Written and reviewed by Josh Kohanim, Esq., California Bar No. 328609 · Reviewed
In this guide
Every injury on this page follows the same path through a claim. A doctor names it, a record documents it, and an insurer decides whether the record connects it to the crash. Get examined the same day, list every symptom rather than the loudest one, and keep treating until a physician says you are done.
Scope of this guide
How fault is decided is covered on our Los Angeles car accident lawyer page. Nothing here is medical advice, and new or worsening symptoms are a question for a physician today.
The same-day medical visit
An emergency department has one job in the first hour, which is to find the thing that will kill you. It scans your head for bleeding, checks your abdomen, and clears your spine. It does not usually work up a shoulder that hurts when you lift your arm, and it will not diagnose a mood disorder that has not started yet. Discharge papers that say nothing is broken get read by an insurance adjuster as proof that nothing was wrong.
The first visit is worth doing carefully. Name every place that hurts, including the ones you would normally ignore. Say whether you hit your head or were dazed, whether anything is numb, and whether you cannot focus. The list you give at the first visit is the list that exists. Everything added later gets treated as an afterthought.
The common injuries and their proof
A soft tissue injury is damage to muscle, tendon, or ligament rather than to bone. Those cases are the most common and the most fought, because the damage rarely appears on an image and the argument becomes whether the pain is real. Bone and organ injuries fight less about existence and more about value.
| Injury | How it is usually diagnosed | Typical treatment | What the file has to prove |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cervical strain, or whiplash | Physical exam and range of motion, with imaging to rule out fracture | Anti-inflammatories, physical therapy, activity limits | Neck pain reported on day one, therapy notes without gaps, a physician tying the strain to the impact |
| Herniated or bulging disc | Exam, then MRI | Therapy, epidural injections, sometimes surgery | The MRI read against any prior films, and a physician stating what the crash changed |
| Concussion and mild traumatic brain injury | Neurological exam; CT or MRI looks for bleeding rather than for the concussion itself | Cognitive rest, graded return to work, neurology follow up | Symptoms recorded early, a neurology referral, and people who knew you before |
| Moderate to severe brain injury | Imaging, hospital admission, neuropsychological testing | Inpatient care, rehabilitation, long term therapy | Neuropsychological testing, a life care plan, and testimony about lost function |
| Fracture | X-ray or CT | Casting, or surgery with plates and screws | The films, the operative report, hardware records, and written work restrictions |
| Internal or organ injury | CT, ultrasound, blood work, sometimes surgery | Emergency surgery, transfusion, monitoring | Emergency records, the operative report, and follow up imaging |
| Rotator cuff or meniscus tear | Exam, then MRI | Therapy, then arthroscopic repair if it does not settle | An MRI and a surgeon addressing what is degenerative and what is traumatic |
| Scarring and road rash | Clinical exam and photographs | Wound care, then revision or laser treatment | Dated photographs through healing and a written opinion on revision cost |
| PTSD, anxiety, or depression | Clinical interview by a psychologist or psychiatrist | Therapy, sometimes medication | Treating records, symptoms lasting at least a month, and people who describe the change |
Whiplash and neck injury
The National Library of Medicine's MedlinePlus page on neck injuries describes whiplash as a soft tissue injury to the neck, also called a neck sprain or strain, and notes that pain can also come from the shoulder, jaw, head, or upper arms. It lists car accidents among the causes and says treatment is usually ice, pain relievers, physical therapy, or a cervical collar, and that surgery is rarely needed.
The claim problem with whiplash is that the imaging is normal by definition. What carries it is the sequence: a same-day complaint, an exam documenting restricted motion, therapy with dates, and a discharge when the restriction resolves. When we see one of these files fail, the cause is usually three weeks of silence in the middle.
Herniated and bulging discs
MedlinePlus describes a herniated disk as a disk that ruptures, letting the jelly-like center leak and irritate nearby nerves, and says it can cause sciatica or back pain. A bulge is a disc pushed out of shape without that rupture. The same page notes the fact the defense will lean on: as you age, the disks break down or degenerate and lose their cushioning ability.
That is why an adjuster calls a disc finding degenerative and offers the smaller figure a soft tissue case gets. The answer is to date the MRI rather than argue it. Prior films, prior complaints, and the absence of prior complaints are all evidence, and a treating physician who compares what was there before with what is there now is what moves the file.
Concussion and traumatic brain injury
A traumatic brain injury is described by MedlinePlus as a sudden injury that causes damage to the brain, which may happen when there is a blow, bump, or jolt to the head, and it classifies concussions as a type of mild TBI. Providers may order imaging such as a CT scan or an MRI. The MedlinePlus concussion page adds the two facts that matter most in a claim: symptoms may not start right away and may begin days or weeks after the injury, and a brain scan checks for bleeding, inflammation, or a skull fracture.
A clean CT is not a clean bill of health. It tells you there is no bleed, which is what the emergency department needed to know. A concussion is diagnosed clinically, and the proof in a file is a documented symptom list, a neurology or neuropsychology referral, and the people around you describing what changed. If a brain injury is part of your case, our Los Angeles brain injury attorney page goes further into testing and long term care.
Fractures, internal injuries, and torn joints
These are the injuries insurers argue about least and value most carefully. A fracture has a film, an operative report, and a hardware list. A rotator cuff or meniscus tear has an MRI and a repair. The dispute moves to whether the surgery was necessary, whether the tear was already there, and what the future looks like, which is why the operative note and the surgeon's own words about causation matter more than the billing.
PTSD, anxiety, and depression
MedlinePlus defines post-traumatic stress disorder as a mental health disorder that some people develop after they experience or see a traumatic event, and names a car accident as one of those events. It describes four symptom groups, re-experiencing, avoidance, arousal and reactivity, and changes in thinking and mood, and states that a diagnosis requires the symptoms for at least one month.
Psychological injury is compensable in California and it is also the easiest line for a defense to dismiss, because there is no film. The record that holds up is a treating clinician rather than a one-time evaluation, notes that track symptoms over time, and people who can describe what you were like before. Fear of driving is not a soft claim when a psychologist has treated it for eight months.
Delayed symptoms and treatment gaps
Symptoms surface late for ordinary reasons. Adrenaline masks pain at the scene, inflammation builds over two or three days, and a concussion can declare itself a week later. None of that is fatal to a claim, as long as the delay is short and documented when it happens.
A gap in treatment is different and more damaging. It is a stretch of weeks with no visits in the middle of active care, and the rule an adjuster applies to it is blunt: a gap is read as recovery, whatever caused it. Childcare, a work schedule, a copay you could not cover, an authorization that never came through, none of that appears in the chart unless someone writes it down. If you have to pause, call the provider and say why, so the reason lives in the record instead of in your memory.
Injury valuation
Damages in California are proved category by category, and a Los Angeles jury is instructed on each one separately. The instruction numbers below come from the 2026 edition of the Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instructions (CACI). Every line needs a document behind it.
| Damage | Jury instruction | What proves it |
|---|---|---|
| Past and future medical expenses | CACI 3903A | Billed and paid records, plus a physician's written opinion on the care still to come |
| Past and future lost earnings | CACI 3903C | Pay records, an employer letter, and out-of-work notes from a treating provider |
| Lost earning capacity | CACI 3903D | Work history with a vocational and economic opinion on what the injury took |
| Loss of ability to provide household services | CACI 3903E | What you did at home before, who does it now, and what replacing it costs |
| Physical pain, mental suffering, emotional distress | CACI 3905A | Treating records over time and testimony about ordinary days |
| Aggravation of a preexisting condition | CACI 3927 | Prior films and prior records set against the current ones |
| Unusually susceptible plaintiff | CACI 3928 | Medical testimony explaining why this body reacted the way it did |
| Settlement deduction | CACI 3926 | Nothing for you to prove; the court subtracts an earlier settlement after the verdict |
Two of those instructions are the reason a preexisting condition is not the defense an adjuster suggests it is. Aggravation is the legal word for making an existing condition worse. CACI 3927 tells the jury that the plaintiff recovers nothing for the condition as it stood before the defendant's conduct, but that if a physical or emotional condition was made worse by that conduct, the jury must award damages that reasonably and fairly compensate for the effect on that condition.
CACI 3928, the unusually susceptible plaintiff instruction, goes further. It tells the jury to decide the full amount that will fairly compensate for all damages caused by the wrongful conduct, even if the plaintiff was more susceptible to injury than a normally healthy person would have been, and even if a normally healthy person would not have suffered a similar injury. Lawyers call it the eggshell plaintiff rule. A fused spine or an old shoulder repair makes a defendant's exposure larger, not smaller.
Medical bills during the claim
The at-fault driver's insurer does not pay bills as you go. It pays once, at the end, which leaves months of treatment to fund some other way. A lien is a legal claim on your future recovery held by someone who provided that treatment. Subrogation is a health plan's right to be paid back out of the same recovery. Both come out before you see it.
| Source | When it applies | What it costs you later |
|---|---|---|
| Your health insurance | You have coverage and the provider accepts it | Reimbursement out of the recovery, capped at one third of the money due to you under Civil Code 3040 |
| Med pay on your auto policy | Your own policy includes medical payments coverage | Usually repaid from the recovery, on the terms in your policy |
| A provider treating on a lien | You have no coverage, or need care your plan will not authorize | The billed balance is claimed from the settlement and negotiated at the end |
| A hospital lien | A hospital treated you after the crash and perfected its lien, meaning it took the formal steps the statute requires | A claim on the damages recovered for its reasonable charges, under Civil Code 3045.1 |
| The at-fault driver's insurer | Only when the claim resolves | Nothing along the way; one payment at the end |
The trade-off with a lien is access now against a bill later. It gets you an MRI in two weeks instead of four months, and it hands you a balance that has to be negotiated down before you are paid. Civil Code section 3040 caps a health plan's reimbursement at one third of the money due to you when you have engaged an attorney, and one half when you have not, and requires the lien be reduced pro rata for your attorney fees and costs under the common fund doctrine, so the plan bears its share of what it cost to collect the money. Section 3045.1 creates the hospital lien. Our post on how contingency fees work sets out the full order money comes out of a settlement.
Limits of more treatment
More treatment is not automatically more money. Defense doctors read charts for volume that does not match function, and a file with sixty chiropractic visits, no imaging and no referral is worth less than one with twenty visits and a surgeon's opinion. Treatment sought to build a case rather than to get better is visible in the records, and it costs the injuries that are real their credibility.
Two California rules can also cut a claim regardless of the medicine. Civil Code section 3333.4, passed as Proposition 213, bars recovery of non-economic losses, which is the pain and suffering half of a case. It applies when the injured person owned an uninsured vehicle involved in the crash, could not establish financial responsibility, usually meaning insurance, as the operator, or was convicted of driving under the influence in that crash. Vehicle Code section 16056 sets the minimum liability limits at $30,000 for one person's injuries, $60,000 for two or more, and $15,000 for property damage. That is the entire pot in a large share of Los Angeles crashes, and when treatment passes those limits, the case moves to underinsured motorist coverage on your own policy under Insurance Code section 11580.2.
A death in the crash is a different claim with different rules and different damages, and it is covered on our page about fatal car accidents and a family's legal options.
Hardest injuries to get paid
The ones with no image and no witness: the strained neck, the concussion nobody charted, the anxiety that started in month two. None of them are hard because they are minor. They are hard because the proof is a habit rather than a document. Go the day of the crash, say all of it, keep the appointments, and tell someone the day you have to stop.
If you are already past some of that, the record can still be built forward from today. We handle the recorded statement, get the treatment organized, and put the file together in the order a jury would need to see it. There is no fee unless we recover. Our guide to what moves a settlement covers the negotiation side, and car accident lawyer fees explains what representation costs.
Tell us what happened and what your records show.