Aggravation of Preexisting Degenerative Condition of the Back Due to a Car Crash

Hi, I’m Tim Williams with Dwyer Williams Potter Attorneys. I’m the lead litigation attorney for our firm and also a partner. I’m going to talk the situation where someone has some degenerative changes, for instance, in their back. Let’s focus on the back for now. It could be the shoulder, the hip, the knee, what have you, but let’s focus on the back.

Let’s say a person has some degeneration, in other words, they have some wear and tear in the back but they don’t have any symptoms. They’re none the wiser. They have no idea that this is going on. Then they are hit from behind and that causes an activation of those symptoms; in other words, activation of an underlying degenerative process. So if a person has, for instance, a disk bulge, no symptoms whatsoever; they are struck from behind due to the negligence of another and it causes that disk bulge to aggravate the nerves that are surrounding the bulge. Insurance companies often take the position, well, look, a disk bulge was there anyways; the disk bulge is causing the symptoms, so it’s not the accident causing the symptoms, therefore, we’re not going to pay you anything.
Well, that is not necessarily the law in Oregon. What I would like to do is show you the law in Oregon because it’s very clear. What you see is a jury instruction, the instruction that a judge would give to a jury in a case involving a prior infirm condition. It reads, if you find that the plaintiff—now, the plaintiff is the person who has been injured through the fault of the other—so if you find that the plaintiff had a bodily condition that predisposed him or her to be more subject to injury than a person in normal health; in other words, a person without a degenerative condition in our case, nevertheless, the defendant—that’s the person who caused the accident—would be liable for any and all injuries and damage that may have been suffered by the plaintiff as a result of the negligence of the defendant. In other words, because through the fault of the defendant, even though those injuries due to the prior condition may have been greater than those that would have been suffered by another person under the same circumstances. So Oregon law is very clear on the issue. A person who has a prior condition that predisposes them to injury is entitled to compensation for their injuries, even though it’s worse than other people maybe that didn’t have that condition.

By way of example, let’s assume that I’m walking in a crosswalk with my grandmother. Now, my grandmother is 80 years old and she has osteoporosis. I don’t have osteoporosis. We’re walking in a crosswalk together, and a young man runs a red light and taps both of us. He doesn’t run us over, but just taps us, knocks us both onto our left hip. And my grandma breaks her hip because she has brittle bones. I don’t break my hip. My grandma is entitled to recover for her broken hip, even though I didn’t break my hip, even though we’re involved in the same accident with the same force, and I didn’t break my hip, she’s entitled to recover for that because she is protected under Oregon law under the jury instruction that I just read to you.

Hopefully, you found this information useful and helpful. I want to thank you for watching this video, and I encourage you to

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