PRE-EXISTING CONDITION INJURY CLAIM
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How a Pre-Existing Condition Injury Claim Works.
One of the first things an insurance company looks for after a serious injury is a reason to blame something other than the crash or fall that brought you to them. If you had a bad back, an old knee, arthritis, a prior accident, or any earlier condition, the adjuster will seize on it and argue that your pain was already there and is worth little or nothing now. It is the single most common way insurers try to shrink a legitimate claim, and it works on people who do not know that Massachusetts law flatly rejects it.
The law here is clear and it is on your side. A wrongdoer takes the injured person exactly as they find them, and is fully responsible for aggravating, worsening, or accelerating a condition that already existed, even one that was causing no symptoms at all before. The correct question is never whether your body was perfect beforehand. It is whether the incident made you worse, and by how much. That is a medical and factual question, answered with records and evidence, not an excuse an insurer gets to assert.
Proving it, though, takes care. The before-and-after has to be documented, the treating physicians have to distinguish the new harm from the old, and the timeline has to show the change the incident caused. Done right, that record turns the insurer’s favorite defense into the very thing that proves your claim: clear evidence that you were functioning before and are not now.
None of that should fall on an injured person while an adjuster works to undervalue the claim. Bringing in a lawyer early means the investigation, the medical documentation, and the pressure from the insurer all become the firm’s responsibility rather than yours.
It is worth knowing just how routine this defense has become. Almost everyone past a certain age carries some wear, an old sports injury, a prior fender-bender, a chronic ache, and insurers treat that ordinary history as a discount code. They comb through years of records looking for any mention of the same body part, then argue the crash changed nothing. Recognizing this pattern for what it is, a tactic rather than a legal truth, is the first step, because Massachusetts law has a clear answer to it, and the answer favors the person who was hurt.
Our firm builds these claims to defeat exactly that argument. Larson Law is led by attorney Daniel J. Larson, a Boston personal injury attorney who knows the aggravation rule cold and assembles the medical proof that separates the new injury from the old, so the harm the incident actually caused is paid in full.
What our clients say.
Why Injured Clients Trust Larson Law.
- We answer the pre-existing defense with the Massachusetts rule that a wrongdoer takes you exactly as you are
- We build the before-and-after record that separates the new harm from the condition you already had
- We work with your treating doctors to document exactly what the incident aggravated or accelerated
- We value the whole worsening, the added pain, care, and lost function, not just brand-new damage
- We prepare every case as if it will be tried, which is what moves an insurer toward the full value
- No fee unless we win
- Free, private consultation
- Straight answers, no jargon
- We return your calls
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100+ Injured Victims Helped
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How Massachusetts Law Treats a Worsened Injury.
A claim involving a pre-existing condition runs on one powerful common-law rule and a handful of statutes, and knowing how they fit together is what keeps the insurer’s defense from working.
The aggravation, or “eggshell plaintiff,” rule. Massachusetts law holds that a person who negligently injures another takes that person as they find them. A defendant is fully liable for aggravating, worsening, or hastening a pre-existing condition, even a fragile or symptom-free one, and cannot escape responsibility by arguing the victim was more vulnerable than an average person. Why it matters: this rule directly defeats the “you were already hurt” defense. The question becomes how much worse the incident made you, which is proven with medical evidence, not whether you were healthy to begin with.
The tort threshold in a motor-vehicle case. Where the injury came from a crash, no-fault Personal Injury Protection pays first, but pain and suffering is available only under G.L. c. 231, § 6D, once reasonable medical expenses exceed two thousand dollars or the injury is a fracture, permanent, or fatal. Why it matters: the cost of treating an aggravated condition, the imaging, therapy, and care the incident newly required, counts toward that threshold, so a worsened pre-existing injury usually opens a full claim rather than closing one.
Comparative negligence. Under G.L. c. 231, § 85, you can recover as long as your share of fault is not greater than the other side’s, with any award reduced by your percentage, and the statute abolishes the old assumption-of-risk defense. Why it matters: a pre-existing condition is not fault. It cannot be used to assign you blame for the crash, only, at most, to separate old harm from new, which is a medical question the evidence resolves.
The deadline. Under G.L. c. 260, § 2A, you generally have three years from the injury to sue. Why it matters: the strongest proof that an incident worsened a prior condition is the contrast between your recent baseline and your condition right after, and that contemporaneous record is easiest to secure early, well before the deadline forces the issue.
These rules work together in a typical dispute. You had a manageable old back injury; a crash leaves you unable to work; the insurer says the disc was always bad. The aggravation rule makes the defendant answer for the worsening, the tort threshold opens the pain-and-suffering claim once treatment mounts, comparative negligence cannot turn your medical history into fault, and the three-year clock runs while the before-and-after evidence is freshest. Winning turns on documenting the change, which is the heart of the work.
How the worsening is proven deserves its own attention. We gather your prior records to establish an honest baseline, then use the post-incident imaging, the treating physicians’ opinions, and the change in your daily function to show what the incident added. An honest, well-documented before-and-after is far more persuasive than either side’s bare assertion, and it is what a jury and a fair adjuster respond to.
There is an important corollary worth understanding. When the old harm and the new harm genuinely cannot be separated, Massachusetts does not simply hand the defendant a discount. Where a defendant’s negligence combines with a pre-existing condition to produce an injury that cannot fairly be divided, the law generally holds the defendant responsible for the whole of it, rather than letting an indivisible harm go uncompensated because part of it might trace to the past. The burden of proving what, if anything, should be attributed to the prior condition falls on the party trying to reduce the claim, not on the injured person, which is another reason the medical evidence is so central.
Pre-Existing Condition Injury Claim Help Statewide.
From our Boston base we represent injured people whose claims involve a pre-existing condition across the Commonwealth. The problem is the same everywhere, on the highways and crowded streets of Greater Boston, in the workplaces and homes of the South Shore, and in the communities of the north and the west: someone with an ordinary medical history is hurt, and an insurer tries to blame the history instead of the incident. Wherever it happens, the same aggravation rule and the same evidence-first approach apply.
We handle these claims across every kind of case in which a pre-existing condition arises, working as a Boston car accident lawyer when a crash worsens an old spine or joint, and as a Boston slip and fall lawyer when a fall aggravates a prior injury. That work reaches well beyond the city, including the cases a Cambridge personal injury lawyer handles just across the river.
A worsened condition also rarely produces a single kind of harm. The aggravation drives much of your pain and the daily limits it leaves behind, it can turn a manageable problem into a life-altering, permanent injury, and how much of it the incident caused is exactly the medical dispute that decides what a full claim is worth. Because a pre-existing condition is never fault, the insurer’s attempt to shift blame is answered by how Massachusetts actually divides responsibility. We make sure every one of those pieces is valued.
Where the injury happened also shapes the proof. A crash on a state road generates a police report and, often, medical records from a specific hospital; a workplace incident creates its own file; a fall on a property may be captured on video that is overwritten within days. Knowing which records establish your recent baseline, which show the change, and which court will hear the claim is part of building it, and gathering that proof early is what keeps the before-and-after clear.
Wherever the case arises, the standard does not change. We represent clients with pre-existing conditions from the streets and workplaces of Greater Boston to the communities of central and western Massachusetts, with the same insistence on an honest, documented before-and-after everywhere. A serious aggravation deserves that rigor no matter where it happened, and no matter how hard an insurer works to blame your history instead of the harm.
Gathering the right records is its own careful task, and where the care happened shapes it. Your baseline may live in the files of a primary-care doctor, an old orthopedist, a physical therapist, or a prior insurer, while the proof of the change sits with the hospital and specialists who treated you after the incident. Pulling those threads together into one coherent before-and-after, from providers across Greater Boston and beyond, is exactly the work that turns a scattered medical history into clear evidence of what the incident added, and it is work we take on so you do not have to chase records while you heal.
What a Worsened Condition Really Costs You.
An aggravated injury is easy for an insurer to dismiss and hard for the person living with it to overstate. The cost of a worsened condition reaches far past the first bill, and a full claim means proving each layer of it.
The medical picture. When an incident aggravates a prior condition, the new treatment, the imaging, injections, therapy, or surgery the incident made necessary, is real and documentable. We gather the complete record and the treating physicians’ opinions so the diagnosis, the cause of the worsening, and the prognosis are established rather than argued, because a clear medical narrative is what defeats the claim that nothing changed.
The work and earning picture. A condition you managed for years can become disabling after an incident, ending a career or capping earning power. We show how the worsening limits what you can now do and where it supports a claim for lost wages and diminished future earning capacity, measured against the life you actually led before, not against a hypothetical healthy person.
The daily and future picture. Increased pain, new limitations, future surgeries, and the loss of activities you could still do before are real damages that must be valued now rather than after the fact. We tie each to evidence and, where the stakes justify it, bring in medical and vocational experts to quantify the change.
Neutralizing the insurer. The defense in almost every one of these cases is the same, that your problems predate the incident and are worth nothing new. We answer it with your honest baseline records, the post-incident imaging, and the treating opinions that isolate the worsening, so the one argument built to shrink these claims has nothing to stand on.
It is worth knowing what to avoid, too. Do not hide your medical history, because a concealed prior condition, once discovered, is far more damaging than an aggravation openly proven. Do not minimize how you functioned before, and do not accept the adjuster’s claim that your history caps the case. Do not give a recorded statement or accept a quick settlement before the worsening is fully documented. We handle the insurer’s questions so an offhand remark never becomes the centerpiece of the defense against you.
Finally, honesty is the strategy in these cases. The strongest aggravation claim is not one that hides the past but one that owns it and then proves, with records and medical opinion, exactly how much worse the incident made things. That candor, backed by evidence, is what turns a pre-existing condition from the insurer’s best defense into the clearest measure of the harm you are owed.
Where the stakes justify it, the right expert can make the difference. A treating physician who can state, in plain terms, that the incident aggravated a stable condition, or a specialist who can read the before-and-after imaging and quantify the change, gives a jury and an adjuster something concrete to rely on. So does an honest accounting of your life before, from the people who watched you work, move, and live without the limits you now face. We assemble that proof deliberately, because in an aggravation case the difference between a discounted offer and a full recovery is almost always the quality of the evidence that isolates the new harm from the old.
It also helps to be realistic about the arc of these cases. Because the whole fight is over how much of your current condition the incident caused, the claim cannot be fairly valued until your treatment has revealed the true extent of the worsening and the records that establish your prior baseline are in hand. An insurer that offers a quick, low number early is counting on you settling before that picture is complete. We hold the line, gathering the proof and letting the medical course run, so the demand reflects the full aggravation rather than the discounted version an early offer represents. That patience, paired with thorough documentation, is often what separates a fair recovery from a settlement that quietly writes off half the harm.
Emergency and Surgical Care
Lost Wages and Earning Capacity
Pain, Suffering, and Trauma
Wrongful Death of a Loved One
Hurt With a Prior Condition? Do This.
Tell your doctors your full history
Tell every doctor about your prior condition and your recent baseline, and follow all care, because an honest, documented before-and-after is what proves how much the incident actually made you worse.
Gather your old medical records now
Gather your old medical records to show how you functioned before the incident, because that baseline, set against how you function now, is the evidence that separates the new harm from the prior one.
Speak to a lawyer before you settle
Talk to a lawyer before you give a recorded statement or accept any offer, because an insurer will use your history to slash the claim, and a free review shows what the true worsening is really worth.
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Talk to Us About a Pre-Existing Condition Injury Claim.
If an insurer is using an old injury or a prior condition to devalue what a recent crash, fall, or other incident did to you, do not accept that your history caps your claim. Massachusetts law makes the responsible party answer for every bit of harm they added, and the aggravation is proven with your own medical record, not the adjuster’s assumptions. Our team will listen to what happened, build the honest before-and-after that shows the worsening, explain how the law applies, and take on the insurer so you can focus on recovery. The consultation is free and private, and you owe nothing unless we win. Reaching out early is what keeps that before-and-after clear.
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Our Clients.
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Larson Law helps injured people and families across Massachusetts after a serious accident. If you were hurt by someone else’s carelessness in Boston, we are ready to listen and explain your options at no cost.
Questions Injured Clients Ask Us.
What is a pre-existing condition in a claim?
It is any injury, illness, or condition you had before the incident, an old back or knee problem, arthritis, a prior accident, or a chronic illness. Insurers point to it to argue your current pain is not new. Under Massachusetts law, though, what matters is whether the incident made that condition worse, not that it existed.
Can I still recover if I was already hurt?
Yes. Massachusetts follows the rule that a wrongdoer takes you as you are and is responsible for aggravating a condition you already had, even one that caused no symptoms before. Being previously injured does not bar your claim; it simply means the case focuses on proving how much worse the incident made you.
What is the eggshell plaintiff rule?
It is the principle that a defendant takes the injured person as they find them. If a person with a weak back or prior injury is hurt worse than a healthy person would have been, the defendant is liable for that full, greater harm. Massachusetts applies this rule, so a pre-existing condition does not defeat a claim.
Will my old injury reduce my settlement?
Only to the extent the harm was truly old rather than newly caused. The defense will argue your history caps the case, but the law entitles you to full compensation for the aggravation, the added pain, treatment, and lost function the incident caused. A documented before-and-after is what keeps the old condition from swallowing the new harm.
Do I have to disclose my medical history?
Yes, and you should. Hiding a prior condition is the worst thing you can do, because once an insurer finds it, your credibility is gone and the whole claim suffers. Full, honest disclosure, paired with proof of how the incident worsened you, is far stronger than any attempt to conceal the past.
How is the worsening actually proven?
With a clear before-and-after. We gather your prior records to establish how you functioned before, then use the post-incident imaging, the treating physicians’ opinions, and the change in your daily life to show what the incident added. That documented contrast, not either side’s assertion, is what proves the worsening.
Can I recover for pain and suffering?
Usually, yes. In a motor-vehicle case, under G.L. c. 231, § 6D, pain and suffering is available once reasonable medical bills exceed two thousand dollars or the injury is a fracture, permanent, or fatal. The treatment an aggravation newly requires counts toward that threshold, so a worsened condition usually opens a full claim.
Is a prior condition treated as my fault?
No. A pre-existing condition is not fault and cannot be used to blame you for the incident. Under G.L. c. 231, § 85, only your share of responsibility for the crash reduces recovery, and your medical history is not that. At most, the old harm is separated from the new, which is a medical question the evidence answers.
How long do I have to file?
Generally three years from the date of injury under G.L. c. 260, § 2A. Because the clearest proof of aggravation is the contrast between your recent baseline and your condition right after the incident, acting early, while that record is fresh and complete, protects both the deadline and the strength of the claim.
What should I not do?
Do not hide your medical history, do not minimize how well you functioned before, and do not accept the adjuster’s claim that a prior condition caps your case. Do not give a recorded statement or accept a quick settlement before the worsening is documented. Honesty backed by evidence is what wins these claims.
What does a lawyer cost?
Nothing up front. We handle pre-existing condition and other injury claims on a contingency fee, so you pay no attorney fee unless we recover for you, and the first consultation is always free and confidential. That lets you find out what the aggravation is worth with no financial risk during a hard time.
Who will handle my case?
Attorney Daniel J. Larson leads the firm and stays personally involved in the cases we take. You will work with a lawyer who understands the aggravation rule and the medical proof it requires, not just a file number, and who builds the honest before-and-after your claim depends on.
Results Disclaimer: Past case results, settlements, and verdicts mentioned on this website do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case is unique and depends on its own facts and legal issues.