Got hit twice while still healing from my first crash — how do they even figure out what caused what?

Ugh, I went through almost this exact thing — two separate crashes within a year, same general area of injury. What my doctor told me was that keeping super detailed treatment records showing your baseline symptoms before the second crash is huge. Like, if your records show you were at a certain pain level before hit #2, that helps establish what the second accident actually added on top. It's messy but it's not impossible to sort out.

From what I've seen working around PI cases, the concept attorneys lean on heavily here is called the "aggravation of a pre-existing condition" doctrine. Basically, even if there were degenerative changes already happening, a defendant can still be responsible for making things worse — they take you as they find you. The tricky part with multiple accidents is that each defendant's insurance is going to try to point fingers at the other crash. That's where your treatment timeline and what your treating physicians document becomes really important. Ideally your doctors are noting your functional status and symptom levels at each visit so there's a clear before/after picture for each incident.

I'll be honest with you because I used to sit on the other side of this. The word "degenerative" in an MRI report is basically a gift to defense adjusters. The moment we saw that, we'd start building the argument that symptoms were going to happen anyway and the accident just "temporarily aggravated" something. The way to push back on that is strong testimony from your treating doctor — not just the radiologist — specifically saying your symptoms began with the crash and are causally related. A treating physician who knows your history carries a lot more weight than a cold read of imaging.

Generally speaking — and this is not legal advice — courts handle this through something called apportionment. Each defendant is typically responsible for the harm attributable to their specific incident, but when injuries are "indivisible" (meaning you can't cleanly separate them), there are different rules depending on the state that can affect how liability is shared. Expert medical testimony is almost always the centerpiece of these disputes. The degenerative finding doesn't automatically kill a claim — it just adds complexity. Not legal advice, but getting someone who handles multi-incident cases specifically is worth asking about.

Just a heads up — both insurance companies have every incentive to blame each other AND blame your "pre-existing" condition at the same time. It's not contradictory to them, it's just strategy. Don't assume that because liability was accepted on either crash that they've conceded anything about the extent or cause of your injuries. Those are two totally separate battles.

Here's the practical reality: you need your doctors talking in the same direction. If one doctor says "degenerative, probably not accident-related" and another says "caused by the crash," the defense will use that split against you hard. If you haven't already, it might be worth having a direct conversation with your treating physician about how they're documenting causation.

Quick question — did your symptoms actually change after the second crash, or stay roughly the same? That matters a lot for how this plays out. If your pain levels and treatment were basically identical before and after hit #2, that could cut either way depending on how you look at it.