Sufferers with spinal cord injuries and their loved ones have every right to be concerned about the sum of money they will be awarded in a settlement or court case. The expense of treating such severe injuries is prohibitive. A severe spinal cord injury (SCI) can have far-reaching repercussions on the victim’s and their family’s finances, well beyond the initial outlay for medical care.
Spinal cord injuries are among the costliest forms of individual injury, alongside TBIs. First, you need to determine how much you deserve in damages before filing a personal injury claim. Otherwise, you run the danger of settling your case for too little and having insufficient funds if and when you actually need them. If you hire a lawyer at khaninjurylaw.com to handle your communications, you won’t have to worry about saying anything illegal by mistake.
The question of how much your case is worth cannot be answered definitively.
If you have suffered a spinal cord injury, you may want to know how much your case is worth by the time you meet with your attorney for the first time. Most lawyers will try to skirt around the question since they have no idea how much your case is worth until they learn more about your injuries and their effects on your daily life. Personal injury damages are something your attorney can help you understand, but you shouldn’t put too much confidence in an off-the-cuff estimate when there are so many other factors to consider.
Damage to the spinal cord and the associated medical expenses
How much money you get from your claim will mostly be determined by how much money you spend on medical care. The cost of treating a spinal cord injury is expected to exceed $1 million in almost all cases.
The Christopher Reeve Foundation estimates the following annual and lifelong costs for SCI care:
- The most severe form of spinal cord injury is high tetraplegia, which results in enormous medical costs—likely more than $1 million in the first year alone. Assuming a 25-year-old has this damage, their lifetime medical costs might easily top $5 million.
- Low tetraplegia medical expenses are comparable to those of quadriplegia. A common estimate for the first year of these costs is $1 million. If a person is 25 years old and sustains this kind of accident, their additional lifetime medical expenses could be close to $1 million.
- The costs associated with paralysis range from over $500,000 in the first year to approximately $100,000 annually thereafter.
