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A spinal cord injury doesn’t only affect your health. It changes the entire financial shape of a case. The U.S. records about 18,000 new cases a year, and vehicle crashes still lead the causes at 37.3%. How deep the damage goes drives both the recovery outlook and the number you’ll have to demand from the at-fault side.
What is a spinal cord injury
The spinal cord is the bundle of nerves that carries signals between the brain and the body. Damage arrives two ways: the blow lands on the nerve tissue itself, or it lands on the bone around it and a vertebral fracture drives fragments inward. Below that point, the signal stops getting through.
An injury in the neck hits the arms, the legs, and the muscles that power breathing, which is why roughly a third of survivors need help breathing. Damage lower down, in the thoracic or lumbar spine, brings paralysis and paraplegia while the arms keep working.
Types of spinal cord injuries: complete vs. incomplete
Doctors sort types of spinal injuries on the ASIA scale, graded A through E. Grade A means a complete injury: no motor or sensory function survives below the level of damage, including the S4-S5 sacral segments. Grades B, C, and D describe incomplete injuries, where some function is left.
With Grade A, independent walking doesn’t return in 91.7% of cases, and over five years only 2.1% of complete injuries convert to incomplete. The grade isn’t assigned on the day of the crash. It waits until spinal shock resolves.
Why a severe spinal cord injury means higher compensation
A catastrophic injury claim is measured in decades of care. The first year of care after damage at the cervical level runs $1,410,163, and every year after that adds $244,879. For someone hurt at 25, the lifetime estimate reaches $6,256,937. With paraplegia, $3,059,615. Lost earnings sit outside those figures and get counted separately, averaging $95,309 a year.
A severe spinal cord injury calls for a different level of proof than a broken arm. The foundation is a life care plan built by a certified planner: future surgeries, equipment, home modifications and attendant care. Spinal cord injury compensation rests on that document, along with lost earning capacity and pain and suffering.
Spinal nerve injury: symptoms and long-term effects
A spinal nerve injury and damage to the cord tissue itself are not the same thing. Below the first lumbar vertebra it ends and a bundle of roots takes over, the cauda equina, most often compressed by a herniated disc. The symptoms overlap: burning neuropathic pain, bladder and bowel dysfunction.
What makes these cases expensive shows up later: loss of mobility and sensation, muscle spasticity, pressure sores and repeat hospital stays for urinary tract infections. At T6 and above, autonomic dysreflexia sets in. A sudden spike in blood pressure, triggered by something as ordinary as a full bladder or skin irritation, raises stroke risk three to four times.
A spinal cord injury lawsuit at Kermani LLP runs on a contingency fee, so the client pays nothing until the case is won. The firm brings in medical experts and life care planners so the insurance company values the whole life after the crash, not the first bill from the emergency room. Consultations are free.
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