Two people can leave the same crash paralyzed. One returns to work within a year, while the other needs attendant care for life.
A spinal cord injury gets its severity from two facts. One is where the cord sustained damage, and the other is whether that damage runs complete.
Below, we explain what those two facts control. We also cover why the national cost data matters so much to a Georgia claim.
Why a Spinal Cord Injury Is Measured by Level
The cord carries signals between the brain and the body. Damage interrupts everything below the injury site, so the height of the injury sets the scope of the loss.
Clinicians group the results into bands. High tetraplegia covers the C1 through C4 vertebrae, and low tetraplegia covers C5 through C8. Paraplegia describes injuries below the neck.
Inches change lives here. A C4 injury often means ventilator dependence, whereas a C6 injury frequently preserves enough arm function for independent transfers.
Speak with a Charlotte car accident lawyer and get a free consultation today.
Call (980) 246-2656What Complete and Incomplete Mean
Severity runs on a second axis. The American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale grades injuries from A through E.
Grade A describes a complete injury. No motor or sensory function survives in the lowest sacral segments.
Grades B through D describe incomplete injuries. Some function persists below the level, and grade D indicates that most key muscles retain usable strength.
Incomplete injuries dominate the statistics. The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center reports incomplete tetraplegia at 47.7 percent among people discharged from model systems care. Incomplete paraplegia accounts for another 20.4 percent.
What These Injuries Actually Cost
The Center publishes average expenses by severity, expressed in 2025 dollars. These figures do the heavy lifting in a life care plan.
High tetraplegia leads. First-year expenses average $1,446,827, and each following year averages $251,246.
Low tetraplegia follows closely. First-year costs average $1,045,459, with $154,128 annually afterward.
Paraplegia costs less but never little. The averages run $705,131 in year one and $93,409 each year after.
Even the mildest category stays expensive. Motor functional injuries, graded AIS D, average $472,190 in the first year and $57,353 annually thereafter.
Why Age at Injury Changes the Number
Lifetime totals depend on how many years follow. The Center calculates them at two ages for that reason.
High tetraplegia at age 25 projects $6,419,617 in lifetime costs. The same injury at 50 projects $3,528,112.
Low tetraplegia follows the pattern. Those totals run $4,690,573 at 25 and $2,885,122 at 50.
Paraplegia lands lower on both. Expect roughly $3,139,165 at 25 against $2,060,139 at 50.
What the Cost Tables Leave Out
Read the footnotes carefully. These figures cover direct costs only.
Lost wages sit outside them entirely. The Center separately estimates indirect costs averaging $97,787 per year in 2025 dollars.
Rehospitalization adds more. Roughly 29 percent of people with spinal cord injuries return to a hospital in a given year, for about 18 days on average.
Why Most Georgia Cases Involve a Vehicle
Causes cluster tightly. Since 2015, vehicle crashes account for 37.1 percent of traumatic spinal cord injuries nationally.
Falls come second at 32.5 percent. Violence follows at 15.2 percent, then sports at 7.6 percent.
Demographics shifted over decades. Average age at injury now sits at 44.3 years, up from roughly 29 in the 1970s. More of these cases therefore involve people at peak earnings.
Why Work Capacity Rarely Returns
Employment data tells a blunt story. Among people who were working at the time of injury, the employment rate falls to 17.8 percent one year later.
Recovery is partial and slow. Twenty years out, the figure reaches only 29.1 percent.
Georgia law addresses that gap directly. Diminished earning capacity forms its own element of damages, separate from wages already lost. Proving it takes evidence of what a person could earn before the injury against what they can earn now.
Why Georgia Juries Hear About Life Expectancy
Lifetime costs require a lifetime estimate. Georgia permits mortality tables as evidence under O.C.G.A. §§ 24-14-44 and 24-14-45.
Those tables do not control the answer. Section 24-14-45(c) treats them as supplementary, so individual medical evidence still matters.
Spinal cord injuries complicate the projection. Life expectancy after these injuries falls below the general population, and the gap widens with severity and ventilator dependence.
Why Future Damages Get Discounted
Money paid today differs from money needed in 2050. Section 51-12-13 lets the fact-finder reduce future economic damages to present value.
Flexibility sits in the statute. It names a 5 percent rate, then permits “any other discount rate” the fact-finder finds appropriate.
One method is off limits. The statute bars using the cost of a particular annuity product as the measure.
Why the Defense Cannot Mention Your Health Insurance
Georgia protects this ground firmly. The collateral source rule keeps evidence of insurance and other outside benefits away from the jury.
Legislators tried to change it once. In Denton v. Con-Way Southern Express, 261 Ga. 41 (1991), the Supreme Court struck that statute down on constitutional grounds.
The practical effect is large. A defendant cannot argue that your insurer already covered the hospital bill.
Why Georgia Has No Ceiling on These Claims
Caps have not survived here. Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery, P.C. v. Nestlehutt (2010) settled the question. Georgia’s Supreme Court held the medical malpractice cap on noneconomic damages unconstitutional under the right to jury trial.
No general cap replaced it. Ordinary personal injury claims in Georgia carry no statutory limit on pain and suffering.
Why Medicaid Has a Claim on Your Recovery
Public benefits create a repayment obligation. Section 49-4-149 lets Georgia recover “the reasonable value of the medical assistance paid.”
Federal law once limited that reach. Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services v. Ahlborn confined a state to the medical expense portion of a settlement.
The Supreme Court then went further. Gallardo v. Marstiller, 596 U.S. 289 (2022), reached settlement funds allocated to future medical care as well.
Catastrophic cases feel this immediately. The medical portion of a paralysis settlement is enormous. Lien analysis therefore belongs at the beginning of a case rather than the end.
Why These Settlements Are Structured Differently
A large check can cost someone their benefits. Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income both apply asset limits.
Federal law supplies the answer. Title 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(d)(4)(A) disregards a trust holding a disabled person’s assets. It must begin before age 65, through a parent, grandparent, guardian, or court, and the State takes repayment at death.
Minors face a separate step. Georgia requires court involvement in a minor’s settlement once the net amount crosses a statutory threshold.
Talk to a Peachtree City Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer
Shane Smith Law builds these cases around the life care plan, the lien position, and the structure that protects benefits. We represent catastrophically injured people in Peachtree City and throughout Georgia. Call (980) 246-2656 for a free consultation.
