CHRONIC INJURY CAUSED OR MADE WORSE BY ACCIDENT VERSUS ACUTE INJURY FROM ACCIDENT
When you are injured in an accident by another person’s negligence, the insurance company often tries to blame your injury on a preexisting condition. (Of course, they also try to claim the accident wasn’t their person’s fault.) Our injury lawyers deal with the issues every day.
Before they pay a claim, the insurance company looks at your medical records. One of the key words they look for in your medical records is ‘chronic.’ When an injury is acute, it means it just happened. However, if the injury is chronic, it has been affecting you for a longer time. The insurance company will then try to make it look like you already had the injury before the accident. Our experienced Minnesota personal injury lawyers have been fighting this battle every day for the last 25 years.
COMPENSATION FOR AGGRAVATION OF PREEXISTING CONDITION
As a general rule, there are at least three things our lawyers look at regarding a pre-existing or chronic condition after an accident injury:
First, many times a ‘preexisting condition’ had no symptoms before the accident. In other words, the symptoms were only triggered because of the accident. The insurance company will still try to use this to get out of paying fair compensation, but the law is not favorable to them. Minnesota law says that people who cause an accident take their victim as they find them. For example, you may have had degeneration in your spine or a knee joint, but you were functioning fine without pain before the accident. The insurance company still must compensate you if the accident triggered your pain.
Second, many times a preexisting condition was well controlled for years before the accident. However, the accident makes it much worse or causes an aggravation of the condition. While the accident did not cause the original injury, you still must be compensated to the extent the accident made it worse.
Third, the word ‘chronic’ itself is misleading. An injury can be considered chronic after just a few months. So, just because a doctor labels it chronic rather than acute doesn’t mean it wasn’t caused by the accident. If the accident happened more than a few months earlier, the doctors may already be calling it chronic. An experienced personal injury accident lawyer will educate the insurance company or a jury as to what the medical records really mean.
DON’T BE BULLIED BY THE INSURANCE COMPANY
If you have been injured in a Minnesota accident that made your preexisting condition worse, call us. You can speak with a MN injury attorney for a free consultation. We will discuss your situation in detail and explain your rights to you. We never charge anything unless your received compensation for your injuries.