How Much are Spinal Cord Injury Claims Worth?

Spinal cord injury claims may be worth thousands, if not millions of dollars depending on the damages sustained. It’s hard to determine your case’s exact amount, but most times an SCI involves catastrophic hospital fees and severe, oftentimes permanent injury.

The National Center for Biotechnology Information reported that 250,000 and 500,000 patients each year suffer from SCIs globally. About 17,000 new SCI cases involve preventable causes like motor vehicle accidents or personal injury cases.

For instance, based on the Christopher & Dana Foundation, the estimated lifetime costs for a 25-year-old with an SCI is over $4.7 million, while a 50-year-old may sustain $3 million in expenditures.

If you suffered an SCI due to negligence or someone’s liability, you can sue by filing a spinal cord injury claim. It’s unfair to endure life-changing expenses for an accident that wasn’t your fault.

Finding a personal injury attorney to help you through a claims process is important, because your settlement can be worth much more than the insurance company’s initial offer.

Factors in Spinal Cord Injury Claims

Just like other personal injury cases, the worth of a spinal cord injury claim depends on if duty of care was violated in your case. What this means is that the guilty party’s actions directly caused your losses.

Multiple factors, outside of proving negligence, influence the worth of your spinal cord injury claim. The more intrusive your SCI is to your life and livelihood, the more you may deserve a high settlement:

• Levels of severity—the location of your spinal cord injury and how much it impacts your daily functions.
• Medical costs—hospital and rehabilitation expenses you pay for treatment.
• Loss of income—salary or wages you’ve lost from not working due to injury.
• Future medical needs—medical expenses to continue future treatment like medicine, physical therapy, or rehabilitation.
• Pain and suffering—emotional distress you’ve been through due to injury, and loss of enjoyment of life.
• Home modifications—costs from changing your home’s layout to accommodate your spinal cord injury.
• Cause of injury—how you suffered the injury such as a motor accident, fall, etc.

There are a lot of factors that play in settling a spinal cord injury. You should speak with a personal injury attorney who can help you determine how much your settlement claims are worth.

Types of Spinal Injury Claims

The type of spinal cord injury claim you suffered from may influence your overall settlement amount.

Your SCI claim may fall into certain categories of tort law, such as:

• Negligence from a motor vehicle accident
• Slips and falls
• Workplace injury
• Medical malpractice
• Defective product liability

Note that work-related SCIs have to go through a workers’ compensation claim instead of a regular personal injury claim. This may affect your settlement because workers’ comp claims cannot compensate for non-economic damages the way a PI claim can.

Claims Caused By Negligence

A large majority of spinal cord injury claims occur due to preventable causes. The main two causes of SCIs are preventable falls and motor vehicle accidents.

For instance, in auto accidents, a driver can be grossly negligent, failing to see a red light and hitting a pedestrian as a result.

Another is a workplace injury where an employer disobeys OSHA standards, failing to maintain a safe working environment, causing an employee to suffer SCI.

Product Liability

Product liability in spinal cord cases often involves defective car parts or vehicle failures. Motor vehicles are one of the leading causes of spinal cord injuries in the United States.

If your car accident was due to a failed vehicle part and the crash caused your SCI, you may be entitled to sue the manufacturer for your injuries.

What Influences How Much Spinal Injury Claims are Worth?

The level of severity and your age heavily influences how much your spinal cord injury is worth.

Your SCI’s average yearly and lifetime costs may be affected by education, neurological damages, and pre-injury employment history. The younger the victim is when suffering SCI, the more potential lifetime damage an SCI can inflict.

The Levels of Spinal Cord Injury

There are four main types of spinal cord injury, each categorized by where the damage is located:

• Cervical—this affects the top seven vertebrae of the spine (C-1 through C-7)
• Thoracic—injuries affecting the middle-portion of the spinal cord (T-1 through T-12)
• Lumbar—the lowest-five vertebrae of the spinal cord (L-1 through L-5)
• Sacral—the triangle-shaped bone at the end of the spinal cord (S-1 through S-5)

Cervical spinal cord injury usually impacts breathing and loss of function in the arms and legs. Thoracic spinal cord injury may affect movement and sensation in the chest, abdomen, and legs resulting in paraplegia.

Lumbar spinal injury mainly impacts the function of the hips and legs. A lumbar SCI may cause bowel and bladder difficulties and nerve damage in the lower body. Sacral spinal cord injury impacts function of the hips, back of thighs, buttocks, and pelvic organs.

Common Damages in Spinal Cord Injury Claims

Since the spinal cord delivers signals throughout vital parts of the body, damage to this organ may cause complete and permanent harm.

Victims may face medical fees as costs for rehabilitation services pile up over time. If the recovery period drags on or if the SCI continues to deteriorate, expect medical fees to pile up.

An SCI may be debilitating enough to force you out of your original career. This may cause lost earning potential as you were either forced to pursue alternative employment or cannot work at all.

The prospect of losing control of your limbs may cause pain and suffering or other forms of psychological trauma.

All of these damages may be compensable through a spinal cord injury claim if you provide the right evidence. Even if you have insurance, hiring an attorney is a good idea to make sure your claim is properly organized.

Defenses That May Lower Your Spinal Injury Compensation Amount

In some unfortunate events, there may be defenses that may lower your spinal cord injury compensation amount.

For instance, shared liability can be used against you if you were partially at-fault for your injury. Also, the assumption of risk can be used if your SCI occurred during a dangerous activity you were involved in or not allowed to do.

Shared Liability

Sometimes, the defendant may argue the plaintiff shared liability through their actions at the time of injury. This may lower your spinal cord injury claim amount depending on how much you’re at-fault in the accident.

This is especially important for states that work under a contributory negligence system. Even if you share 1% of liability for an accident, under contributory negligence, you’re barred from receiving compensation.

Your settlement may be reduced under a comparative negligence system if you share liability for the accident. This system is less harsh than contributory negligence, but it still lowers your settlement amount depending on your level of liability.

Liability is a measurement of how much you were responsible for something. This is entirely subjective, so your attorney’s ability to legally defend you can sway your spinal cord injury claim.

Assumption of Risk

Your spinal cord injury claim may be affected if your SCI happened while involving yourself in a knowingly dangerous activity.

For example, if you knowingly drive recklessly, the defendant may raise the assumption of risk against you to lessen or revoke your chances of a higher settlement.

The assumption of risk is prevalent in premises liability cases where they may make you sign a waiver. Even with a waiver, establishments have a baseline to maintain when preventing accidents in their premises. If they fail to maintain a reasonable amount of care, they may be liable for your damages.

Raise Your Chances of Approval With a Spinal Cord Injury Attorney

If you’re suffering from a spinal cord injury, potentially raise your chances of approval by finding a personal injury attorney. LegalASAP can help you find an attorney through our 500+ law firms established in the United States.

If you fail to present your claim on-time, you may be barred from starting a spinal cord injury claim at all. Thus, you shouldn’t wait since that would affect your case’s statute of limitations. File a personal injury claim here, and we’ll see if your claim qualifies.