How a Preexisting Shoulder Problem Affects an Injury Claim

Q: Does a preexisting condition ruin a personal injury claim in California?

Generally no. Cal. Civ. Code § 3333 measures tort damages as the amount which will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused, whether it could have been anticipated or not, and a new injury to a body part that had trouble before is still detriment caused by the incident. What a preexisting condition does is shift the argument to apportionment: the defense will try to attribute part of the current problem to what came before, and the claimant's medical records, imaging and treating physicians are what answer that. A prior record is a reason to gather it, not a reason to abandon a claim.

Q: What happens if you were partly to blame for your own accident in California?

California uses pure comparative fault, so recovery is reduced in proportion to the claimant's own share of responsibility rather than barred by it — the Supreme Court reaffirmed that system in Daly v. General Motors Corp., 20 Cal. 3d 725 (1978), and Cal. Civ. Code § 1714(a) is its statutory root. Even a claimant found substantially at fault is not automatically shut out. That said, comparative fault only matters once there is someone else who was careless; if nobody else's carelessness contributed, there is no claim to reduce.

Q: Does a fall on the job go through workers' compensation?

As against the employer, generally yes. Cal. Lab. Code § 3602(a) makes the right to recover compensation the sole and exclusive remedy of the employee against the employer where the conditions of compensation are met. Workers' compensation does not require proving that anyone was at fault, and it has its own claim deadlines that are separate from the ordinary civil ones. It also does not bar a claim against a careless third party who is not the employer, such as a property owner or another contractor on the site.

Question

I saw a doctor in 2016 because my shoulder started hurting out of nowhere. I saw the doctor maybe twice. Two years later I fell off a roof and tore my rotator cuff and had surgery. Will my preexisting condition from two years prior hurt my case?

A. Jason Velez · Accepted Answer

A preexisting condition rarely sinks a California injury claim. The other side gets to argue about how much of your shoulder problem is new, but a claim is not defeated just because that shoulder had been looked at before. The harder question in your situation is a different one: whether there is anyone legally responsible for the fall. Take the preexisting condition first, because it worries people most. Cal. Civ. Code § 3333 sets the measure: "For the breach of an obligation not arising from contract, the measure of damages, except where otherwise expressly provided by this Code, is the amount which will compensate for all the detriment proximately caused thereby, whether it could have been anticipated or not." The detriment proximately caused by a fall includes a new tear and the surgery it required, and it includes any worsening of a condition you already had. What it does not include is the condition you would have had anyway. In practice that means the fight is about apportionment, not about whether you can claim at all — and two visits in 2016 for pain that came on by itself is a thin record for a defense that wants to say the tear was already there. Your imaging and operative findings will matter far more than those two visits. Now the part that decides whether there is a case. A fall from a roof only produces a claim if someone else was legally responsible — a property owner, a contractor, a company that supplied a defective ladder or scaffold, or an employer's workers' compensation coverage. Cal. Civ. Code § 1714(a) makes a person responsible for an injury occasioned to another by their want of ordinary care in the management of their property or person. If nobody's carelessness put you where you fell, there is no one to claim against, and no amount of medical proof changes that. If you were working when it happened, Cal. Lab. Code § 3602(a) makes workers' compensation the exclusive remedy against your employer where the conditions of compensation are met — a separate system, with its own deadlines, and one that does not turn on proving fault. Being partly at fault yourself is not the end either. California applies pure comparative fault: recovery is reduced only to the extent your own lack of reasonable care contributed to the injury, as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Daly v. General Motors Corp., 20 Cal. 3d 725 (1978). What you can do 1. Request the 2016 records and the complete records from the fall, the surgery and the follow-up. The comparison is the whole fight, and having both sets is better than having neither. 2. Ask your surgeon to record what the imaging and operative findings actually showed about the tear. 3. Keep every bill and receipt, and a record of the time you missed from work. 4. If the fall happened at work or on a job, file a workers' compensation claim with your employer's carrier, and ask a local attorney about it — that system runs on its own deadlines. 5. Ask a local attorney to review your dates immediately, before anything else on this list. Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts is worth more than any general guidance, including this page. ⏱ Time limits apply. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 gives two years for an action for injury to an individual caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another, and two years is short. A fall that happened well before you are reading this may already sit outside it — or it may not, depending on facts this page does not have. Do not assume either way. Take the exact dates to a local attorney now, because once the period has run a claim ends regardless of how strong it was.

How a Preexisting Shoulder Problem Affects an Injury Claim

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