Can I recover compensation after a car accident if I have a pre-existing condition?

Pre-Existing Injuries Don’t Negate Your Rights, But They Could Make Recovery More Difficult

Rhode Island has a fault-based insurance system. If another driver makes a mistake and causes an accident, their insurance company is responsible for paying your bills. However, negotiating with adjusters isn’t always easy—especially when you need compensation for a preexisting injury.

You don’t have to risk your right to a fair recovery. Read more to learn how your preexisting conditions could impact your Rhode Island car crash claim, and contact Kirshenbaum & Kirshenbaum, Attorneys at Law, to find out how our experienced team of personal injury lawyers could help you assert your rights and reclaim your independence.

Car Accidents and Pre-Existing Injuries

A Pre-Existing Injury Doesn’t Supersede Your Right to Recovery

Preexisting conditions don’t negate your right to a recovery, but they can sometimes stall negotiations. The extent to which an adjuster is permitted to consider your condition depends on whether it was affected by the accident. Some conditions, like diabetes or cancer, probably aren’t going to get any worse after a rear-end collision. However, other injuries can worsen or develop complications that impact your physical health and your mental well-being.

If a crash exacerbates your symptoms or otherwise diminishes your quality of life, you may still be entitled to additional compensation.

Your Potential Damages After a Serious Motor Vehicle Accident

Every car accident claim is different, but you can’t typically file a personal injury lawsuit unless you have sustained damages.

In Rhode Island, damages always fall into the following categories:

Economic damages. Your economic damages are the financial losses you’ve incurred as a direct result of your accident. Most economic damages are tangible and can be verified by collecting receipts or performing basic calculations. They could include the money you’ve already spent on hospital bills, the money you’ll need for future care, and the money you’ve lost to take time away from work.
Noneconomic damages. Your noneconomic damages represent a more abstract category of loss. They are comparatively intangible and relate more to your mental health and quality of life than your finances. Noneconomic damages include compensation for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment, and disfigurement.
Punitive damages. Economic and noneconomic damages are sometimes termed “compensatory damages” because they are intended to compensate different forms of loss. Punitive damages are not compensatory because they are designed solely to punish outrageous acts of negligence.

Rhode Island is very different from most states in the country, in that it imposes no caps on the amount of economic, noneconomic, and punitive damages that you could recover in a typical car accident lawsuit.

3 Obstacles You Can’t Afford to Overlook

Although Rhode Island doesn’t cap damages in most personal injury claims, its laws and legal system provide negligent motorists, defense attorneys, and insurance companies ample opportunity to cast doubt on your claim.

If you have a preexisting injury, your settlement could be affected by:

Skepticism. Insurance adjusters have a strong incentive to cast doubt on your claims. Even if you know that an accident has worsened your pain or otherwise exacerbated the symptoms of a preexisting condition, some adjusters will argue that their company shouldn’t be responsible for any injury that you had before the accident.
Nondisclosure defenses. If you share too much information with the insurance company, they could try to blame certain injuries on preexisting conditions that have nothing to do with your accident. However, if you share too little, an adjuster could just as easily claim that you intended to conceal your preexisting injuries to obtain additional compensation. Finding the right balance can be difficult and may require an attorney’s input.
Doubts about damages. Assessing your damages isn’t as easy as totaling receipts and researching multipliers. If you were already going to physical therapy before your accident, who should pay after the accident—you or the insurance company? Securing damages may require collecting unambiguous evidence of how the crash has influenced your symptoms.

Despite these obstacles, Rhode Island adheres to a doctrine termed the “thin-skull rule.”

The thin-skull rule describes a so-called “eggshell plaintiff,” or somebody whose preexisting injury makes them especially and unusually susceptible to injury. Under this rule, an at-fault motorist is still responsible for “all consequences flowing from [the] collision,” even the eggshell plaintiff needs more intensive treatment than a person without a preexisting injury.