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The Shoulder
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warm-swan-695

Three accidents, one ongoing injury — how do they even figure out what caused what?

Okay so I'm trying to wrap my head around something that feels really complicated and I'm hoping someone here has been through anything similar.

About 18 months ago I got rear-ended pretty hard on the highway by a box truck. Started having neck and shoulder pain almost immediately, began PT within a couple weeks. I've had imaging done, two rounds of injections, and I'm still going to appointments. It's been a whole thing.

Here's where it gets messy: I've since been in two more rear-end crashes while still in treatment for the first one. Both of the other drivers were clearly at fault and their insurers have acknowledged that. My symptoms never really went away between any of the accidents — if anything they'd get a little worse and then slowly settle back down.

One doctor mentioned something about "degenerative changes" on my latest MRI, but I genuinely never had neck problems before that first truck accident. Now I'm worried that gets used against me somehow.

I'm not asking what I should do legally — I have someone helping me with that. I'm more just curious how this kind of situation is even analyzed. Like, how do insurance companies and courts figure out which accident caused which part of the injury when everything is overlapping? What kind of evidence actually matters in situations like this? Do the later accidents automatically reduce what the first driver is responsible for?

Anybody been through something like this or know how it tends to work?

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9 replies

  • 16
    bright-vole-605

    I went through something similar — got hurt in one crash and then got hit again before I was even done with treatment. My attorney explained it to me as basically a timeline puzzle. They look at your medical records before each accident and compare your symptom notes, what treatments changed, whether you reported new pain after each event. It's painstaking but apparently that paper trail is everything. The degenerative thing came up in my case too and honestly it didn't sink me — they argue it was "asymptomatic" before the crash, meaning it existed but wasn't actually bothering you until the impact aggravated it.

    • 14
      mellow-raven-338

      Not legal advice, but I can share how this is generally analyzed. The legal concept you're bumping into is called "apportionment" — basically, which defendant is responsible for what portion of your harm. In multi-accident cases, expert medical testimony is huge. Doctors are often asked to give opinions on whether each collision was a "substantial contributing cause" of specific symptoms. The degenerative finding isn't automatically disqualifying — there's a well-established principle called the eggshell plaintiff rule that says defendants take you as they find you. If a pre-existing vulnerability was made worse by the crash, that still counts. The tricky part is when multiple crashes all arguably aggravated the same structure.

  • 9
    swift-vole-114

    The evidence types that tend to matter most in these overlapping cases: (1) your medical records from before the first accident, showing no prior complaints; (2) imaging comparisons across time — what changed and when; (3) treatment notes that document your reported pain levels after each specific event; and (4) independent medical examinations, which insurers often request and which can go either way. If any of the insurers request an IME, know that those doctors are hired by the insurance company and their reports tend to favor minimizing the injury. That doesn't mean you can't fight it, just go in informed.

  • 9
    careful-swan-027

    Genuine question — are all three claims being handled by the same attorney or separately? Because that seems like it would matter a lot for how the strategy plays out. I could see a situation where different lawyers are pulling in different directions if they're only handling one claim each.

    • 9
      bold-owl-923

      The fact that you've been consistently in treatment this whole time and never had a gap actually works in your favor. A continuous treatment record is way stronger than one where you stopped going for months and then resumed — that can make insurers argue you "recovered" in between. Your situation is complicated but it's not hopeless, not by a long shot.

  • 8
    clever-wren-680

    Former claims adjuster here. From the inside, what we'd look at is the gap between accidents — specifically, were you improving or stable before the next hit? If your records show you were trending toward recovery and then suddenly got worse right after crash two or three, that's how we'd try to segment liability. Adjusters will also dig hard into that "degenerative" language because it gives them a narrative that your injury is just normal aging and not their insured's fault. Don't let that word spook you but do make sure your doctors are documenting your functional limitations clearly at every visit.

    • 13
      genuine-stoat-370

      Whatever you do, be really careful about recorded statements with ANY of the insurers involved here. When there are multiple claims floating around, adjusters from different companies will sometimes try to get you to say something that the other company can use against your claim. It's a mess. Each one has an incentive to point the finger at the other accidents.

    • 12
      curious-heron-995

      From a medical documentation standpoint, what matters a lot is whether your treatment notes show a change in your condition after each subsequent accident versus just continuing the same baseline pain. If every visit for 18 months shows roughly the same complaints, that actually supports the idea that the original injury never fully resolved. The degenerative finding is really common and honestly shows up in imaging for tons of people who've never had symptoms — your doctors should be able to speak to whether that finding correlates with your actual symptoms or not.

    • 11
      candid-badger-813

      Short version: get a copy of every single medical record from every provider across the whole timeline. Don't assume your attorney has them all — sometimes records from smaller providers fall through the cracks. The whole case in situations like yours lives and dies on documentation.