How A Pre-Existing Medical Condition Affects Your Personal Injury Claim

Personal injury cases are typically negligent torts.  A tort is any civil wrong (as opposed to a criminal wrong)that infringes on a person’s safety, peace, liberty or property.

Negligent torts are infringements that result from improper care or caution on behalf of a party that breached a duty due to you; that breach proximately causing you injury. In order to understand how a pre-existing medical condition affects a personal injury claim, it’s important to understand what these claims are.

Here’s an explanation of what a personal injury claim is and how it relates to pre-existing medical conditions.

Personal Injury Claims

Personal injury claims typically involve negligence, i.e., one party (called “plaintiff”) claims/asserts that another party (called “defendant”) failed to exercise that degree of reasonable care that would be exercised by persons of ordinary prudence under all the existing circumstances in view of the probable danger of injury to others.

In order to succeed in a personal injury lawsuit, a negligence claim must satisfy four (4)conditions which a plaintiff must prove:

1. A Duty:The existence of a duty on the part of the defendant to conform to a specific standard of conduct for the protection of the plaintiff against an unreasonable risk of injury;
2. Breach of that Duty:The defendant acted or failed to act in accordance with that duty;
3. Proximate Cause:The breach of the duty by the defendant was the proximate cause of (i.e., resulted in) plaintiff’s injury(ies); and
4. Damage/Injury:The defendant’s act(s) or failure to act resulted in damage/injury to the plaintiff.

These aren’t the only conditions that a claim needs to satisfy. Other conditions tend to be place-specific. For instance, the civil statute of limitations in Illinois places a two-year limit, (with some exceptions), on personal injury claims.

Pre-Existing Medical Conditions

In a personal injury claim, the plaintiff is compensated for (among other damages) the injuries to his/her physical and mental conditions. But what about the situation where the plaintiff’s condition before the accident was already impaired? In such a case, the plaintiff (if he can prove this) is nevertheless entitled to be compensated for the difference between his/her condition before the defendant’s negligence versus after the defendant’s negligence.

By way of example, let’s assume plaintiff (“Joe”) is suffering from constant, intense back pain, causing him depression and his doctor puts him on a medication which significantly reduces the pain and depression. Let’s further assume his doctor failed to warn the plaintiff that if he continues taking this medication for a period longer than 2 years, the plaintiff will become hopelessly addicted to it; will not be able to transfer to another medication to control his depression and pain and will continue to need higher doses of this medication as the years pass, but it will not work to control the depression or pain as well; and both(the feelings of depression and pain) will increase yearly.

Let’s further assume that under the standard of care applicable to the medical profession in his locale, this doctor knew or should have known this addiction (while not always certain) happens to a significant number of patients. Because of this standard of care applicable to this doctor, he owed his patient/plaintiff the duty to wean him off the medication before the 2 years had passed and also owed a duty to warn his patient of this possibility of addiction.

By not taking either of those actions, the doctor breached duties owed to his patient; those breaches proximately caused the plaintiff/patient not only to be addicted, but also subject to increasing levels of pain and depression for the rest of his life. The elements of medicalmalpractice, i.e., “negligence” (duty, breach of duty, proximate cause & damages) on the doctor’s part, are all present in the foregoing example. Also, in the foregoing example, while Joe was already subject to the pre-existing conditions of back pain and depression before the accident, the doctor is still responsible for the change in the plaintiff’s condition as a result of the negligence. By breaching the two duties he owed his patient, the doctor becomes liable to pay plaintiff damages equal to the value of the difference before the doctor started plaintiff on this new pain regimen vs. after the plaintiff followed the doctor’s advice; began taking the medication; became addicted, plus was thereafter subject to increasing pain each year, plus subject to increased depression each year.

The fact that the patient was previously in pain and depressed (pre-existing medical condition) before the doctor began treating him does not shield the doctor from being responsible for compensating plaintiff for the fact that now (as a result of the doctor’s aggravation of the pre-existing condition), the patient is an addict whose pain and depression will increase for the rest of his life.

If you’ve suffered from medical malpractice or any other kind of personal injury, contact us at McDermott & McDermott, Ltd. We are personal injury lawyers that also handle workplace accidents, truck accidents, and other instances of personal injury in Matteson, Tinley Park, and other places in Illinois.

Get in touch, and we’ll represent you and get you compensation for your injuries.