Attorney Rich Zalasky and his team secured a $1.6 million settlement in St. Louis County, Missouri, on behalf of a client injured in a serious motor vehicle collision on Manchester Road, east of I-270. The defendant made a left turn from the center turn lane directly into our client’s path, leaving her no time to avoid the crash.
The collision caused severe lower-back injuries. Our client ultimately required a three-level spine surgery, including two disc replacements and a spinal fusion. With the right medical evidence connecting the collision to the injury that followed, a complicated medical history does not have to limit what a client recovers.
The defense seized on our client’s prior history of lower-back problems, arguing the collision wasn’t truly responsible for the surgery she needed. Rich Zalasky and the team built the case around medical causation, showing how the crash took an existing condition and turned it into a disabling injury requiring major surgery. As the case approached trial, the parties went to mediation, and the case settled the following week for $1.6 million.
This result is a reminder that a prior medical history doesn’t have to sink a case. Insurance companies routinely use a plaintiff’s pre-existing conditions to argue down the value of a claim, but with the right medical evidence connecting the collision to the injury that followed, even a client with a complicated medical history can recover a result that reflects the true severity of what happened to her.
