Alexander Bennett

On May 21, 2025, the Federal Circuit en banc banished the notion that the reliability of an expert’s methodology under Federal Rule of Evidence 702...

Santos v. Kimmel, No. 24-2196-cv, 2025 WL 2825050 (2d Cir. Oct. 6, 2025)

Objectives Over 600 UK Armed Forces personnel and civilians were seriously injured in the conflict in Afghanistan. We examined whether combat injury, and limb loss specifically, reduced the likelihood of employment after leaving the UK Armed Forces and to what extent this was mediated by pain and mobility.Methods Combat-injured participants who were aeromedically evacuated to a UK hospital while on deployment to Afghanistan and subsequently left the UK Armed Forces (n=406) and a comparison group of uninjured personnel who had left the military (n=107) were drawn from an existing cohort (the ADVANCE study). Current employment was determined by self-report questionnaire, and pain and mobility mediating variables were taken from the EuroQol EQ-5D 5-Level measure.Results 21.2% of the injured group were not in paid employment, compared with 14.3% of the uninjured comparison group; this difference was not statistically significant. Unmediated analyses showed that although those with amputation injuries had an increased risk of being unemployed compared with the comparison group, this was not statistically significant. For those who were injured without limb loss, compared with the comparison group, there were indirect effects on employment through both mobility (adjusted risk ratio (aRR) 1.32, 95% CI 1.11 to 1.69) and pain (aRR 1.10, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.31).Conclusions In this severely injured cohort, combat injury does not result in a significantly reduced rate of post-military employment. Any potential relationship between injury and employment for those injured without limb loss compared with the uninjured is due in part to the mediating effects of mobility and pain.Data are available upon reasonable request. Data are not publicly available due to high security regarding the participants; however, access to anonymised data may be possible on reasonable request, in which case please contact the main study ()

[co-author: Brandon Griffith] ImagineAR, Inc., v. Niantic, Inc., 2026 WL 936029 (D. Del. Apr. 7, 2026)