Jersey City, NJ Accidental Injuries, Part 4: It’s Your Aching Back

It’s the last of our series on accidental injuries. The aching back. To many, back pain is debilitating. Unfortunately, many types of back injuries happen as a result of accidents. Regrettably, countless back problems result in permanent damage.

We’re sure you’re already familiar with the circumstances that can cause back injuries. An individual can pick up something heavy at work and feel instant pain. Another person may fall flat on their back while walking in a shopping center. Car accidents can cause back injuries. You name it. Back pain is often a common result of accidental injuries.

What makes back injuries particularly difficult — both medically and legally — is how unpredictable they are. Two people can experience nearly identical accidents and walk away with completely different outcomes. One recovers in a matter of weeks. The other develops a chronic condition that reshapes their entire life. The spine is complex, the surrounding musculature is interconnected, and the nervous system runs directly through it. A seemingly minor trauma can produce consequences that take months to fully surface.

Back Injuries and Accident Claims

As experienced personal injury attorneys, we see a great number of clients who have some type of back injury. First, let’s make sure you understand the anatomy of the back.

When medical providers reference back injuries, they are talking about four basic areas of the spine. The thoracic spine covers the twelve vertebrae between the neck and the lower back. The lower back is referred to as the lumbar spine and consists of five vertebrae.

You may also hear doctors say that your injury involves the sacrum, which is located just below the lumbar region. The sacrum is above the coccyx, affectionately known as the tailbone.

Consider the foregoing a geography lesson of your back. It will help you understand how your doctor relates your diagnosis to the region of the back injured in an accident.

Understanding that geography also matters in a legal context. Where an injury is located in the spine affects how it is treated, how long recovery takes, and how significantly it impacts a person’s daily function. An injury to the lumbar spine often interferes with sitting, standing, walking, and lifting — the physical demands that most jobs require. An injury to the thoracic region can affect trunk rotation and breathing mechanics. When you understand the anatomy your doctor is describing, you can communicate more clearly about how your injury has changed what you can and cannot do. That narrative matters when building a personal injury claim.

Back Sprain or Strain: You may have heard the term soft tissue injury. Back sprains and strains fall into this category. If you’ve twisted or pulled a muscle or a tendon in a part of your back, you will receive this type of diagnosis.

Soft tissue injuries to the back are among the most contested injuries in personal injury cases. Because they do not appear on standard X-rays, insurance companies frequently argue that the injury is exaggerated or unverifiable. This is frustrating for injured people who are experiencing genuine, sometimes severe, pain. The absence of visible fracture on imaging does not mean the injury is not real or not serious.

MRI imaging can reveal soft tissue damage more clearly than X-rays, and a treating physician’s clinical notes documenting range of motion limitations, tenderness, and functional impairment carry significant weight. Physical therapy records that show a structured course of treatment and measured progress — or the lack of it — also help establish the reality and persistence of a soft tissue back injury. The documentation around these injuries needs to be thorough, because the challenge to them is almost guaranteed.

Lumbar sprains and strains, in particular, have a way of becoming chronic. The lower back is load-bearing and constantly in motion. When the muscles and ligaments supporting it are injured, they can take a long time to heal, and they are vulnerable to re-injury during recovery. Someone who suffers a lumbar strain in a slip and fall accident at work may find that their symptoms fluctuate — better some days, significantly worse on others — for a year or more. That pattern does not mean they are not injured. It reflects the nature of soft tissue healing in a region of the body that cannot simply be rested the way a sprained ankle can.

Herniated Discs: We spoke about herniated discs in part three of our series on accidental injuries. Discs are protective cushions within the spine. If one protrudes or breaks off, it can cause excruciating pain. Some herniated discs may require surgery. If you experience pain shooting down your leg, you may have a herniated disc in your back.

That shooting leg pain has a clinical name: sciatica. The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve in the body, running from the lower back through the hips and down each leg. When a herniated lumbar disc presses against the sciatic nerve root, the resulting pain can radiate from the low back all the way into the foot. For some people it presents as a burning sensation. For others it is sharp and stabbing, or it manifests as numbness and weakness in the leg. The specific pattern of symptoms often helps physicians identify which disc level is involved.

Lumbar disc herniations are objectively visible on MRI. That makes them easier to document than soft tissue injuries, but it does not make them easier to litigate. Defense medical examiners frequently argue that disc pathology shown on imaging reflects age-related degeneration rather than accident-related trauma. The legal principle that applies here is sometimes called the “eggshell plaintiff” rule or the aggravation doctrine. Under New Jersey law, a defendant is responsible for the full extent of harm they cause, even if the injured person had a pre-existing vulnerability. A disc that was already degenerating can still be herniated by an accident, and the person responsible for the accident is liable for that result.

Surgical intervention for a herniated lumbar disc — which might include a microdiscectomy, laminectomy, or spinal fusion depending on the severity — adds significantly to the value of a personal injury claim. These procedures carry their own recovery timelines, risks, and long-term implications. Even after a successful surgery, many patients live with residual symptoms, activity restrictions, and the possibility of adjacent disc disease developing at a neighboring spinal level over time.

Back Fractures: You may hear a back fracture called a broken back. It is otherwise known as a spinal cord injury. This is considered a catastrophic injury as it can result in paraplegia.

Spinal fractures exist on a wide spectrum of severity. A compression fracture — where a vertebra collapses under force — can result from a fall or a car accident and may cause intense localized pain without immediate neurological consequences. A burst fracture, where the vertebra shatters and bone fragments spread outward toward the spinal canal, is a far more dangerous injury. The risk there is direct injury to the spinal cord or nerve roots. A fracture-dislocation, where vertebrae shift out of alignment at the fracture site, carries the highest risk of spinal cord damage.

The location of the fracture within the spine determines the neurological outcome if the spinal cord is involved. Injuries at higher levels of the thoracic spine can affect trunk stability and lower limb function. Fractures lower in the lumbar region, where the spinal cord has already transitioned into a bundle of nerve roots called the cauda equina, may still cause severe dysfunction of the bowel, bladder, and lower extremities.

Paraplegia resulting from a back fracture produces damages that extend far beyond any single medical procedure. Lifetime care costs, home modification expenses, adaptive equipment, lost earning capacity, and the profound impact on quality of life all factor into what a catastrophic injury claim must account for. These cases require careful calculation and, frequently, testimony from life care planners, vocational experts, and economists to present the full picture accurately.

When Back Injuries Are Not Obvious Right Away

One of the most common mistakes people make after an accident is waiting to seek medical attention because their back pain seems manageable in the immediate aftermath. The adrenaline and stress response that follow a traumatic event can genuinely suppress the perception of pain. A person involved in a car accident may feel shaken and sore but not recognize the severity of their back injury until the next morning, or several days later, when inflammation has built and the body has had time to signal what is actually wrong.

This delay creates a problem in personal injury claims. Insurance adjusters treat the gap between an accident and first medical treatment as evidence that the injury is minor or unrelated to the accident. The longer the gap, the harder the argument becomes to make. Seeking prompt medical evaluation — even if you are not certain how serious your injury is — creates a record that connects your condition to the event that caused it. That connection is foundational to any claim you may need to pursue.

Consistent treatment matters too. Gaps in medical care — periods where you stopped going to physical therapy, delayed a follow-up appointment, or skipped prescribed treatment — are used by defense attorneys to argue that your injury resolved or that you failed to mitigate your damages. Staying engaged with your medical care, following your treatment plan, and documenting your symptoms over time all serve both your health and your legal position.

What Accident Victims Often Do Not Know About New Jersey Back Injury Claims

New Jersey’s personal injury law includes several features that directly affect how back injury claims are handled. One is the statute of limitations. In most personal injury cases in New Jersey, you have two years from the date of the accident to file a claim. That window can close faster than people expect, particularly when ongoing medical treatment and recovery consume most of their attention.

Another is the role of comparative negligence. New Jersey follows a modified comparative fault rule, which means that if an injured person bears some share of responsibility for the accident that caused their injury, their recovery is reduced proportionally. A back injury victim who is found to be twenty percent at fault for a workplace accident can still recover, but the damages award is reduced by twenty percent. If they are found to be 51 percent or more at fault, recovery is barred. This framework makes the facts of how the accident happened — and how they are presented — genuinely consequential.

For accidents involving automobile insurance, the type of policy the injured person carried affects what claims are available to them. New Jersey’s no-fault insurance system means that certain medical benefits are paid through the injured person’s own policy regardless of fault, but tort claims for pain and suffering depend on which insurance option the person selected. Soft tissue back injuries may be subject to a verbal threshold in some policies, while more serious injuries — herniated discs that require surgery, fractures, permanent limitation of a body function — typically meet the standard for a pain and suffering claim regardless of threshold selection.

Having a New Jersey Personal Injury Attorney review your situation before you communicate with the other party’s insurance company is consistently one of the most protective steps an injured person can take. What you say in early conversations with adjusters can shape how the claim is characterized, and those early characterizations are difficult to undo later.

Contact Us

At the Law Offices of Anthony Carbone, we have many years of experience dealing with accident victims. If you have suffered an injury to your back or another part of your body, we would be happy to meet with you. Contact us for an appointment.

Back injuries rarely resolve themselves quickly, and the decisions you make in the weeks immediately following an accident can affect both your medical recovery and your ability to pursue fair compensation. Whether your injury is a strain that has kept you out of work for weeks or a fracture that has changed your life entirely, the circumstances that led to it deserve a careful legal review.

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