How Does a Pre Existing Injury affect My Personal Injury Claim? | Corona, Riverside

Insurance companies want you to believe that if you have a pre-existing injury or condition you are not entitled to recover as much as someone who was healthy before the accident. This is not true. Find out the truth by calling the Inland Empire Law Group.
(909) 481-0100

We provide legal services in the following personal injury practice areas:
*Car, Truck, Motorcycle, Pedestrian, and Cyclist Accident Cases
*Slip and Fall Accidents and Premises Liability Cases
*Dog Bite and Animal Attack Cases
*Medical Malpractice and Surgical Error Cases
*Wrongful Death Cases

8600 Utica Ave., Suite 200
Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730
TELEPHONE: (909) 481-0100

I want to tell you a quick story. Let’s say you have an egg, and you have a piece of wood. You put those on a counter and you bring a hammer to them. You hit both of them at the same rate of speed. You hit the wood, nothing happens. You hit the egg, what’s going to happen? It’s going to crack. Well, sometimes in accidents, the same amount of force is going to cause a different amount of injury to the person that is using that car. You might have a young person, very athletic and they get hit in the same car, in the same manner as someone else whose older or has some frailties or some preexisting condition, and that young person has no problem just like the piece of wood. But that older person or person with some sort of preexisting condition gets hit exactly the same and what happens? They have a lot of injuries. We have what is called a preexisting condition. The law still allows you as a person to recover from the injuries that you suffered from an accident, even if you have preexisting conditions. Because that accident is going to cause aggravation and damage to you. In other words, the defendant, or person you hit you, the person who was negligent, has to take the person as he or she is. You can’t just say, “Oh well, you’re old or hurt, therefore you’re not entitled to damages because if you were young and not hurt before then you wouldn’t have been hurt.” That’s not the way it works. They take you as you are. So if you had some preexisting condition and you were hurt, are you going to recover for the aggravation or for the pain that resulted from that accident. You don’t get to recover for your preexisting condition, you only get claim for what has happened afterwards. There are many people that I know, many clients I know that didn’t have any pain before the accident but, in fact, they had a preexisting condition, they didn’t know it. A lot of times when we get older our backs begin to deteriorate, our bones become weaker, we don’t know whether we’re hurt or not because we’re not feeling any pain, but then all of a sudden you get in an accident and everything changes. That which was not painful, is painful, the things we could do before, we can’t anymore. All because of a simple accident that changes our condition. You as an injured person are entitled to recover for the aggravation to those injuries. You’re entitled to recover damages because of the aggravation from your preexisting condition. You need to find a good lawyer who understands the difference between those two and can explain that to an insurance company or to a jury if necessary, so that you can get the best recovery possible for your injuries from an accident.


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