Are your injuries really from the car accident or pre-existing?

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:  Hello everybody, my name is Robert Mansour, and I wanted to make a brief video today about causation. Causation is an important element of personal injury cases. Just because you have an injury doesn't necessarily mean it was from the car accident. Sometimes I have clients who have a lot of pain and we go and we take an MRI or some kind of scan of their back or their neck, and we find a problem. Let's say we find a herniation of the disc or a bulging disc or a tear in the shoulder or something like that.

The question from the opposing side is always going to be well fine, but is that from the accident or perhaps it's from something else. When you have a preexisting problem for example before the accident, it's a 2-edge sword. The defense is going to argue that that's a preexisting problem and the accident has nothing to do with it. The plaintiff is going to argue that the accident aggravated that condition and made it worst. Now its tough to tell of course when it's aggravated, when does it go back to pre-accident level or does it ever go back to pre-accident level.

This is where doctor's testimony is very important. This is where you want to be able to ask the doctor, "Doctor can you say with any certainty that this is from the accident versus something that predates the accident?" Now another thing that you can do sometimes is you can say, "Fine. Maybe I have this problem before the accident, but it was dormant. It was asymptomatic. I didn't have any symptoms." The argument that I would use is I would say, "Ladies and gentleman, my client is standing at the edge of the cliff."

The other party came and push them over the cliff. By doing so, they can't just say, "Oh well, I pushed you over the cliff. That's your problem." If you have a preexisting problem that was asymptomatic but is now symptomatic, that is an argument that you should make in your personal injury case. My name is Robert Mansour and I just wanted to address this issue causation today in this brief video. I hope you found it helpful, and thank you very much for watching.

Call (661) 414-7100 if you've been involved in a serious car accident and need advice.  Robert serves Santa Clarita, CA and its communities of Valencia, Saugus, Canyon Country, Newhall, Castaic and Stevenson Ranch.  Robert also serves the larger Los Angeles county area.