The Injury and the Law, in Plain English
A spinal cord injury can be complete — no motor or sensory function below the level of injury — or incomplete, meaning some signals still get through. Where the injury sits on the spine determines what functions are affected: cervical injuries often affect the arms, chest, and breathing; thoracic injuries affect the trunk and legs; lumbar and sacral injuries affect the legs and pelvic floor. Each level of injury maps to a different lifetime-care profile, a different set of complications, and a different economic loss.
Texas law allows recovery for medical expenses past and future, lost earning capacity, physical impairment, disfigurement, pain and suffering past and future, and loss of enjoyment of life. For a spinal cord injury, the largest numbers are almost always the future ones: decades of attendant care, equipment replacement, complications management, and the compounded cost of a career cut short. Under Texas’s proportionate responsibility framework in Chapter 33 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, a defendant who is more than 50% responsible pays the full judgment, and most catastrophic-injury cases involve a defendant who is clearly the primary cause.
The two-year statute of limitations under Section 16.003 applies, and the work of building a life-care plan takes time — which is one reason the earlier a case begins, the better its outcome.
The Life-Care Plan Is the Case
A life-care plan is a document prepared by a certified life-care planner — typically a rehabilitation nurse or physician — that catalogs every item of future medical care and related cost the injury will generate, priced at current rates and projected forward for the injured person’s statistical lifetime. It is the foundation of a spinal cord injury case, and it has to be built to withstand a defense expert hired to tear it apart.
- Attendant care. A complete cervical injury typically requires round-the-clock care. The hours, the rates, and the duration are calculated from the treating team’s records and the rehabilitation physician’s assessment — not from what the family has been able to provide informally.
- Equipment on replacement cycles. Motorized wheelchairs last roughly five years. Cushions, positioning equipment, and communication devices cycle on similar schedules. Each item is priced, each cycle is counted, and the total spans decades.
- Medical complications. Pressure sores, urinary tract infections, respiratory complications, autonomic dysreflexia, heterotopic ossification — these are not hypothetical. They are documented sequelae of spinal cord injury, and they carry real costs. A life-care plan that omits them is a plan the defense will use to make our case look dishonest. We include them.
- Home and vehicle modifications. A roll-in shower, a ramp, a widened doorway, a hand-control vehicle adaptation — each modification is an item in the plan, with a cost and a replacement cycle where applicable.
- Lost earning capacity. A vocational expert analyzes the injured person’s pre-injury career trajectory and earnings, the injury’s effect on the ability to work, and what, if any, alternative work is realistically available. For injuries that end a career entirely, the number spans the statistical working lifetime.
Every case here is prepared the same way: your lawyer leads it, an experienced trial lawyer supported by a partner Board Certified in Personal Injury Trial Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, a distinction held by less than 1% of Texas lawyers. The decision to settle or try the case is always yours. The full four-step approach is on our Serious Personal Injury page.
Go Deeper
- Serious Personal Injury: The hub — how every serious injury case gets valued for a lifetime, not a hospital bill.
- Traumatic Brain Injury: Proving the injury the scans don’t show.
- Amputation & Crush Injuries: Prosthetic cycles, phantom pain, and the full lifetime cost.
- Severe Burn Injuries: Reconstruction, thermoregulation, and who caused the fire.
- Police Officer & First Responder Injuries: Officers and firefighters struck at roadside scenes suffer spinal cord injuries — a third-party claim is separate from your benefits.
