Experienced spinal cord injury lawyer Las Vegas NV

Spinal injuries are among the most serious and complex claims in personal injury law, and pre-existing conditions can make them even more challenging. In this video, Keith E. Galliher, Jr., founder and principal attorney of The Galliher Law Firm in Las Vegas, explains how these cases work. 

Galliher walks through the range of spinal injuries and the important legal principle that a negligent party is responsible for everything that follows a crash — even where a pre-existing, previously painless condition is made symptomatic by the collision. He explains how the full scope of recoverable damages, from surgery to rehabilitation to future care, is established, drawing on his extensive experience handling spinal injury cases in Nevada. 

Transcript 

I’ve had a lot of spinal cord injury cases. The thing to remember about spinal cord injuries is that they vary, of course. They could be neck, they could be back, which are the primary areas of the spinal cord that are injured. There are things called pre-existing conditions, which means that if somebody — for example, if they’re my age — you have a pre-existing condition, because you’ve got a lot of degenerative conditions in your spine. They may not be what we call symptomatic, meaning painful. 

However, if a person strikes you and those conditions become symptomatic and become painful, then the person who caused the crash is responsible for everything that follows the crash, irrespective of whether or not you had a pre-existing condition. If you end up with spinal pathology — like a herniated disc, facet joint issues, osteopathic complexes, that type of thing — and it requires surgery, the defendant is responsible for everything that follows the crash. So they’re responsible for the cost of the surgery, the rehabilitation, any future surgeries. Those are all part and parcel of recoverable damages in that type of case.