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No. Degenerative disc disease develops over years from aging and daily strain, so a single crash can’t cause it outright. What a crash can do is turn a condition you were living with into a source of chronic pain, and Florida law lets you recover for that difference.
These claims are harder to prove than a broken bone, because the insurance company has an argument built into your own MRI. Talking to a West Palm Beach car accident lawyer before you give a recorded statement or accept an offer usually matters more in a DDD case than in a straightforward one.
Why didn’t your back hurt until after the crash?
Because degeneration and pain aren’t the same thing. Discs dry out and flatten with age in almost everyone, and plenty of people carry significant changes on imaging without symptoms. A crash can push an already-weakened disc past the point where it stays quiet: it can tear the outer wall of the disc, push disc material against a nerve root, or set off inflammation around a previously stable level.
Timing adds to the confusion. Adrenaline masks pain at the scene, and inflammation builds over 24 to 72 hours, which is why the worst day is often two days later rather than the day of the crash.
What happens when the adjuster sees “degenerative changes” on your MRI?
You should expect the phrase to become the centerpiece of the defense. The argument is that your pain is the natural result of aging and would have arrived on its own, and that the crash is a coincidence of timing.
The medical literature doesn’t support treating imaging as proof of cause. A 2024 MRI study of more than 8,000 patients found lumbar disc herniation in 55% of them, at rates that varied by which symptoms they reported — findings and symptoms don’t line up neatly enough for a scan alone to explain anyone’s pain.
What answers the argument is the before-and-after. Prior medical records showing what you could do, what you complained of, and how often you sought care. Your treating physician’s opinion on what changed and why. Sometimes a comparison to older imaging. The question isn’t whether you had degeneration before the crash. It’s what you could do before and what you can do now.
Does a pre-existing condition reduce what you can recover?
Not the way insurers suggest. Florida’s standard jury instruction on aggravation tells jurors to award only the damages caused by the worsening if they can separate it out, and if they can’t, or if the condition wouldn’t have existed apart from the injury, to award damages for the entire condition.
That’s the opposite of the assumption most people bring to these claims. A pre-existing condition isn’t a discount. The uncertainty about how to divide it up works in the injured person’s favor, not the defense’s.
How do Florida’s PIP rules affect a back injury claim?
Two rules do most of the damage here. First, you have 14 days from the crash to get initial care, or you lose PIP coverage entirely. Second, PIP pays up to $10,000 only if a qualifying provider finds you had an emergency medical condition; without that finding, you’re capped at $2,500. Back pain that develops over a few days is exactly the kind of injury that gets classified out of the higher limit.
PIP also won’t reach the rest of it. Recovering unpaid medical expenses from the at-fault driver is straightforward, but recovering for pain and suffering requires a permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, or a significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function. In an aggravation case, that permanency opinion is usually the whole fight. You generally have two years from the crash to file suit.
Talk to a lawyer before the insurer frames your MRI
The Florida attorneys at Lytal, Reiter, Smith, Ivey & Fronrath are recognized as Super Lawyers, and the firm has handled Palm Beach County injury claims for more than 40 years. There’s no fee to talk with us, and you pay no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered. Call us at (561) 655-1990 or contact us online for a free consultation.