Los Angeles Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer

A spinal cord injury is a catastrophic injury in the truest sense. Like the brain, the spinal cord can’t grow back the way other body tissues can. And like the brain, the spinal cord controls essential, basic functions that may be gone forever after an injury. Victims are left with permanent, lifelong disabilities that range from toe and foot movement problems to complete paralysis from the neck down (quadriplegia). It’s no exaggeration to call that loss devastating, physically and emotionally, for victims and their families.

Our spinal cord injury attorneys represent clients in Los Angeles, Orange County, and throughout Southern California.

Because spinal cord injuries, like paralysis, are expensive to treat and sometimes rob the victim of a career, they can also be a great financial burden. Victims will need intensive short-term medical care, and most will need physical therapy and ongoing treatment from a spinal care specialist. Very seriously injured victims may need multiple surgeries, long-term therapy or even around-the-clock care. Even families with good medical insurance may not be able to afford the best possible treatments. If the accident was caused by someone else’s careless or malicious behavior, victims have the right to sue to hold that person or organization responsible for the results.

How Our Los Angeles Spinal Cord Injury Lawyers Can Help

After suffering a spinal cord injury, you may be eligible to file a personal injury claim against the person responsible for that injury to recover monetary damages.  While that may sound simple, the process of litigating claims on behalf of victims of spinal cord injuries is far from it.  At the outset, the spinal cord injury victim and his or her family need to understand the challenges that will inevitably arise as the legal process takes it course.

Our spinal cord injury lawyers take their role as counsel seriously.  What does it mean for a lawyer to act as “counsel?”  First, it requires our attorneys to consult with and inform our clients of their legal options in the wake of these devastating injuries.  But the role of counsel also includes informing our clients about the peaks and valleys that their cases are likely to encounter throughout their lifecycle.

After the initial consultation, our attorneys work diligently to push our clients’ cases to trial to maximize the compensation their clients receive.  The sections below are a brief introduction to the work that goes into every one of our spinal cord attorneys’ cases.

The Investigation

Our Los Angeles injury attorneys will begin investigating the accident that caused your injury as soon as you hire them.  That investigation includes:

•  Going to the scene;
• Examining the mechanism or device that caused your injury;
• Contacting and interviewing witnesses;
• Reviewing your medical records, and
• Crafting legal theories to support your claim.

Invariably, these investigations require time and effort.  The California statute of limitations for personal injury claims is two (2) years; claims generally cannot be filed past that point.   This means it is vitally important for victims of spinal cord injuries to contact a knowledgeable spinal cord injury lawyer as soon as they are able to do so.

Preserving the Evidence:

There are legal requirements as to how evidence must be preserved if it is to be used at trial to prove your case.  We are well-versed in the law of evidence and know just how to keep that evidence in the proper condition for trial.

Litigating the Case

Your case will be filed after we have conducted a proper investigation.  After filing, your case will face a lengthy series of procedural hurdles that insurance companies will use to scuttle your case—often in bad faith.  Those procedural hurdles may include:

•  Motions practice regarding venue and jurisdiction.
•  Written discovery;
•  Depositions;
•  Discovery motions and disputes;
•  Evidentiary motions; and
• Motions for summary judgment.

That may sound complicated, but remember: we will be right there with you throughout that process.  We will act as your trusted counsel and steadfast advocate from the moment you retain us until you receive every penny you are owed.

Negotiations:

Insurance companies treat our clients as nothing more than a number, but to us, our clients are family and we treat them like it.  These companies make money by treating people unfairly.  That is why we deal with insurance companies so aggressively in the negotiation process.

The negotiations process includes:

• Our attorneys are scrupulously reviewing your medical records and the evidence in the case to discern the proper financial value of your case;
• We deal directly with the insurance company and its lawyers on your behalf; and
• We present your arguments to mediators to resolve your case and maximize the money in your pockets.

By hiring our spinal cord injury attorneys at Panish, Shea, & Ravipudi, you allow yourself to focus on healing and navigating your new normal. We understand that this process is a serious challenge to our clients, and we will do everything we can to help you focus on healing.  We work hard to lessen the impact that this process has on our clients.

Damages You Can Recover After a Spinal Cord Injury

Successful personal injury cases end with the injured client receiving financial compensation for his or her injuries from the insurance company of the person or company that caused the injuries.  In the legal world, that financial compensation is referred to as “damages.”

Damages

Under California law, the term “damages” describes the payment made to an injured person by the person responsible for those injuries to compensate the injured person for the injuries he or she suffered.  The purpose of awarding damages is to place the injured person in the same position (from a financial standpoint) as he or she would have been if the defendant had never injured them in the first place.

Victims of spinal cord injuries are entitled to damages to compensate them for their injuries, to the extent that money can do so.  Given the severity of spinal cord injuries, damage awards often cannot put the victim in the same place that they would have been without the injury.  Still, monetary damage awards can still be used to improve the spinal cord injury victim’s quality of life as they adjust to that new normal.

Commonly Awarded Damages in California

California explicitly authorizes the following types of damages for the following financial losses, including medical expenses, lost wages, pain & suffering, and punitive damages.  All of these damages are “compensatory,” meaning they are intended to compensate the injured person for a specific type of loss, except for punitive damages.  Each will be discussed below.

Medical Expenses

Spinal cord injury plaintiffs can recover damages to compensate them for the reasonable value of the medical expenses they incurred as a result of their spinal cord injury from the time they sustained the injury.  These damages include the expenses the spinal cord victim will have in the future where those future expenses are attributable to their injury.

Recovering medical expenses requires the injured person to prove:

• That they actually incurred medical expenses;
• The amount of money they spent on the medical expenses they incurred; and
• The “reasonable value” of the medical services for which the injured person paid.

Lost Time & Earnings

Victims of spinal cord injuries can recover monetary damages to compensate them for the value of the time they lost due to their disability caused by their injuries.  The value of that time is equivalent to the injured person’s earning power and is sometimes measured simply by the wages or salary that the injured person actually lost.

Impaired Earning Capacity

California law authorizes recovery for a person’s impaired ability to earn money as well.  These compensatory damages are especially significant in the context of a spinal cord injury, which can cause partial or total paralysis in some cases.

Impaired or lost earning capacity is different from the lost time and earnings.  Lost time and earnings evaluate the money the injured person lost or will lose due to the injury.  Damages awarded for an impaired earning capacity are damages awarded for the difference in the person’s earning capacity before and after they suffered the injury.

Pain & Suffering

Damages awarded for the pain and suffering endured by spinal cord injury victims are noneconomic, compensatory damages that compensate victims for their physical, mental, and emotional pain in the wake of their injuries.  Specifically, California allows recovery for fright, nervousness, grief, anxiety, worry, shock, humiliation, indignity, embarrassment, terror, or ordeal because all of these fall under the pain and suffering umbrella.

There is no set formula for calculating the damages awarded for pain and suffering because translating another person’s pain and suffering into a specific amount of money is a inherently subjective.  California law simply assigns this difficult decision to the jury.

California law does place the following limits on what jurors may consider when deciding how much money to award for pain and suffering in the following ways:

• Jurors can only base their decision on the evidence specific to the case in front of them;
• Jurors cannot base a damage award for pain and suffering on statistical data available to the broader public; and
• Jurors are not allowed to measure pain and suffering damages by placing themselves in the injured person’s shoes and awarding a figure that they would charge to undergo equivalent pain and suffering.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages—unlike all of the other forms of damages discussed in this article—are not awarded to compensate people who are injured.  Rather, they are unique in serving the purpose of punishing particularly bad conduct on the part of defendants and deterring them from behaving in a similar manner in the future.  Punitive damages are never guaranteed in any case, but—when they are awarded—they are awarded in addition to the damages previously discussed.

A spinal cord injury victim seeking punitive damages must show, at a minimum, that the person or company who caused his or her injury knew that their actions would cause an injury and have been indifferent to the resulting injury while they were acting which is consistent with a wrongful intention to injure them.  Generally, this will depend on whether or not the jury finds the bad behavior reprehensible enough to award the punitive damages.

How Long Do I Have to File a Spinal Cord Injury Claim?

Under § 335.1 of the California Code of Civil Procedure, spinal cord injury victims have up to two years to file a lawsuit to recover damages for an injury to themselves or the death of another person caused by another person’s negligent or intentional behavior.  As discussed earlier, investigating spinal cord injury cases can take some time.  That investigatory period and the two-year statute of limitations are why it is crucial to contact a trusted attorney as soon as you are able to do so.

Who Can Be Held Liable for Your Spinal Cord Injury?

Under California law, multiple people or companies can be responsible for causing a single injury.  The rule is that each person or company whose negligence is a proximate cause of a single injury is responsible for all compensatory damages attributable to the injury.

A person or company is the proximate cause of an injury if two conditions are met:

• Their negligent or intentional acts must cause the injury, and
• Their negligent or intentional acts have a sufficient connection to the resulting injury when considering the particular context in which the act or injury happened.[JH5]

What Is the Average Settlement for a Spine Injury Case?

There is no one-size-fits-all settlement value for personal injury claims.  Case values depend on many different factors that an insurance company, judge or jury will carefully consider before assigning an award.  One factor is injury severity.  For example, a catastrophic spine injury that causes permanent paralysis will be worth more than a minor back injury due to the high level of impact it will have on the victim.

A personal injury claim may be able to reimburse a victim for the full lifetime costs of the injury. For this reason, spine injury cases have the potential to be worth millions of dollars due to the severity of the diagnosis. According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, the average lifetime cost (health care and living expenses) of a spinal cord injury for a victim age 25 ranges from about $2 million to $5.8 million. Discuss the potential value of your case with an attorney before accepting an insurance settlement.

Resources for Victims of Spinal Cord Injury

If you or a loved one has suffered a serious spinal cord injury, your life as you know it may change dramatically.  Adjusting to that change may be difficult, especially on your own.  To help, the internet offers a vast collection of resources and other materials that can help with the adjustment and aid in educating you or your family members.  A few such resources are listed below:

• Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation – The Reeve Foundation is dedicated to curing spinal cord injury by funding innovative research, and improving the quality of life for people living with paralysis through grants, information, and advocacy.
• United Spinal Association –  Spinal cord resource center that aims to answer the who, what, where, when, why, and how of spinal cord injury and diseases.
• Disability Resources – A collection of resources and businesses that help people with disabilities.
• Disability.gov –  The U.S. federal government website for information on disability programs and services nationwide.  Disability.gov connects people with disabilities and their families with a variety of helpful resources.

Experienced Spinal Cord Injury Lawyers

Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP is one of America’s leading injury and consumer protection law firms. Our partners have won multiple record-setting verdicts and settlements, including a $13.55 million settlement for an Army helicopter maintenance officer who was rendered quadriplegic in the crash of a defective helicopter over Iraq in Beltran v. Chadwick Helmuth. The firm excels at winning lawsuits that present complicated medical and legal issues; partners have taken several national leadership roles in complex pharmaceutical class actions and aviation disaster lawsuits.

Attorneys at Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP are leaders in their fields. All of our attorneys are active in professional life and often take leadership roles in professional organizations like the Consumer Attorneys of California and the Association of Business Trial Lawyers. Partners Adam Shea, Brian Panish, and Rahul Ravipudi frequently speak to other attorneys about trial procedures and practice. The firm has won more than 150 verdicts and settlements of $1 million or more.

Sample Spinal Cord Injury Verdicts & Settlements

1. Lampe v. Continental General Tire $55,600,000
2. Ledesma v. Patel $9,500,000
3. Doe v. Auto Manufacturer $8,500,000
4. Doe v. Auto Manufacturer $7,000,000
5. Surrency v. Herman Miller $3,300,000

Most Common Causes of Spinal Cord Injuries

For the year 2023, the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (the “NSCISC”) estimates that there are approximately 305,000 people suffering from spinal cord injuries in the United States.  The NSCISC further estimates that there are about 18,000 new spinal cord injuries every year.

There are five major causes of spinal cord injuries according to the NSCISC:

The most common cause of spinal cord injuries are vehicular collisions, which are responsible for 37.5% of spinal cord injuries;

Falls closely follow car crashes as the second leading cause of spinal cord injuries and account for 31.7% of spinal cord injuries:

• Acts of violence—primarily gunshot wounds—are the third leading cause of spinal cord injuries and cause 15.4% of all spinal cord injuries;
• Sadly, 8% of all spinal cord injuries are attributable to sports and other recreational activities; and
• Another 3.7% of spinal cord injuries are due to medical or surgical complications.
• Further, there are several risk factors according to both the NSCISC and other studies:
•  Men are at greater risk to suffer a spinal cord injury—79% of new spinal cord injury victims since 2015 were men;
•  Demographically, non-Hispanic black people have suffered a disproportionate number of spinal cord injuries to the general population of non-Hispanic black people in the United States; and
• The average age of a spinal cord injury victim at the time of the injury has increased from 29 years old in the 1970s to 43 years old in 2015; and
• Elderly people are more likely to suffer spinal cord injuries because elderly people face increased risks of falling due to their diminished health conditions.

Common Types of Severe Spinal Injuries

Spinal cord injuries can diminish a person’s ability to perform daily activities like walking, writing, or even dressing him or herself.  In fact, spinal cord injuries are a major cause of long-term disability and accounted for over 4.5 million years of life lived with disability in 2021.  Though every spinal cord injury is a serious injury, they are not all created equal.

There is a major question when working with spinal cord injuries: how are spinal cord injuries classified?  There are numerous methods of classifying spinal cord injuries, and a few will be discussed below.

Anatomy of the Spinal Cord

A brief overview of the anatomy of the spinal cord is necessary to understand spinal cord injury classifications.  The spinal cord extends from the brain to the lower back through a canal in the center of the vertebrae, using nerve cells to send and receive information between the body and the brain.

Doctors refer to these nerve cells based on their location:

•  Cervical Spinal Nerves—known as C1 through C7—are in the neck and control signals to the back of the head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, and diaphragm.
• Thoracic Spinal Nerves—referred to as T1 through T12—are in the upper-to-mid-back and control signals to the chest muscles, certain muscles in the back, and many organ systems.
• Lumbar Spinal Nerves—known as L1 through L5—are in the lower mid-back, and these nerves control signals sent to lower parts of the abdomen, the back, the buttocks, certain external genital organs, and parts of the legs.
• Sacral Spinal Nerves—known as S1 to S5—are in the lower back, and these control the signals to the legs, feet, most of the external genital organs, and the areas around the anus.

Classification by Level of Injury

Spinal cord injuries are often referred to by their level.  Essentially, the level of a spinal cord injury refers to the physical location of the injury on the body.  The injury can be to either the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, or sacral spinal nerves as discussed above.  The type and severity of the spinal cord injury sustained by a victim will depend on the section of the spine that was injured, i.e. whether the victim injured the cervical, thoracic, lumbar, or sacral section of the spine.

Speaking generally, injuries to levels of the spine that are higher on the body tend to be more severe than injuries to levels that are lower on the body.  For example, injuries to the cervical spinal nerves (which are in the neck) are the most severe level of spinal cord injuries.  Contrast cervical spinal cord injuries with injuries to sacral spinal cord injuries, which leave victims with the greatest likelihood of being able to walk again after being injured.

Complete vs. Incomplete

Both the World Health Organization (the “WHO”) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (the “NINDS”) classify spinal cord injuries as either complete or incomplete.  These terms refer to the extent of loss of muscle control, feeling, and function below the site of the injury.

A complete spinal cord injury means that there is no nerve communication below the site of the spinal cord injury.  In instances of a complete spinal cord injury, the victim loses all muscle control, feeling, and function below the site of the injury.

An incomplete spinal injury is an injury in which the spinal cord is still capable of sending some messages to or from the brain.  In cases of incomplete injury, the victim still has some feeling, function, and muscle control below the site of the injury.

Functional Classifications: Paraplegia & Tetraplegia

Spinal cord injuries are also classified according to how much of the body is affected by the injury to the spinal cord.  The extent to which the body is functionally impaired by the spinal cord injury is determined by the level of the injury—or where along the spinal cord the injury is located.

Tetraplegia (also known as quadriplegia) is the most severe functional classification of a spinal cord injury.  A spinal cord injury victim suffering from tetraplegia will suffer loss of the use of all four of his or her limbs.  Tetraplegia occurs in cases where the cervical nerves are damaged.

Paraplegia is the term medical professionals use to describe the functional impairment of the legs or waist.  Paraplegia is caused by spinal cord injuries to the thoracic nerves, with the severity being determined by the specific level of the injury to the thoracic nerves.

Notably, injuries to the lumbar and sacral nerves will result in lost function in the hips and legs.  Injuries to the lumbar nerves may leave the victim capable of walking, but there is a chance that the injured person will need to use a wheelchair or braces to walk.  Most spinal cord injury victims who suffer an injury to their sacral nerves are able to walk.

Symptoms of a Spinal Cord Injury

Every spinal cord injury is unique. The symptoms and effects a victim might experience will depend on the type, location, and severity of the injury. Spine injuries can come with acute or chronic symptoms. Acute symptoms are immediately noticeable or appear in the first few hours after the injury occurs. Chronic symptoms will stay with the victim for weeks, months or longer.

The symptoms associated with a spine injury may include:

• Numbness or tingling anywhere in the body
• Pain in the back, neck or head
• Weakness or paralysis
• Trouble walking or balancing
•  Loss of coordination
• Loss of bowel or bladder control
• Sexual dysfunction
• Trouble breathing

If the neck or back sustains any type of harm in an accident, the victim should seek immediate medical attention. These injuries require emergency medical care to minimize the damage caused to the spinal cord and its surrounding nerves. Even if a victim feels fine initially, the spine injury could have delayed symptoms. Prompt medical care is imperative.

Contact a Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer Today

A spinal cord injury may alter the course of your life forever. At Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP, our attorneys will help you pick up the pieces and move forward after suffering a spine injury in a preventable accident. We are passionate about bringing wrongdoers to justice. We understand what you need during this difficult time and will represent you in and out of court as our client. Speak to our attorneys today during a free case consultation for more information. Call (310) 477-1700 or contact us online anytime.