If you’ve been injured because of someone else’s negligence, bringing a personal injury case is an important way to get compensation for your losses. It’s natural to worry about pre-existing conditions, but a personal injury attorney in Cheyenne, Wyoming can give you specific advice on what effect your pre-existing condition may have on your settlement. In general, the significance of the effect will depend on the specifics of your situation, your degree of fault, and the knowledge and competence of your lawyer.
How Pre-Existing Conditions May Affect Your Settlement
It is possible for a pre-existing injury to have a great effect on a personal injury settlement, but it should not ever automatically bar you from getting compensation. The first step in understanding the potential effect is understanding all the legal terminology involved.
“Pre-Existing”
Under the law, this would include any medical condition that existed before the accident. This might be anything from arthritis to a fracture that you had years ago. It includes both the results of accidents and diseases or disorders.
The “Eggshell Doctrine”
This term refers to an important right that you have under the law, which is that anyone who injures you must “take you as they find you.” In other words, they cannot claim to be less liable because you are more vulnerable than another person.
Consider an extreme example which could illustrate the basic idea. Say that a cyclist is speeding along in a pedestrian-only area and hits a 30-year-old, fit adult man. The cyclist will not cause nearly as much injury to that man as they would if the pedestrian were an eight-year-old boy, but that does not make the cyclist any less responsible in either case. The cyclist could not claim that they only have to pay for the amount of damages that would have been incurred had their negligence harmed a mythical “physically ideal” person.
Challenges in Proving Injuries
Although the eggshell doctrine is quite clear, it is still challenging to bring a claim when you have a pre-existing condition, and part of the reason for that is simply the difficulty of sorting out what the accident made worse and how much worse it became than it would otherwise have been. This is where insurance companies work hard to find ways to argue that whatever you’re suffering is either related to the original injury, and not to the aggravation or injury caused by their client, or is part of the natural progression of a disease or disorder rather than the result of the accident.
If you’re going to counter this claim, you will need very detailed medical evidence and clear explanations from your doctor, and possibly from medical experts that your lawyer can bring alongside to testify, showing why they believe that what you’re suffering is related to the accident. Sometimes, medical imaging can also be used to show a definitive difference between the state of an injury prior to an accident and after it.
Another helpful bit of evidence could be testimony from workmates or family members who may be able to describe your state before and after the accident and how the accident has changed your mobility or health.
Impact on Settlement Valuations
Your settlement should cover all your damages and losses for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and potentially other things, as well. To get affair settlement, you must do a careful and accurate valuation of all your losses. On the one hand, you don’t want to minimize anything or forget to leave something out. On the other hand, the negligent party is only responsible for the damage they caused, not for your original injury or condition. It’s important to work with an experienced personal injury lawyer who knows how to value these claims and who has a network of expert medical witnesses to call upon to help prove the full extent of what the accident has done to you.
Strategies to Strengthen a Case
There are some things that you can do to strengthen your case and ensure that you get everything you’re entitled to under the law
Contact a Cheyenne, Wyoming Personal Injury Attorney
The first and most important strategy is to make sure you have an experienced lawyer. You want your lawyer to have experience with Wyoming law and with the local courts, so they know how the evidence is likely to be interpreted and what evidence will be most convincing.
Studies show that injured people who work with a personal injury lawyer come away, on average, with more than three times as great as settlement as those who try to go it alone, and the more complicated a case is, the more likely it is that having a lawyer will get you a better result. Pre-existing conditions definitely make a case more complicated!
Be Completely Transparent
They say there are two people you should never lie to: your doctor and your attorney. Although the saying was originally speaking of criminal attorneys rather than an attorney in a civil lawsuit, it is still very important that you be completely honest with your lawyer and tell them everything that you can about your medical history.
If the other side can find any way to accuse you of hiding a prior condition, they will try to use this against you. Once your lawyer knows what the full situation is, they can go about protecting you not only in your settlement but also protecting your privacy and medical history.
Get Medical Help Immediately After an Accident and Follow Through
Always get medical help immediately after an accident, even if you don’t think you’ve been badly hurt and even if the symptoms you are feeling seem to be entirely related to a previous injury or illness. You need the documentation that comes from a careful check-up by a doctor right after an accident to show the extent of the harm, and the greater delay there is between the time of the accident and the time that you seek medical help, the easier it is for the insurance company to argue that your injuries are related to the pre-existing condition naturally and not a result of the accident.
Keep a Diary
If you don’t already keep a journal or diary, now is a good time to start. You don’t have to keep everything here, and you can keep an audio diary as easily as a written one. The purpose of this is to record each day how the accident is affecting your life. Talk about how you’re feeling, whether the accident is interfering in any way with your ability to do normal life tasks, and any changes you’ve noticed over time.
Dealing With Insurance Companies
If the insurance company contacts you, refer them to your lawyer every time. Your lawyer will be able to negotiate with them effectively, keep them from accessing information about you that they don’t have a right to have and which may not be related to the case, and will protect you from signing any settlements that don’t properly reflect your losses.
Reach out to us at the Ochs Law Firm now for help in Cheyenne and through Wyoming.
