High Impact Collision: Client Victory Story

[0:00:02] - Hey, I'm Shane from Shane Smith Law. Today here we're talking to Thomas, one of our attorneys. Here we're gonna talk about one of his recent client victories where he helped a client named ASQ, which is critical about this particular case. It was high impact rear end collision going about 45 miles per hour. But the key differentiator in this case and others is that the client was braced up against the dashboard and the impact that had on her. So, Thomas, tell us about the accident.

[0:00:25] - Yeah. So AS driving down the highway about 55, 65 miles per hour, he had to come to a sudden stop because traffic had backed up. Everything stopped in front of him. Person behind him didn't come to a stop until he smashed into him. Going about 45 miles an hour, as had his hands on the steering wheel when the collision happened. He tensed up really tight, didn't stop the whiplash from occurring which damaged his spinal column, but he also had some pretty decent injuries to his hands and arms as well.

[0:00:57] - So when I yeah, so I mean I never know whether it's better or not to brace, generally I tell clients it's worse to brace, but I mean that's why sometimes we see people who don't even know it, you know they suffer less injuries than somebody who sees it coming or whatever, and I can only imagine all that force if his arms are braced there. So where were the injuries to his arms? Were they on the shoulders? Were they on the wrists?

[0:01:20] - Well, he ended up being diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Yeah, it wasn't something that he had before this had happened. It was, you know, when you hear about carpal tunnel, you think of somebody who's sitting there on a keyboard right, you know keyboard warrior and you know they don't have the pad or just they're overusing their hands as a result of something you know. One of the misconceptions is that this is the only way that you get carpal tunnel. Yeah, because carpal tunnel is when you have, you know, some sort of injury or overuse or severe strain or fracture that leads to swelling, that would increase the pressure on that medial nerve at your wrist. That you know nerve runs from your forearm all the way down into your palm, and when that gets compressed or squeezed on, that's where you have carpal tunnel syndrome. So it's a pretty small injury.

Yeah, pretty small injury but a pretty intense pain. And what they'll end up doing a lot of times they'll make an excision in that nerve so that it can kind of you know or not nerve in that tissues that your arm can kind of free up. But that was one of the injuries he suffered here.

[0:02:19] - And this is Did he have it in?

[0:02:21] - both hands or just one?

[0:02:22] - Both arms, both arms, yeah, and it is unusual to me that I see it in both I mean I've seen it before where somebody has one, but it looks like he did a really good job of bracing on both sides and injured both wrists.

[0:02:33] - Yeah, strong guy. He was actually an infantryman in the military. He went signed up when he was 18, finished when he was 22. Very next year, you know, he's working as a mechanic and boom Wow.

[0:02:45] - How did the insurance company deal with that? Did they fight you on that carpal tunnel diagnosis or did they see the stuff and say, okay, yeah, it is our fault, they didn't fight on the carpal tunnel.

[0:02:54] - We explained it, I think, pretty well and we're able to talk about it with Mr AS on the issue. The bigger issue came in with we had a pretty significant gap in treatment. You know we had a 45 day we're not 45 day 45 mile per hour collision and you didn't have him going to any doctor whatsoever until 17 days after-.

[0:03:13] - Wow, I was up with that. He just was hoping it was gonna get better. He was doing the standard. Take some towel and I'll drink a beer and I hope it goes away. And it didn't.

[0:03:20] - Yeah, john Rambo trying to muscle through it. Tough guy obviously, serving his country honorably, going overseas and got hurt, tried to survive and make it through and at the end of the day he just said, hey, this is too much, I gotta get some help. And we see that a lot with people.

[0:03:37] - I mean, quite frankly, I hate to go to the doctor and don't ever wanna go. And if I had a choice to go to the doctor, take some Tylenol and maybe having a beer, I'd pick that route every single time. I think so I totally understand it. We encourage our clients not to do that, obviously, to go to the doctor right away and figure out what's going on. Thank goodness he didn't just continue it indefinitely when he saw you. What were his symptoms? Do you remember?

[0:04:02] - Yeah, so essentially had some pretty significant pain in his wrists, obviously Some radiating pain from his neck down into his arms as well. So there's a little bit of blending of neck injury along with that carpal tunnel. Then he had a pretty significant lower back pain.

[0:04:17] - So he had the carpal tunnel. Thank you for your time from day one that pain was there, huh, from day one.

[0:04:22] - Yeah, that was, that was right there. You know something that you know you wake up with you know, not having it one moment, having it the next, that's a big difference.

So it was pretty clear in him it came from the car wreck yeah, because before this, you know this was a man who used his arms as his tools. You know, underneath cars, you know using lug wrenches, fixing things up, and all of a sudden he can't work. Wow, you can't, can't use your arms, you can't work so, mechanic, you do a lot with your forearms.

[0:04:48] - Obviously you know turning nuts and bolts and all those kind of things. So I assume Carpal tunnel popped up super quick like you said it couldn't work was the ultimate able to get back to work.

[0:05:01] - I'm not sure if he's gotten back yet. I know he had to go through a lot here and still hasn't had the carpal tunnel issue addressed, as of the last time I talked to him it ended up going down a route where he saw a couple different specialists and ended up focusing on the neck and back injury and he said you know, let me see if I can go through the VA to address the rest of this address the carpal tunnel type stuff okay, ultimately, how did he feel about the settlement?

he felt great he was. He was very, very pumped. You know he had to go through a few different doctors. He started with the chiropractor. He ended up going to a pain specialist. Pain specialist shockingly ordered an MRI and saw some issues there pretty early on in the case and then ended up getting a second opinion, having a surgical procedure.

He had a RFA radiofrequency ablation kind of going in there and cauterizing the nerve so he ended up with his neck pain gone and some options to get his wrists treated okay and ended up being very happy yeah, very happy, a good one.

[0:06:02] - Sounds like a complex medical case. You know, something a little more than just the neck and back we normally see, and I'm glad he was able to at least get a plan in place to deal with all of that. And it sounds like he was lucky to have you should his lawyer. Somebody took the time to talk to him, listen in and fight with the insurance company to give him a good result yeah, I think.

[0:06:22] - I think at the end of the day he was, he was really happy with the result and, you know, saw some, some hope moving forward to get the rest of his issues addressed right.

[0:06:29] - Well, a good deal that's another client victory from Shane Smith Law. Hit like and subscribe down below for future updates how we tell our clients stories and how we have victories for them.

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