Car Crash Lawyer Guidance on Dealing with Pre-Existing Conditions

Personal injury law does not ask whether you were in perfect health before a crash. It asks what the collision changed. If you live with arthritis in your neck, a prior back surgery, migraines, or a patched-up knee from high school sports, a new wreck can aggravate those conditions in ways that are real, painful, and compensable. The challenge is proving it in a claims environment that treats any pre-existing condition as a target.

Over years of handling auto claims, a pattern emerges: insurers latch onto a medical history to shrink or deny payouts, while injured people hesitate to disclose prior issues for fear it will hurt their case. Both instincts, if uncorrected, lead to mistakes. A seasoned car accident lawyer expects pre-existing conditions and builds the claim around them rather than around a fictional blank slate.

This guide explains how experienced counsel approaches these cases, what evidence tends to move the needle, and how to navigate the insurer’s predictable lines of attack. The goal is simple: turn a perceived weakness into a documented, credible story of aggravation that a claims adjuster, mediator, or jury will accept.

Pre-existing covers a broad spectrum. It could be degenerative disc disease shown on a five-year-old MRI, a torn rotator cuff repaired last spring, diabetes that slows healing, or anxiety that flares after a crash. None of that disqualifies you from compensation. The law in most states follows the eggshell plaintiff rule: a defendant takes you as you are. If a collision worsens a condition or makes an asymptomatic condition symptomatic, the at-fault driver is responsible for that aggravation.

The line that matters is not whether you had prior pain somewhere in your body, but how your baseline changed after the wreck. If you occasionally had neck stiffness before but could sleep, carry groceries, and drive without limitations, and now you wake nightly with nerve pain and need injections, that delta is the case. A car crash lawyer focuses the record on that before-and-after.

Adjusters are trained to isolate alternative explanations. They will ask for broad medical authorizations, sometimes fishing for unrelated complaints from years prior. They will highlight any gap in treatment or any reference to “degenerative change” to argue your current pain is merely the natural course of aging. They will cite a prior claim or workers’ comp case and imply overlap.

These tactics are predictable, so your approach should be as well. Expect to share earlier records, but do it with limits. Expect the degenerative label, but don’t let it frame the narrative. Degeneration describes a condition of tissue; aggravation describes an event-driven worsening. People live with degenerative findings for decades without disabling pain. After a crash, the symptoms and treatment intensity frequently spike. Well-prepared files show this shift in concrete terms.

Right after a collision, pain can be diffuse and adrenaline can mask injury. Many clients decline transport, then wake up two days later with shoulder pain that wasn’t obvious at the scene. The early window is when records are created that insurers later treat as gospel. Even a single line that says “patient denies back pain” can become a cudgel, taken out of context.

A car accident attorney will urge you to be specific and honest in early care visits. It is not malingering to say you feel okay at rest but pain spikes when you turn right or climb stairs. That detail explains why a complaint appears two days later when the swelling sets in. If you have a prior condition, say so, and then say what’s different now. Clarity beats minimization. A note that reads “history of lumbar degenerative disease, acute exacerbation post-MVC, now radiating to right calf, positive straight leg raise, baseline pain 2/10 now 7/10” sets a foundation that can carry the case.

The most persuasive cases read like a timeline you could hand to a tired adjuster at 4:45 p.m. and still get a fair number. They track the baseline, the crash, the immediate complaints, the diagnostic pivot, and the treatment arc. That arc often includes conservative care, then interventional pain management, and only then discussion of surgery. When pre-existing conditions exist, the task becomes stitching in the earlier decade in a way that feels complete rather than evasive.

A car wreck lawyer assembles three buckets of proof:

Baseline documentation: prior clinic notes, imaging, physical therapy discharge summaries, work clearance letters, and pharmacy logs that show what life looked like in the months before the crash. The goal is not to sanitize the past but to quantify it. If you had intermittent neck pain controlled by ibuprofen twice a week, that is a strong baseline compared to daily gabapentin post-crash.

Post-crash trajectory: emergency records, primary care notes, specialist consultations, imaging, and therapy records that show a step-up in complaints, objective findings, and interventions. The case strengthens when an MRI that once read “mild desiccation at C5-6” now shows a posterior disc herniation with nerve impingement, or when a previously stable knee now requires arthroscopy after a dashboard impact.

Functional impact: employer emails documenting missed shifts, caregiver notes, activity logs, and statements from people who saw the change. Insurers pretend pain is a number; juries respond to function. If you were the grandparent who drove carpool, and now your daughter covers those routes because you cannot turn your head safely, that is compensable loss of normal life.

Most battles land on a handful of questions: causation, extent, and duration. Adjusters and defense counsel scan for a physician willing to say the https://reidstwy687.iamarrows.com/how-to-build-a-strong-case-with-help-from-an-injury-attorney wreck probably caused a specific exacerbation, that the symptoms you now report are consistent with the mechanism of injury, and that the need for treatment flows from the crash, not simply the passage of time.

If you carry a pre-existing condition, the language “aggravation of” or “exacerbation of” becomes critical. A doctor who writes “patient has chronic degenerative changes” without tying the new symptoms to the crash unintentionally hands the defense a talking point. Conversely, a note that says “based on patient’s history, prior functionality, mechanism of injury, and comparative imaging, it is my medical opinion within a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the motor vehicle collision on [date] caused an acute aggravation of pre-existing cervical degenerative disc disease resulting in right C6 radiculopathy” is gold. It answers the legal question in clinical terms.

Good lawyers do not script doctors, but they do provide context. They send brief summaries of the claim, baseline facts, and key images, and they ask precise questions that align with legal standards. They also make sure the doctor understands the difference between a diagnosis and a medicolegal opinion, and that both end up in the record.

In some states, your compensation is reduced by your percentage of fault. Pre-existing conditions don’t alter fault, but they can affect how believable you seem. If you hide a prior back issue and it surfaces later, the adjuster or jury may doubt your entire story. An experienced car accident lawyer leans into disclosure, frames it correctly, and then uses it to establish credibility.

When you admit, without hedging, that you had prior pain but could garden for two hours before and now last fifteen minutes, you control the narrative. When your work attendance logs confirm you rarely missed time before and now have twelve absences in three months, you look trustworthy. When the defense suggests you were always this way, contemporaneous proof answers for you.

Some states allow the defense to apportion damages between pre-existing conditions and crash-related aggravation. In practice, apportionment can be messy. Human bodies don’t label percentages. But medical professionals can compare imaging, exam findings, and the acute timeline to give reasoned estimates. You rarely need a precise number; you need a well-founded opinion that some component of the current impairment is new or significantly worsened because of the crash.

A car crash lawyer may retain a treating physician or an outside expert to address apportionment directly. If a knee had mild osteoarthritis before and now has a meniscal tear with mechanical symptoms triggered by a direct dashboard impact, the surgeon might apportion 80 percent of current impairment to the crash. Even if the defense offers a lower split, a thoughtful apportionment often opens settlement doors. It gives adjusters a way to justify paying more than they planned.

Radiology reports often include degenerative language. That scares clients and emboldens insurers. But degeneration is common. If you MRI a random group of 45-year-olds with no pain complaints, a significant percentage will show disc bulges or joint wear. The presence of degeneration can explain why you suffered worse injury than a healthier person, not why you suffered no injury.

Mechanism matters. Low-speed crashes can still cause real injury, especially with vulnerable anatomy. A tap to an already narrowed spinal canal can tip a person from manageable stiffness into daily headaches and paresthesia. The law does not punish vulnerability. A skilled car accident attorney reframes the radiology: “these changes pre-existed, which made our client fragile, and the collision lit the fuse.”

Nothing persuades like steady, medically appropriate care. Gaps are inevitable for life reasons, but long, unexplained gaps help the defense. Likewise, wild swings in complaints raise eyebrows. A better record reads like a diary: therapy twice a week for six weeks, a plateau, a referral to pain management, two injections with partial relief, a stutter step back to work, then recurrence that leads to surgical consult. It is not dramatic. It is human.

If you had similar treatment in the past, the comparison helps. Maybe you did six physical therapy sessions last year and were fine. Now you complete eighteen sessions and still struggle, a difference in response that points to a new problem. Your car accident lawyer will ask you to keep a short pain and activity log that feeds into visits, so notes capture not only symptoms but function. This is the quiet backbone of the claim.

Clients with pre-existing conditions sometimes feel guilty asking for compensation. They assume the crash only piled onto old problems and worry that they are asking too much. That hesitation leaks into negotiations. Adjusters sense it. A better frame is economic reality. You did not choose your body, your prior injuries, or your genetics. You also did not choose to be hit at an intersection. If the crash increased your medical bills by thousands, forced you into unpaid leave, or left you buying household help to make life work, those are quantifiable losses the law recognizes.

Pain and suffering is harder to price, but in cases with pre-existing conditions, the loss of normal life often speaks louder. If you built your routine around managing chronic issues and the crash took away the margins you relied on, the harm is not speculative. It’s the difference between functioning and not. Settlement presentations that show day-in-the-life examples rather than abstract adjectives tend to earn respect.

Not every case with pre-existing conditions settles for full value. Sometimes the record is thin, a prior injury was severe, or the crash was modest. In those cases, your car wreck lawyer will balance risk against reward. Filing suit forces the defense to make choices: spend money on experts or move toward resolution. Discovery lets you depose their doctors and lock in opinions that can be undermined at trial. Mediation opens space for nuanced numbers, including structured settlements if future care is likely.

Trials with pre-existing conditions hinge on credibility and teaching. Jurors understand wear and tear. Many have it. When you explain, without self-pity, how the collision changed your workable routine into a precarious one, they listen. When your surgeon brings side-by-side images and points to a clear herniation that wasn’t there before, they see it. When your supervisor testifies you were reliable and now you’re not, they believe it. The challenge is assembling those pieces cleanly and avoiding overreach.

Health insurance often covers initial treatment. If you have Medicare, Medicaid, or an employer plan with ERISA rights, those payers may assert liens on your settlement. Pre-existing conditions do not change that, but they can complicate the math. If your plan paid for care before the crash and after, the lien might include a blend. You want accurate allocation to crash-related care only.

A car accident attorney will request itemized lien statements, audit them for unrelated charges, and negotiate reductions. Medicare has strict reporting and reimbursement rules; ignoring them risks penalties. Many private plans will cut their lien by a proportional share of your attorney’s fees and costs. Clearing these issues early prevents a last-minute squeeze when a settlement finally lands.

Insurers will request broad access to your records. You do not need to hand them your entire medical life. A reasonable time window tied to the injuries at issue usually suffices. If you had a back issue ten years ago with no complaints since, that distant episode rarely informs current causation. Your lawyer will fight scope while ensuring the records that help you get into the file.

Social media is a silent discovery trap. A single photo hauling a suitcase can undermine weeks of reports about lifting limits. The point is not to live dishonestly; it’s to avoid snippets without context. If you have a good day and try to rake leaves for twenty minutes, then spend the evening in pain, the rake photo tells only the sunshine half. Until your claim resolves, treat your online life as part of your medical chart.

Defense carriers love independent medical examinations because “independent” sounds neutral. Many IMEs are not neutral. Still, a thoughtful second opinion can help the plaintiff too. In cases where the treating physician is cautious with language or simply too busy to write a causation letter, your car crash lawyer may retain a board-certified specialist to review records, examine you, and write an analysis that addresses aggravation directly. The weight of that opinion depends on credentials and candor, not cheerleading.

Biomechanical experts sometimes appear in low-speed collision disputes. Their role is to estimate force and argue plausibility. Those reports are not medical opinions. Courts often remind jurors that people vary. A light rear-end collision can injure a fragile neck. If the defense insists on a biomechanical model, your team may counter with a more complete model or simply remind the court of the limits of physics without physiology.

A warehouse worker with a decade-old L4-5 bulge managed his back with occasional ibuprofen. After a side impact at 30 mph, he developed leg numbness and foot drop within weeks. A post-crash MRI showed a larger herniation compressing the nerve root. He failed conservative care, had a microdiscectomy, and returned to modified work. The insurer pointed to the old bulge. The surgeon compared images and charted the neurologic progression that never existed before. The case resolved in the mid six figures, with a portion reserved for future flare-ups. The old disc was a subplot, not the story.

A receptionist with chronic migraines averaged two severe days a month. A rear-end collision at a stoplight pushed her to eight severe days, with photophobia and missed work. CT imaging was normal, as is common. Neurology notes recorded the pattern change and documented failed medication trials post-crash that used to work. The defense called it stress. Her employer’s attendance logs, pharmacy records, and headache diary told a different tale. A realistic settlement funded a neuromodulation device and covered wages for a job change to part-time.

A retired carpenter with shoulder osteoarthritis rammed his AC joint into a seat belt during a T-bone collision. He had mild pre-crash pain and near-full range of motion. Two months later he could not lift to shoulder height. MRI showed a full-thickness supraspinatus tear. The insurer argued degeneration plus age. The orthopedic surgeon apportioned 80 percent of current impairment to the traumatic tear. A modest verdict acknowledged the baseline but paid for arthroscopic repair and rehab.

These are not outliers. They are what real files look like when built with attention to detail.

Pre-existing condition cases reward methodical lawyers. Ask how often the firm handles aggravation claims, which experts they trust for specific body systems, and how they plan to document your baseline. Inquire about trial history, not because most cases go to verdict, but because insurers respect firms that will try a case if necessary. Discuss communication cadence. You want a car accident lawyer who will push you, gently, to keep appointments and to be precise in how you describe symptoms.

Look for humility in strategy. Overpromising is a warning sign. A professional who talks in ranges, discusses risks, and asks for your help compiling old records is more likely to deliver a fair result.

Insurers try to pay as if you were already halfway down the hill. Your task is to show where you stood, how far you slid, and what it takes to climb back. Fair compensation typically includes crash-related medical bills, future care if aggravation will linger, wage loss or diminished earning capacity if your body can no longer keep pace, and non-economic damages for pain, inconvenience, and loss of normal life. When pre-existing conditions shape the background, a thoughtful apportionment and a well-organized record tend to produce accountable numbers.

A car accident attorney cannot manufacture health you did not have, and you should not try. What they can do is anchor the claim in specifics, speak the right language to your doctors, and push insurers past reflexive denials. That is the quiet craft of these cases. When done well, the defense stops waving the word “degenerative” like a magic wand and starts dealing with the reality in front of them: a person whose life works differently now because a crash made an old problem bigger or a quiet problem loud.

If you are carrying a history into a new injury, do not apologize for it. Bring it into the open, measure it, and keep moving. The law gives you that path. The right car crash lawyer keeps you on it.