How Pre-existing Conditions Affect Your Personal Injury Claim in Ontario

Personal Injury Law Podcast | Iacobelli Law Firm

In this episode, Ontario Personal Injury Lawyers will be discussing how pre-existing conditions and injuries can affect new personal injury claims. Learn about the challenges a person may face when submitting a personal injury claim with a history of prior health issues or injuries.

Watch the video version ►

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2qvO-XbNvc

========================

CONTACT US FOR A FREE CONSULTATION

If you've been recently involved in a car accident in Ontario, feel free to give us a call at any time for a FREE consultation.

📞 Calls are answered 24/7 at 1-866-234-6093

Or

🌎 Visit our website at:

https://www.iacobellilaw.com (Ontario, Canada)

https://www.iacobellilawyers.com/ (Florida, USA)

========================

ABOUT IACOBELLI LAW FIRM

Iacobelli Law Firm is a dedicated personal injury law firm serving all of Ontario. If you or a loved one has been injured, you do not have to face the consequences alone. The compassionate and competent legal team at our Ontario personal injury law firm can help you and your family on your road to recovery.

========================

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

We're gonna talk about situations where somebody has been involved in an accident and has sustained injuries, but they already had a history of some prior illness or health issue or injuries. And how that creates a challenge to the claim and sort of some of our strategies to overcome those challenges.

If clients have pre existing injuries, more often than not, the insurance company would try to use that to their advantage and basically try to pin all the new injuries saying that it was from the preexisting injuries, our clients pre existing injuries. So it's very important to let your doctor know how the injuries have been exacerbated, or how they're different from your pre existing injuries.

It's important for clients to know they need to be forthcoming because sometimes people might wanna hold back information when they're talking to a lawyer and they're kind of downplaying their pre-existing because they're afraid people are gonna judge them by that and try to attribute everything to that. Be open and honest about previous injuries and pre-existing conditions.

Be as candid as possible. It's better for your lawyer to know what you’re dealing with so they can come up with strategies to best address it.

What kind of things do you see the insurance company doing when they see preexisting health?

Generally speaking, whenever insurance companies see that potential clients have preexisting health conditions, they basically try to pin all their current symptoms since the accident on the preexisting health conditions. And again, that's why it's so important to let your doctors know how they differ from your previous injuries.

To further the claim, we would obtain statements from family members, coworkers and friends, to speak about how you were functioning before the accident, as opposed to after the accident. This is so that you can show how the accident impacted your life. In terms of compensation, the insurance companies are only gonna pay for how it affected your life and how it affected your medical condition.

What's the difference between the crumbling skull and the thin skull theory? That's a term that lawyers use.

The thin skull theory is a theory in law. It's a rule of law basically that says that if somebody causes harm to another person, they're responsible for the outcome irrespective of the fact that that person may have been more vulnerable. Conversely, the insurance company and their lawyers will try to paint the picture using a different theory of law, which is called crumbling skull. Crumbling skull theory says that this person was deteriorating with time and the injuries were bound to happen eventually.

The best way to defeat that is obviously with medical evidence. So you need doctors, you need specialists, you need experts that can give those kinds of opinions. But then you have to also get behind that, bring it to life, beyond just the black and white and the medical records. With the observations of the people that know this person best. And that can be really, really persuasive in these types of cases.

Produced by 6Story - https://6story.ca

===

This material is provided for informational use only, and is in no way intended to constitute legal advice. Nothing in this website is intended to be, and should not be construed as, legal advice or the formation of a lawyer-client relationship. You should not act on information contained in this podcast or video. If you have a legal question or issue, you should seek the advice of a lawyer. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results and the amount recovered and other litigation outcomes will vary according to the facts in individual cases.