Does she have a chance?

Question

My wife got injured while on the job. It was 4-5 yrs ago. It is a workmens comp case. She received multiply injections into her spine to correct a spinal injury she received. At that time the insurance co. gave us 40,000$ as a settlement. That was 3 yrs ago. Now she just had major back surgury to try to correct the problem. She is still healing. We paid NOTHING out of pocket. But we were told she would never be 100% of normal. Now we have been told by people that we should seek another settlement. Now I dont believe we do because we signed a statement that we would not seek anymore $. I have no idea what chance (if any) we have. But she is never going to be 100% of normal. Doesnt that account for more? I dont know. What do you think?

Answer 1

What do you think? - I think you need to ask this question to a lawyer. Normally, once you sign a settlement, that is it. However a good lawyer can sometimes work past that. You will not be able to if you are asking the question here (no insult, I couldn't either)

Answer 2

You should get an attorney to advise you of your rights, but in most cases, once you accept a settlement from an incident, you waive or sign away your rights to sue for further or future damages. (Check the paperwork you signed when you got the check, more than likely you agreed to not sue them again for the incident.) The "never be normal" diagnoses should have been known to you when you settled, and future medical costs should have been worked in to your total settlement amount. If they weren't, it's the fault of the lawyer you had to handle the original case.

Answer 3

You can try but unless the condition is something that was just discovered or missed on the original settlement and not a worsening of the previous injury the odds would not be good. You can always talk to a lwyer and have him look at the chances of it.

Answer 4

If she "signed off", she's out of luck. Good luck to you both. (no pun intended.)