If you get injured while already dealing with another injury, a disability, or a preexisting health condition, does that make it harder to get paid for the new injury? There are many situations where it might have some effect, but people who injure you cannot get out of paying for injuries they caused just because you had other injuries, too.
Generally, a defendant is liable for any harm they cause you in an accident. If they caused harm on top of an existing injury, then they are responsible for the extent to which it got worse. You cannot make them pay for the original condition or underlying health issue, but you can make them pay for how much more pain it causes, how much more treatment it requires, and how much more time away from work it causes you because they hurt you.
Reach out to Basch, Keegan & Spada at (845) 303-2748 to discuss your potential case for free with our Poughkeepsie, NY personal injury lawyers.
What Constitutes a Preexisting Condition?
Preexisting conditions might involve health conditions, disabilities, and separate injuries you already had before the accident. This could be something like a bad back you’ve been dealing with for years, a broken leg you acquired a few weeks ago, or even blindness you experienced since birth.
Does a Preexisting Injury Stop Lawsuits?
Just because you have a disability or prior injury does not mean you can get damages for a new injury or accident. It may limit your damages, since some of the harms would have already been there before the injury, but it does not block a lawsuit.
How Preexisting Injuries and Disabilities Might Help Prove Fault
In fact, it may help you prove negligence. Defendants cannot base the case on a “normal” or “average” plaintiff, and have to deal with the conditions as they actually were. For example, if you were on crutches and you slipped in a store because it wasn’t safe enough for you, they are still responsible, even though you might not have slipped without the crutches.
This could, effectively, lower the threshold for when the defendant’s actions become dangerous or unacceptable.
Does Injury Insurance Cover Preexisting Conditions?
When people talk about “preexisting conditions” and insurance, they are often talking about health insurance, not injury insurance. However, there is an effect on whether injury insurance will cover you as well.
Health Insurance vs. Injury Insurance
It used to be the rule that health insurance would not cover preexisting conditions. For example, if you had cancer and tried to sign up for insurance, they might not have covered you because that makes you more expensive to cover. The law has since been changed to require coverage for preexisting conditions in health insurance.
Injury insurance is a bit different because it covers specific damages after an injury happens, regardless of what else is going on with the person’s health.
Old Injury Not Covered
If you have any prior injuries or health conditions, they would not be covered under injury insurance because they are not related to this accident. For example, if you had a broken leg, then slipped and fell in a store and broke your arm, the store’s insurance would not cover the broken leg.
New Injury Covered
Injury insurance only covers damages that can be linked to this accident/to this injury. In the example above, the new broken arm would certainly be covered in an injury claim for that slip and fall, but the broken leg is unrelated.
Suing for Worsened Condition
Because the defendant can be held responsible for the new injury, but not the preexisting injuries and damages, we often have to deal with “worsened condition.” This means assessing the overall damages caused by this injury, but subtracting out anything that was already there.
For example, if you already had chronic pain and are at a 4 out of 10 for daily pain levels, but this injury moves your pain up to a 6, they are responsible for the increase from 4 to 6, but not the level of pain you were in before the accident.
Separating Preexisting and New Injuries
When you sue for worsened condition, you have to parse out which damages come from the original injury – and would not get paid in this case – and what is attributable to the new injury.
Purpose
The defense will try to say everything that you are experiencing comes from the old injuries or preexisting conditions, and it is up to us to prove that the new harms are actually from the new injury. This is the only way to hold the defendant responsible for what they did to you.
Evidence Needed
This often requires evidence from before the injury – to show your baseline – and evidence from the accident and afterward – to show how things changed. For example, we can look at your pay stubs and medical records before and after the accident to show what changed.
Assessing Damages
Every case is different, but these three areas of damages are generally involved in injury claims:
Medical Bills
The cost of treating your injuries should be paid for you. This should see the person who caused these new injuries cover all of the effects.
This can include ongoing care in the future tied to this specific injury, such as physical therapy bills or pain medication costs, as well as the emergency treatment needs.
Lost Wages
If your new injuries keep you from working, the defendant should cover the full cost. This can include missing a few days of work during recovery or ongoing disabilities from an injury.
Only the extent that your new injuries made your old disability worse will be covered in this case. E.g., if you were 4 weeks into healing a 6-week broken bone, you are expected to miss 2 more weeks anyway. If you rebroke the bone and now need a fresh 6 weeks of disability, only the 4 additional weeks can be attributed to this case. You were scheduled to miss 2 more weeks, even before your new accident.
Pain and Suffering
Every injury hurts, but the impact on your day-to-day life is a bit different. More “severe” injuries generally have a higher impact, such as preventing you from enjoying your life, participating in activities you used to enjoy, or even dealing with activities of daily living (e.g., dressing yourself).
We again only attribute the extent to which this is worse to this new lawsuit.
Call Our New York Personal Injury Lawyers for Help
Call Basch, Keegan & Spada’s Albany, NY personal injury attorneys at (845) 303-2748 today for a free case review.