One of the most common misconceptions following a car accident is the belief that a pre-existing condition—like a chronic bad back, a previous neck injury, or degenerative disc disease—disqualifies you from seeking a recovery. People often worry that because they weren’t “100% healthy“ before the crash, the insurance company can blame their current pain on the past.
In Utah, this is fundamentally incorrect. Thanks to a long-standing legal principle known as the “Eggshell Plaintiff“ Rule, the law protects victims who are more susceptible to injury due to their physical history. At Hernandez Injury Law, we believe that having a “bad back” shouldn’t make you an easy target for insurance adjusters.
The term comes from a classic legal metaphor: if a defendant negligently hits someone over the head. That person happens to have a skull as thin as an eggshell, the defendant is responsible for the resulting fractures—even if a “normal“ person wouldn’t have been hurt as badly.
In plain English, the law states that a negligent driver must take the victim as they find them. If a rear-end collision would have caused a minor strain in a healthy teenager but caused a catastrophic disc herniation in a 50-year-old with a history of back issues, the at-fault driver is still responsible for the full extent of that aggravated injury.
Under Utah law, you cannot recover damages for a condition that existed before the accident and remained unchanged. However, you are absolutely entitled to compensation for the aggravation of that condition.
Insurance adjusters often try to use your medical history to “apportion“ fault. They might say, “You already had arthritis, so we’re only paying for 10% of this claim.“ However, if that arthritis was manageable or asymptomatic before the crash, and now requires surgery or daily medication, that “leap“ in pain and limitation is a compensable injury.
Because Roberto Hernandez spent years working in insurance defense, he knows precisely how adjusters comb through old medical records. They look for any mention of “back pain“ from five or ten years ago to argue that your current suffering is just a continuation of an old problem.
They rely on the hope that you will feel guilty or discouraged about your medical history. They want you to believe that because you were “fragile,“ the accident didn’t “cause“ the injury. The Eggshell Plaintiff rule exists specifically to stop this line of reasoning. The question isn’t whether you were healthy before; the question is, how much worse did the defendant’s negligence make your life?
If you have a history of injury and are involved in a new accident, how you handle your medical documentation is critical:
Understanding your rights in a complex “No-Fault“ state is the first step toward a fair recovery. For more information on how Utah handles these unique insurance situations, you can visit the Utah Insurance Department’s guide to auto insurance and claims.
Your physical vulnerability should not be a “get out of jail free“ card for a negligent driver. If a crash has turned a manageable ache into a life-altering injury, the law is on your side.