A serious back injury can affect nearly everything you do. Sitting, standing, walking, lifting, driving, sleeping, and working may become difficult or impossible. Some people recover after conservative treatment, while others require injections, surgery, prolonged rehabilitation, or permanent work restrictions.
At Robert Edens Law Office in Antioch, we represent people who suffer back injuries in car accidents, truck crashes, falls, construction accidents, workplace incidents, and other events throughout Lake County, McHenry County, Cook County, and surrounding Northern Illinois communities.
We handle both personal injury claims caused by another party’s negligence and Illinois workers’ compensation claims involving job-related back injuries.
Our job is to determine how the injury occurred, document the medical condition, address insurance-company arguments about preexisting degeneration or prior treatment, calculate wage and future losses, and pursue the compensation or workers’ compensation benefits supported by the evidence.
Call us at (847) 395-2200 or contact us to discuss an Illinois back injury claim.
The term “back injury” encompasses many different medical conditions.
Some injuries affect muscles, ligaments, or other soft tissues. Others involve vertebrae, intervertebral discs, spinal joints, or nerve roots.
A herniated disc occurs when disc material extends outward and can irritate or compress nearby nerves. A lumbar herniated disc may cause back pain together with pain, numbness, or weakness extending into the hip, buttock, leg, calf, or foot.
Back injuries we encounter in accident and workers’ compensation claims can include:
The diagnosis alone does not establish the value of a legal claim. We also consider treatment, objective findings, functional limitations, work restrictions, future medical needs, and whether the injury can be connected to the accident or workplace activity.
Intervertebral discs sit between the vertebrae and help absorb forces placed on the spine.
When disc material herniates, it may irritate a nearby nerve and produce back pain, sciatica, numbness, tingling, or weakness. Diagnosis generally involves the medical history and physical examination and may also involve imaging. Treatment can include medication, physical therapy, and, in some cases, surgery.
An MRI finding by itself does not determine whether an accident caused the condition.
Insurance companies frequently argue that disc abnormalities represent age-related degeneration rather than trauma. The medical and legal analysis may therefore involve prior symptoms, earlier imaging, previous treatment, the mechanism of injury, the timing of new symptoms, and physicians’ causation opinions.
Our Herniated And Bulging Disc Injuries After A Car Accident page explains these injuries in greater detail.
A back injury can affect a spinal nerve even when much of the pain is experienced somewhere else.
Lumbar radiculopathy may cause symptoms that radiate from the lower back into the buttock, hip, leg, or foot. Herniated discs are one recognized cause of radiculopathy.
Sciatica can involve pain, weakness, numbness, or tingling extending from the lower back into the leg, calf, foot, or toes.
These symptoms may become particularly important in a legal claim when they interfere with walking, prolonged sitting, driving, lifting, standing, or performing physical work.
We consider both the spinal diagnosis and the functional effect of nerve symptoms.
Motor vehicle crashes, falls from height, construction accidents, and other substantial trauma can fracture one or more vertebrae.
A fracture may require bracing, activity restrictions, rehabilitation, or surgery depending on the location and severity.
Illinois workers’ compensation law also contains specific minimum permanent-disability provisions for work-related vertebral fractures. Section 8 provides a minimum of six weeks of compensation for each fractured vertebra and three weeks for each fractured transverse process, although the total permanent disability may be greater when supported by the evidence.
A fracture should therefore not automatically be valued using only the statutory minimum.
Motor vehicle crashes can place substantial forces on the lumbar and thoracic spine.
Rear-end collisions, intersection crashes, head-on collisions, rollovers, and commercial truck accidents may cause new back injuries or aggravate an existing spinal condition.
The claim may involve questions concerning:
Our Motor Vehicle Accident Lawyers page explains the broader accident-claim process, while our Lumbar Back Injuries After An Illinois Car Accident page focuses specifically on lumbar injuries after crashes.
A slip-and-fall or fall from height can injure the lower or middle back through direct impact, twisting, compression, or an attempt to prevent the fall.
Whether the accident creates a personal injury claim depends on why the fall occurred and whether another party was legally responsible.
A property case may involve a dangerous walking surface, defective stairs, ice, inadequate maintenance, or another hazardous condition. A construction-site fall may involve workers’ compensation together with potential claims against another contractor or responsible company.
The severity of the back injury does not itself establish negligence. Liability and damages must each be proven.
Back injuries are also common subjects of Illinois workers’ compensation claims.
A worker may be injured while lifting, carrying, pushing, pulling, bending, twisting, operating equipment, falling, or performing other job duties. Repetitive work activities can also contribute to certain conditions when the necessary connection to employment can be established.
Illinois workers’ compensation generally requires the employer to provide medical services reasonably required to cure or relieve the effects of a compensable work injury. Disability and vocational benefits may also be available depending on the employee’s inability to work and permanent limitations.
The employee generally must report a specific workplace accident as soon as practicable and no later than 45 days after the accident. Filing the formal IWCC claim is governed by a separate limitations period.
Our Illinois Workers’ Compensation Complete Claim Guide provides a comprehensive explanation of these requirements.
Potentially.
Not every compensable work injury occurs during a single identifiable accident. Repeated lifting, bending, twisting, or other work activity can contribute to a cumulative condition.
The employee still must establish the necessary causal relationship between employment and the injury.
Repetitive-trauma claims can become medically complex when imaging also shows degeneration associated with age or prior conditions. Work duties, symptom progression, medical histories, treating-physician opinions, and the date when the injury and its connection to employment became apparent may all matter.
One of the most common insurance-company arguments in a back injury case is that the claimant already had degeneration, arthritis, disc abnormalities, or an earlier back injury.
A preexisting condition does not automatically prevent recovery.
In an Illinois negligence case, the Illinois Supreme Court has recognized that a defendant is not relieved from liability merely because the defendant’s conduct aggravated a previous injury. The defendant may be responsible for the additional harm caused by the aggravation.
The same basic medical issue frequently arises in workers’ compensation: was the disability caused solely by the natural progression of the preexisting condition, or did work activity aggravate or accelerate it?
We examine the person’s condition before and after the accident.
Important evidence may include whether the person was working without restrictions, whether treatment was occurring before the incident, prior MRI findings, changes in symptoms, new neurological problems, additional medical treatment, and new work restrictions.
Trying to hide prior back treatment is generally far more damaging than addressing it directly.
Back injury claims can depend heavily on medical documentation.
We may review emergency records, orthopedic or neurosurgical evaluations, physical therapy records, pain-management treatment, MRI reports, diagnostic testing, operative reports, work-status notes, and permanent-restriction opinions.
Medical evidence can help answer several different questions:
Did the accident cause or aggravate the condition?
Was the treatment reasonable and related?
Did the injury prevent the person from working?
Will permanent restrictions remain?
Is future treatment or surgery reasonably anticipated?
An MRI can identify abnormalities such as herniated discs, spinal narrowing, or degenerative changes, but imaging must be interpreted in the context of symptoms, examination findings, and medical history. (medlineplus.gov)
Back injury treatment depends on the diagnosis and individual medical circumstances.
Treatment can include medication, physical therapy, activity modification, injections, specialist care, and surgery in appropriate cases. Herniated-disc treatment, for example, can range from conservative care to surgery depending on the symptoms and medical findings. (medlineplus.gov)
Surgical procedures may include discectomy, laminectomy, decompression, or spinal fusion.
A surgery does not automatically establish a particular settlement value. We consider why surgery was necessary, whether it was related to the accident, the result of the procedure, recovery time, remaining symptoms, permanent restrictions, future treatment, and ability to return to work.
A significant back injury can have substantial occupational consequences.
Permanent restrictions may limit lifting, carrying, bending, twisting, prolonged sitting, prolonged standing, climbing, driving, or repetitive physical activity.
Those restrictions may have relatively modest employment consequences for one person and prevent another person from returning to a lifelong occupation.
For workers’ compensation injuries occurring on or after September 1, 2011, Illinois requires permanent partial disability to be evaluated using five factors: the reported impairment level, occupation, age, future earning capacity, and disability corroborated by treating medical records. No single factor controls the determination.
A worker unable to return to the former occupation may also require evaluation for vocational rehabilitation or wage-differential benefits rather than only a conventional PPD award.
There is no standard Illinois settlement amount for a herniated disc, lumbar strain, radiculopathy, or back surgery.
A personal injury claim may potentially include compensation for past and future medical expenses, lost wages, diminished earning capacity, pain and suffering, disability, and loss of normal life when legally recoverable and supported by the evidence.
Factors that can materially affect the value include:
Our existing Illinois Back Injury Settlement Calculator can help illustrate some valuation factors, but no calculator can determine the value of a specific case from a diagnosis or medical-bill total alone. The existing calculator itself recognizes that injury severity, medical costs, and recovery duration materially affect valuation.
Workers’ compensation uses a different compensation system.
A compensable back injury may involve medical benefits, temporary total disability, temporary partial disability, permanent partial disability, vocational rehabilitation, a wage differential, or permanent total disability depending on the circumstances.
Nonscheduled back injuries may be evaluated as a percentage loss of the person as a whole. Permanent work restrictions can also make wage-loss or vocational benefits particularly important.
The settlement should therefore not be evaluated solely by asking what percentage a disc injury is “worth.”
Our Illinois Workers’ Compensation Benefits And Claim Value page explains those benefit categories in greater detail.
The answer differs between personal injury and workers’ compensation.
In a negligence claim, inability to return to the former job can support a claim for lost income or diminished future earning capacity when adequately proven.
In workers’ compensation, the worker may qualify for temporary disability during treatment and potentially wage-differential, vocational, or permanent disability benefits when permanent restrictions prevent a return to the original occupation.
Section 8 specifically provides vocational rehabilitation and maintenance benefits in qualifying cases and temporary partial disability when an employee performs reduced-wage light duty.
We evaluate the actual physical requirements of the job rather than relying solely on the job title.
Illinois uses modified comparative negligence in ordinary negligence cases.
A claimant whose contributory fault is 50 percent or less may still recover, with damages reduced according to that percentage. A claimant who is more than 50 percent responsible is barred from recovery.
Workers’ compensation is different. An employee generally does not need to prove employer negligence to establish an ordinary compensable work injury.
An Illinois personal injury lawsuit is generally subject to a two-year limitations period, although governmental defendants, minors, medical malpractice, and other circumstances can involve different deadlines.
Workers’ compensation uses separate deadlines. A specific workplace accident generally must be reported within 45 days. Most accidental injury claims generally must be filed with the IWCC within three years after the accident when compensation has not been paid or within two years after the last payment of compensation when qualifying compensation has been paid, whichever is later.
Do not wait for a deadline to approach. Medical histories, witnesses, workplace records, accident evidence, and insurance information are easier to investigate while they remain available.
No. You must still establish that another party’s negligence caused or aggravated the injury or, in workers’ compensation, that the condition has the required relationship to your employment.
Potentially. Illinois personal injury law recognizes liability for an aggravation of a prior injury when the defendant’s conduct caused additional harm.
Potentially. Prior back problems do not automatically eliminate the claim. The important question is what additional injury, symptoms, treatment, or disability the new accident caused.
Not every back condition requires the same testing. Physicians determine appropriate diagnostic evaluation based on the history, symptoms, examination, and clinical circumstances. Imaging can help identify disc and spinal abnormalities but is only one part of the evidence.
No. Treatment can include conservative measures such as medication and physical therapy, while some cases require surgery.
Yes. Surgery is not a prerequisite for a compensable workers’ compensation claim. Medical treatment and disability benefits depend on the injury, work relationship, medical evidence, and resulting disability.
A degenerative condition does not automatically resolve the case. Medical evidence may establish that work activity aggravated or accelerated the condition.
There is no standard amount. Liability, medical causation, treatment, surgery, permanent restrictions, wage loss, future care, and insurance coverage all affect a personal injury settlement.
A back injury may be evaluated as a nonscheduled person-as-a-whole permanent disability, but permanent restrictions can also support wage-differential, vocational, or other benefit theories depending on the circumstances.
Potentially. If you were injured while working because of the negligence of someone other than your employer, you may have both a workers’ compensation claim and a third-party personal injury action.
Back injury cases can involve disputed causation, preexisting degeneration, MRI findings, nerve symptoms, surgery, permanent restrictions, future medical care, lost earnings, and insurance-company arguments about whether an accident actually caused the condition.
At Robert Edens Law Office, we evaluate the complete medical and legal picture rather than reducing the claim to an MRI diagnosis or generic settlement average.
We represent injured people and workers throughout Antioch, Waukegan, Grayslake, Gurnee, Lake Zurich, Round Lake, Lake Villa, Libertyville, Woodstock, McHenry, Crystal Lake, Barrington, and surrounding Northern Illinois communities.
Call us at (847) 395-2200 or contact us to request a consultation about an Illinois back injury claim.
For additional information, visit the following pages:
Illinois Personal Injury Lawyers
Illinois Workers’ Compensation Complete Claim Guide
Illinois Personal Injury And Workers’ Compensation FAQs.
Every back injury claim depends on its individual facts, medical evidence, accident or employment circumstances, and applicable law. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and this page provides general information rather than legal advice concerning a particular injury.
The Law Offices of Robert T. Edens, Personal Injury and Workers' Compensation Law Office, have offices in Antioch, Waukegan, Grayslake, Woodstock and Barrington. We represent clients throughout the communities of Antioch, Waukegan, Grayslake, Barrington, Woodstock, Buffalo Grove, Deer Park, Gurnee, Lake Zurich, Round Lake, McHenry, Cary, Crystal Lake, Libertyville, Lincolnshire, Mundelein, Vernon Hills, Wheeling, North Chicago, Zion, Inverness, Palatine, Wauconda, Island Lake, Fox Lake, Barrington Hills, Spring Grove, Lake Bluff, Lakemoor, Long Grove, Lake Villa, Kildeer, Wadsworth, Indian Creek, Fox River Grove, Lindenhurst and other cities within Lake and McHenry Counties Illinois.
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