Here is a fact the insurance industry has monetized more effectively than almost any other fact in medicine. Take a hundred adults over thirty who have never had a crash, never missed a day of work, and never complained of back pain, and run every one of them through an MRI machine. A large share of those scans will come back showing degenerative disc disease, disc bulges, facet arthropathy, or some combination of the three.
That is what a spine looks like after it has been used. It is as diagnostic of injury as gray hair is diagnostic of a head injury.
The move
The adjuster obtains your imaging. The radiologist’s report contains the word degenerative. The adjuster writes a letter explaining that your symptoms are attributable to a pre-existing degenerative condition rather than the collision, offers a number that would not cover the MRI itself, and uses the word unfortunately twice.
It works often enough to be standard practice, because it sounds like science and arrives on letterhead.
Florida law disagrees, and has for a long time
The first is aggravation. A defendant is liable for the aggravation or acceleration of a pre-existing condition. If you had a quiet, asymptomatic degenerative spine on Monday and a spine that wakes you at three in the morning on Tuesday, the difference between those states is the injury, and it is compensable.
The second is the eggshell plaintiff rule. A defendant takes his victim as he finds him. If the person you rear ended on Cortez Boulevard has a fused cervical spine, a bad knee and osteoporosis, you are responsible for the harm you caused that person, not a healthier hypothetical one you would have preferred to hit.
Neither principle is exotic. Both are routinely explained to Florida juries. Neither appears in the adjuster’s letter.
What actually beats the argument
The single most valuable thing in a case like this is documentation of what you were like before. Prior primary care notes showing no complaints. Employment records showing no missed time. A gym membership with a scan history. A coaching schedule, a hunting season, a job that required lifting. The contrast is the case.
The second is a treating physician willing to state the basis for causation clearly: that the imaging findings are chronic, that the symptoms are new, and that within a reasonable degree of medical probability the collision caused or aggravated the condition.
The gap in treatment is a separate weapon, and it is self inflicted
Everything above collapses if you disappear for six weeks.
A gap in treatment is the defense argument that requires no expert, no imaging and no cleverness. You said you were hurt. Then you did nothing about it for forty days. The jury is invited to draw the obvious conclusion, and juries often accept.
People create gaps for entirely sympathetic reasons. Work. Childcare. No transportation. No money. A hope that it would resolve on its own. None of those reasons appear in the medical chart. What appears is a blank space.
If you have to stop treating, tell your provider why and make sure it is documented. A charted reason is a defense. A blank space is not.
One more thing the 2023 reforms changed
Section 768.0427 now governs what evidence of medical damages a jury may hear. For bills already paid, the evidence is generally limited to the amount actually paid rather than the amount originally billed. Letters of protection must be disclosed, along with itemized coded billing, whether the receivables were sold to a third party, whether you had health insurance, and who referred you to the provider.
The translation: how you get your medical care now affects what a jury is allowed to see about it. That is a decision worth making early and deliberately, with counsel, rather than discovering it during a deposition.
If an adjuster in Spring Hill or Brooksville has told you your injuries are pre-existing, they may be describing your imaging accurately and your case entirely wrongly. Those are different things. A Hernando County personal injury attorney can tell you which one is happening.
External legal resource: Florida Statutes, section 768.0427 (Evidence of Medical Damages)
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