Spinal claims are usually contested on two fronts at once: whether what shows on the imaging predates the incident, and whether the treatment still ahead is reasonable or speculative.
Degenerative changes are common in people who have never been injured at all, which is what makes the pre-existing-condition argument available in nearly every one of these cases, and what makes the treatment record on either side of the incident the thing that answers it. Margossian Law represents people with spinal injuries in California.
A Pre-Existing Condition Is Not a Defense
Degenerative changes in the spine are close to universal in adults, and an insurer reviewing your imaging will find some. The argument that follows, that the disc was already damaged and so the collision cannot have caused anything, is the single most common response to a spinal claim.
California law does not support it. A negligent party takes an injured person as they find them, and aggravating an existing condition is compensable. What settles the argument is the record either side of the incident: what you could do before, what changed, when it changed, and what treatment you needed that you did not need before.
How Long You Have
Two deadlines govern most injury claims in California, and they are nothing like each other in length. Which one applies to a spinal injury follows from how it happened, whether a collision, a fall on premises someone else controls, or a workplace incident involving a third party, rather than from how serious it is. The short one is what catches people out, because a long course of treatment gives no sign that a shorter period is running alongside it.
6 months
To present a claim against a public entity
2 years
To file suit in most other cases
Why Resolving Early Is Especially Expensive Here
Spinal treatment escalates in stages (rest and physical therapy, then injections, then in some cases surgery), and each stage takes months to evaluate. Whether surgery will eventually be recommended is often not clear for a year or more.
Accepting a settlement before that is known typically means signing a release covering treatment you have not had. A single-level fusion, and the future care and lost capacity attached to it, is an order of magnitude away from a course of physical therapy.
What a Claim Can Recover
California recognizes two kinds of loss. Economic losses can be added up from records, and in a spinal case a large part of that total is treatment that has not happened yet. Non-economic losses cannot be added up, which does not make them smaller.
Losses with receipts
- Medical treatment already received
- Treatment still ahead, including surgery that has been deferred
- Income lost while unable to work
- Reduced ability to earn a living in the work you were trained for
- Rehabilitation, therapy, and assistive equipment
- Out-of-pocket costs the injury forced on you
Losses without them
- Physical pain, during recovery and after it
- Emotional distress and its effects on daily life
- Disfigurement and permanent scarring
- Loss of independence in ordinary daily activity
- Loss of consortium, claimed by a spouse or domestic partner