Can I Get Compensation for Plastic Surgery After a Car Accident?

Common Car Accident Injuries That Require Surgery

Car accidents are as varied as the cars and drivers on the roads—in other words, no two are the same. However, there are some injuries that commonly require surgery after a car accident. While severe pain is often an indicator of a serious injury at the moment the injury occurs, some injuries are harder for injured victims to detect. In fact, many injuries can require advanced medical imaging or diagnostic techniques to uncover and treat. As a result, if you are the victim of a car accident and believe you may have been injured, you  should seek medical treatment regardless of how slight you may feel the injuries are in the hours after the accident. 

Some common injuries that lead to car accident related surgeries include: 

Burns Caused By Car Accidents

In some car accidents, fires can occur, burning victims as a result. If gas tanks are struck or friction causes the gasoline or other flammable objects to ignite, it is possible for a car to become engulfed in flames. However, this is not as common as action movies might suggest. What is more likely are burns caused by airbags. The chemicals on the airbag combined with the speed of the airbags deploying can cause burns on a victim’s face and other exposed areas. 

In motorcycle accidents, road rash is a common injury. Despite the name, road rash is actually a type of burn injury, not a rash. Motorcycle accident victims may suffer burns running down the length of their arms and legs that can be extremely painful. Treating these, and airbag burns, can require skin grafting and scar revision surgeries. 

Head and Face Injuries

When moving vehicles collide with nonmoving objects and other vehicles, victims’ heads and faces can strike the steering wheel or dashboard. The impact can result in a broken nose, jaw, or other bones in the face. These injuries, left unaddressed, could alter how a person speaks, breathes, hears, and smells. These impacts might completely upend a person’s life, literally changing how they see themselves. 

Victims may require plastic facial reconstruction surgery after trauma caused by impact with dashboards or steering wheels. This form of plastic surgery can help restore a person’s appearance and facial function back to how they were before the accident and reduce the pain they’ve suffered as a result. 

Lacerations

While seatbelts do protect against fatalities and injuries, they can sometimes be a source of injury as well. In an accident, a person can be thrust forward while their seatbelt tries to pull them back. These competing forces can cause seatbelts to slice through soft tissue and organs.  Seatbelts can also cause internal injuries.  Unfortunately, many people involved in accidents may not realize at the time of the accident that these internal injuries have occurred.  Internal injuries may require surgery to stop internal bleeding and repair damage to vital organs. Repairing damage to soft tissue may require plastic surgery to reduce scarring and later complications.

Broken Bones

It may come as no surprise that another common car accident surgery is for broken bones. The force a car accident creates can be sufficient to break bones. Depending on the crash, it may cause a fractured pelvis, neck, clavicle, or even skull. Surgeons may perform surgery to install pins, rods, or plates to help the bones set and heal properly.  

How To Receive Compensation After an Accident

After an accident, your health becomes the top priority. However, for many victims, that leads to concern about how to afford medical treatments. Medical bills, surgery costs, physical therapy and medications may all become burdens that a household can’t afford. The choice shouldn’t be between your health and your wallet, and it doesn’t have to be. 

Start By Requesting Legal Help

One of the first things an injured victim or trusted family member can do after an accident is to have a  free consultation with an experienced car accident attorney. During the consultation, the attorney can help explain what comes next in the process, particularly as it relates to an insurance claim. One of the main sources of compensation for the costs of a  surgery caused by a car accident is the at fault person’s insurance company. 

An attorney can help an injured victim navigate these conversations because they can be especially tricky for victims that need surgery after a car accident. The insurance company’s top priority is the health of their bottom line, not the health of the victim. As a result, they may argue that the surgery was unnecessary to the overall health and medical needs of that patient. 

If an insurance company refuses to acknowledge that a car accident surgery was necessary and negotiations break down, a lawsuit may become necessary. Here, an experienced car accident lawyer will argue before a judge or jury that the car accident surgery was medically necessary given their client’s health and circumstances. 

How to Determine What is Medically Necessary?

In negotiations with the insurance company and in a potential lawsuit, an experienced attorney will argue that the surgery was medically necessary for the health of the car accident victim. Once litigation begins, an attorney will look to state law, precedents, and potentially expert testimony to show that a car accident surgery was medically necessary for the victim. 

Statutes Related to Surgery After a Car Accident

In car accident cases  that occur in Georgia, state laws often dictate what compensation is available and how to properly assert claims for medical expenses.. Compensation in a personal injury case is known as damages. Georgia law authorizes victims and their attorneys to pursue damages in two forms, general and special damages under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-2. General damages don’t require proof and are presumed to follow from the negligent act in question. 

Special damages, on the other hand, do require evidence. These are the damages that actually stem from the negligent act. Medical expenses, including car accident surgery expenses are considered special damages that require proof. Additionally, O.C.G.A. § 51-12-7 establishes that victims can estimate the extent of their damages based on the necessary expenses. 

Taken together,  an experienced attorney will gather documentation about the accident, the injuries, and the treatment to show they were all connected and importantly, that the treatment was necessary for the victim’s health. Complicating the matter is the recently passed SB 68—this new law affects the nature and extent of what damages can be introduced and the amount of those damages.

Precedents Matter

As attorneys navigate the state laws regarding damages and compensation, they simultaneously look to similar accident cases. These past cases may establish precedents for a current victim’s claim. If, in a past claim, facial reconstruction surgery after trauma from a car accident was deemed medically necessary, that can help show that a client who had the same surgery was also medically necessary. Experienced lawyers who have worked on numerous car accident claims may have even worked on similar claims for past clients.

Expert Testimony for Surgery From Car Accident

Expert testimony is another important source of potential evidence to show that a surgery after a car accident was necessary. Doctors, surgeons, plastic surgeons, and similar professionals can be called upon to give their opinion on car accident injuries that require surgery and whether the victim’s injuries also required surgery. These experts provide their professional medical opinion to establish why surgery was required in this particular instance based on their understanding of how it improves outcomes and how failing to perform surgery could leave a patient in pain, or unhealed. 

Being able to call upon expert testimony during a trial is powerful. These professionals have in-depth knowledge about an issue right at the heart of the claim. Well-resourced law firms can identify these experts and question them before litigation even begins. They can also help ensure that they provide their testimony in-person if there’s a trial. 

Compensation For Plastic Surgery Due to Injuries from a Car Accident Is Possible

Car accidents have the power to upend lives, forever changing how victims see the world and their lives. Surgery due to car accident injuries can be painful but restore a victim’s hope for healing at the same time. So to hear that an insurance company doesn’t believe the surgery was necessary can be particularly heartbreaking. Hope that surgery can begin the healing process can quickly turn to dread as medical bills pile up. 

If you’ve been injured in a car accident, call Montlick. During your free consultation, an attorney will learn about your case  and discuss a possible path forward. Standing behind each one of our seasoned lawyers is a firm that’s fought for innocent victims for over 40 years. We will fight to find all the evidence we can that shows a car accident surgery was medically necessary, so innocent victims can get their lives back.  

Contact us today to see how Montlick can make a difference. Your initial consultation is free.