Our client was driving on the interstate with her daughter-in-law and two grandsons in the car when a tractor-trailer driver suddenly swerved into her lane. The truck struck her vehicle and forced it off the road.
She suffered multiple injuries including: several spinal disc herniations and a torn shoulder labrum. Her neck required cervical fusion surgery, and her doctors have recommended additional surgeries on her lower back and her shoulder that remain ahead of her.
The tractor-trailer driver was working for a trucking company at the time, so the company was dually responsible for his negligence. The Townsley Law Firm recovered a settlement of over $750,000 on behalf of our client.
A Herniated Disc Is Not a Bulge, and the Difference Matters
Spinal injuries after a crash exist on a spectrum, and the words used to describe them carry real weight in a claim. The language used is especially important when determining damages in a case.
For example, a disc herniation is more severe than a disc bulge. In a herniation, the tough outer layer of the disc tears and the softer inner material pushes out through the tear. That displaced material can press directly on nearby spinal nerves or the spinal cord, producing pain, numbness, weakness, and radiating symptoms into the arms or legs. Our client sustained multiple herniations, meaning more than one level of her spine was affected.
When a herniation is severe enough, and when more conservative treatment such as therapy and injections does not resolve the symptoms, surgery becomes the next step. To repair our client’s severe herniation, she underwent a cervical fusion.
What Cervical Fusion Surgery Actually Involves
Cervical fusion is not a minor procedure. The surgeon removes the damaged disc in the neck and permanently joins the adjacent vertebrae together, often using hardware such as plates and screws and a bone graft, so that the two bones grow into a single solid unit.
Fusion relieves the nerve compression and stabilizes the spine, but it comes with permanent trade-offs. The fused segment no longer moves, which reduces neck mobility. Since the fused level no longer flexes, the levels above and below it absorbs additional stress over time, a phenomenon that can lead to future problems. A person who undergoes cervical fusion must manage a permanently altered spine.
That permanence is central to valuing a case like this. This is not an injury someone fully recovers from. It is one they carry and adapt to for the rest of their life.
When More Surgery Is Still Ahead
One of the defining features of this case is that the cervical fusion was not the end of our client’s surgical needs. Additional surgeries on her lumbar spine and her shoulder were recommended by her treating physician.
Future recommended surgery is a real and compensable part of an injury claim in Louisiana. A person should not have to complete every operation before their claim accounts for the ones their doctors have already told them they need. Establishing future surgical costs generally requires medical testimony about what procedures are indicated, how likely they are to be necessary, and what they will cost, along with the recovery, lost time, and continued limitation each one carries.
For our client, that meant her claim had to look forward: a torn labrum likely headed for repair, a lumbar spine with recommended surgery, and the extended recovery and future limitation each of those represents.
A Crash That Could Have Been Far Worse
Her daughter-in-law and two grandsons were in the vehicle when the truck forced it off the road. That detail is part of the human reality of this case. Being responsible for passengers in the car during a violent crash, and in the aftermath, adds a layer of fear and emotional weight that a simple injury list does not capture.
Louisiana law recognizes emotional and psychological harm as compensable, including the mental anguish and loss of enjoyment of life that follow a traumatic collision. The experience of being run off an interstate by a tractor-trailer, with her family depending on her, is part of what she carried away from that day.
