Attorney Jim Desmond

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Category: Car Wrecks

Symptoms of a Herniated Disc – Part 2

Symptoms of a Herniated DiscLet’s take a closer look at possible symptoms of a herniated disc. In some cases a herniated disc will cause no symptoms and in other cases the condition can create localized pain if the tear affects the small nerves located in the uppermost layers of the outer wall of the affected disc. Additional symptoms can develop if the disc wall or escaped nucleus pulposus (the jelly like center) exerts pressure on the spinal cord or a spinal nerve root. Some people may experience neck or back pain, radiating pain that travels down the arms or legs, muscle weakness, numbness or walking difficulties.

A herniated disc can occur in the cervical (neck region), thoracic (mid back region) or lumbar (lower back) region of the spine, although it is most likely to develop in the cervical and lumbar spine segments. That’s because the neck and lower back are both highly flexible and responsible for supporting significant body weight, which takes its toll over time. The thoracic spine, by comparison, is far more stable because it is attached to the rib cage and doesn’t have the same mobility nor does it support the same weight load.

The specific symptoms associated with a herniated disc also depend on the location of the disc degeneration. Most commonly, this condition is associated with localized pain near the origin of the tear in the disc wall, although symptoms can also extend throughout the body when the extruded disc material irritates a nearby nerve root or the spinal cord.

In fact, when nerve root or spinal cord compression occurs, it can result in symptoms that appear far from the origin of the problem, making at-home diagnosis difficult if not impossible.

Here are just a few examples of the symptoms that can develop as a result of a herniated disc:

Cervical herniated disc — localized pain in the neck; a sensation of pins and needles, muscle weakness and numbness that permeate through the shoulders, arms, hands or fingers; difficulty walking; a feeling of heaviness in the hands or feet; a decline in fine motor skills

Thoracic herniated disc — upper back pain that can radiate into the chest or stomach; back stiffness and muscle weakness; symptoms caused by a herniated disc in the thoracic spine that can also be incorrectly attributed to a problem with the heart, gastrointestinal tract or lungs

Lumbar herniated disc — discomfort in the lower back; pain that travels into the lower body; pain in one or both legs; weakness or tingling in the lower extremities; diminished reflexes and muscle spasms; in rare cases a loss of bowel or bladder control, which can indicate a serious neurological condition called cauda equina syndrome (CES), a rare but serious condition of extreme pressure and swelling on the nerves at the end of the spinal cord. This condition requires immediate medical attention.

The symptoms of a herniated disc can vary widely depending on both the location and severity of the damaged disc, and many of the symptoms commonly associated with this condition can also be explained by the presence of additional spinal degeneration, including facet disease (spinal osteoarthritis – degenerative arthritis that affects the facet joints), spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spaces within your spine), and spondylolisthesis (a condition in which one vertebrae slides forward over the bone below it). In order to effectively manage the symptoms of a herniated disc, the exact cause, location and severity of the condition has to be identified by a medical professional.

If you’d like more information about a herniated disc, please read our previous post.

Head Injury from a Car Wreck?

Did you hit your head on the steering wheel or dashboard after being rear-ended? If you did, you may be diagnosed with a closed head injury, a concussion or a brain contusion. A friend of mine, whose career is in the medical field, was good enough to provide me with the information listed below. We hope that it might assist you in treating any injuries you or your family members may have suffered in an car wreck or motorcycle accident.

A closed head injury is a trauma in which the brain is injured as a result of a blow to the head or sudden back and forth, violent motion.  When this occurs, the brain is knocked around against the inside of the skull. Closed head injuries are common in traffic accidents, falls and assaults.

Closed head injuries can range from mild skull injuries to traumatic brain injury.  They can result in severe brain damage or even death.

Different types of closed head injuries:

  • Concussion,
  • Brain contusion,
  • Diffuse axonal injury and
  • Hematoma

Concussions

A concussion is described as any head injury that temporarily affects normal brain function. Most concussions are mild and do not cause loss of consciousness. People suffering from a concussion can experience any number of symptoms including headache, dizziness, nausea, ringing in the ears, slurred speech, and vomiting. Persons suffering from a concussion may also have trouble concentrating or keeping their balance. While symptoms can be immediate, in other cases symptoms do not surface until hours or days after the blow to the head. Secondary symptoms can include mood swings, sensitivity to light and/or noise, and changes in sleep patterns.

Contusions

A brain contusion is when the tissues of the brain are bruised, as a result of the trauma. This can lead to a hemorrhage (bleeding) in some cases, which are then absorbed into the brain tissue. If this blood gets into the cerebrospinal fluid, it can lead to permanent neurological damage. Contusions are localized to a certain area, which is different from a concussion, which can be diffuse (spread out). Persons with a brain contusion (20-30% of severe head injuries) may feel weak and numb, lose coordination, struggle with memory or have cognitive deficits (trouble thinking straight).

Diffuse Axonal Injury

Diffuse axonal injury is one of the most debilitating traumatic brain injuries. These can be caused by high-speed collisions. Diffuse axonal injury causes permanent damage to the nerves in the brain. This can cause brain swelling and increased intracranial pressure (as with other closed head injuries), however, in this case it leads to a coma or a vegetative state in 90% of patients.

Intracranial hematoma

An intracranial hematoma occurs when the brain comes into contact with the inside of the skull, resulting in a pool or blood outside of the blood vessels of the brain or between the brain and the inside of the skull. This can compress brain tissue and requires immediate attention. This can result in unconsciousness, seizures or lethargy.

Bowling Green Fatal Crash Involved KSP

route and journey during sunrise with the mistThe Bowling Green Daily News reported on a recent story.  The Bowling Green fatal crash involved a KSP Trooper and the Trooper was attempting to pass a series of cars when his vehicle struck a pickup truck.  The crash resulted in the death of the truck’s driver.  The husband of the driver was treated and released from a local area hospital.

This isn’t the first a traffic fatality has occurred on that stretch of KY 185, just north of Bowling Green.

Any time there’s a serious accident on Kentucky roads, multiple things happen quickly.  The authorities will begin trying to determine how the automobile accident occurred and the preservation of evidence is extremely important.  When the damages suffered by my client(s) are substantial, car wrecks such as these, can justify the expense of an accident reconstructionist; an expert that will gather information on the client’s behalf and provide us with an expert’s opinion as to who caused the car wreck.  Of course, such an expert depends entirely upon the information he is provided with.

Quick Action is an Advantage in a Car Wreck

I have had several cases over the years that because my client(s) contacted me immediately after the car wreck, the accident reconstructionist was able to view the scene of the wreck and discover additional evidence that the police overlooked.

In addition, a cheaper alternative is to hire a private investigator to capture the testimony of any witnesses while their recollection of the car wreck is fresh.  I have found that by obtaining the statements from witnesses and providing a copy of these witness statements to the insurance company, we have been able to prove our client(s) were not at fault in causing the car wreck early on.  Of course, this allows us to avoid the cost of litigation and attempt a pre-suit settlement of our client(s) personal injury claim in any car accident, whether the Bowling Green fatal crash involved a KSP trooper or not, the local police department will need to determine if any driver(s) were under the influence of alcohol or drugs or was this car wreck caused by distracted driving.  However, a good personal injury attorney should be doing the same.

Accident Investigation

Whether it is Court records, hospital records or obtaining posts from social media, proving a driver was drunk or distracted can increase the value of the personal injury claim and/or make liability for the wreck indisputable.

In a case like this that may give rise to a wrongful death claim, such facts are all the more important. After all, when a family member experiences a death from a car wreck, the last thing they should have to do is worry about proving the decedent was not at fault for the car wreck.

Here’s a brief summary of KY traffic fatality data:

  • 2015 – 694 Fatal Collisions, Resulting in 761 Fatalities
  • 2014 – 612 Fatal Collisions, Resulting in 672 Fatalities
  • 2013 – 590 Fatal Collisions, Resulting in 678 Fatalities
  • 2012 – 694 Fatal Collisions, Resulting in 746 Fatalities

If you’d like to learn more about Kentucky or Indiana wrongful death cases, there’s a specific page on my website.  Click here to learn more about Wrongful Death Issues in KY and IN, there’s also a brief video toward the bottom of my website’s home page.

When Insurance Totals Your Car

When Insurance Totals Your CarIn a recent blog post I started talking about some of the issues that come up when your car is damaged in a car wreck.  However, the one issue I did not get to is when the insurance company tells you that your vehicle is totaled or a total loss. So, what happens when insurance totals your car?

For example, assume you have just finished paying off your Ford Explorer that has a present, book value of $7,000 and because you have taken meticulous care of it over the years, you believe it should run for another 10 years or 100,000 miles. A drunk driver plows into the rear-end of your vehicle and pushes your Explorer into another large SUV causing your airbags to go off.   Most likely, your Explorer will be a total loss as each airbag alone tends to cost about over $1,000 to replace.

In Kentucky and Indiana, an insurance company is required to total out a vehicle if the repair costs equal or 75% (in Kentucky) or 70% (in Indiana) of the value of the vehicle.  This is a link to a website that describes what I am talking about and lists the percentages for each state, http://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/total-loss-thresholds.aspx.

The problem being that when a car is a total loss, the insurance company owes you the fair market value of the vehicle, not the replacement value.  

Therefore, in my example, you could recover the $7,000 the Explorer was worth with some fees for taxes and titling the vehicle.  The fact that it may cost you more money to replace that vehicle with something just as good, is irrelevant in the eyes of the law.

Yes, you can keep your vehicle if an accident totals your car.  Nothing in the law requires you to turn over your vehicle to the insurance company. However, the insurance company will deduct whatever money they would have gotten from a junkyard for the Explorer.  This is usually referred to as salvage value and it tends to run about 20% of the fair market value of the vehicle. So in the case of the Explorer, you could keep it but the insurance company would pay you approximately $5,600 instead and you would have to apply to your local County Clerk for a salvage title.

You have to check with the County Clerk as to the specifics required for a salvage title but, I can tell you that you have to turn in the license plate so the vehicle can not be driven while it is being fixed and a mechanic has to complete an affidavit as to the work done with the appropriate receipts for the parts purchased.

Typically, if insurance totals your car, unless you can fix the vehicle yourself, know a backyard mechanic who can do the repairs cheaply or drive the car ugly because the damage to the vehicle was mostly cosmetic, it is better to let the insurance company haul the car off.

Using Collision Coverage

Using Collision CoverageAs a personal injury lawyer, I preach a lot about getting your medical bills paid and recovering your claim for pain and suffering from the insurance company for the at-fault driver. However, what about the damage to your car? What does my collision coverage actually cover?  What about a rental car? Who is going to be responsible for fixing my vehicle and putting me in a rental car while it is being fixed?  The answer to that question depends all upon the course of action you choose.

Collision coverage, on your own automobile insurance, is the easiest and quickest route to take.   Ultimately, your insurance company is going to be responsible for paying for the damage to your vehicle, regardless of who caused the car wreck, less your collision deductible.   The downside is that it may be months before you get your deducible back, if at all, and your collision coverage will not provide for a rental car.

Another route is to make a claim against the insurance company for the at-fault driver assuming he was insured and fault for the car wreck clearly rests with him.  In such a case, there is no deductible and the insurance carrier will put you in a rental car while your car is being repaired.  However, listed above, were two conditions that had to be met before the insurance company is going to agree to pay the first penny:

  1. Their driver has to be at fault for the wreck and
  2. They have to agree that they have insurance coverage for this wreck.

You have to show that the at-fault driver was negligent and that this negligence caused the damage to your vehicle.   If you can’t prove negligence by the other driver, the insurance company will simply deny your claim thereby forcing you to either file a lawsuit or use your collision coverage.  Remember it is not what you think happened in the car wreck but rather what can you PROVE.  (See May 16, 2016 blog, https://attorneydesmond.com/law-depends-upon-can-prove/ .)

So what about the police report? Isn’t that enough to show the other guy was at fault?  Sometimes but, recall that negligence means you can show that the other driver had a duty, breached that duty and but for that breach, you would not have suffered your damages.

Nothing in the law prevents an insurance company from making reasonable assumptions, contrary to the assumptions contained in a police report, as to who was at fault for a car wreck; as long as these assumptions are based upon reasonable interpretations of the facts.

When a car wreck involves a drunk driver or a rear-end collision while you are stopped at a traffic light, it is pretty easy to show the other guy was negligent.  However, when you have two drivers who both claimed to have entered the intersection on a green light, how do we know who is telling the truth and can’t an insurance company reasonably assume that their insured is being honest?

The second issue is that the insurance company has to have had valid insurance on that vehicle or the driver at the time of the car wreck.  Insurance companies can deny insurance coverage for a variety of reasons including but not limited to: their insured is not cooperating with their investigation; the policy premiums have not been paid; they did not insure that driver; or that did not insure the vehicle involved in the car wreck.  If this happens, you either have to use your collision coverage or try to find other insurance on this driver to cover the damage to your car.

If you don’t have collision coverage and you can’t find any insurance on the other driver, you may be looking at a lawsuit to try and recover for the damages to your vehicle. The problem being that lawsuits are lengthy, expensive processes that can end with you trying to collect on Judgment wherein the at-fault driver has little to no money to pay that Judgment.

In writing this blog, I realized I may need to address it a little deeper with a future blog or two.  So for the moment, I would suggest you call me should you have questions about your damaged automobile. The call is free no matter whether we pursue a personal injury claim or not.  You can reach me on my phone at [number].  FYI, since it is my phone, you can text me at that number as well should you prefer that method of contact.