Legal Cases of Tailbone Injuries or Coccyx Pain

 Proving that a tailbone problem even exists
  • Do you have a lawsuit related to your tailbone injury (coccyx injury)?
  • The first step in a legal case involving a tailbone injury or coccyx pain would be proving that a tailbone problem actually exists.
  • The legal system is generally based on evidence. Subjective factors like self-reported symptoms might get some consideration, but typically more consideration is given to “objective evidence” that essentially “proves” that there is a tailbone problem or injury.
  • Examples of subjective, self-reported symptoms include your own statements about
    • the pain that you feel,
    • the difficulties that you have with sitting on certain surfaces, etc.
  • Examples of objective evidence include:
    • abnormalities that the physician documents from performing a careful and thorough physical examination
    • abnormalities on x-rays
      • coned-down x-ray views of the coccyx
      • sitting-versus-standing x-rays of the coccyx are especially helpful. Without this type of x-rays, a large percentage of tailbone injuries will fail to be diagnosed. Without these sitting x-rays the abnormality will be missed, unrecognized, thus weakening your legal case.
    • abnormalities on MRI
    • abnormalities on CT scans
    • abnormalities on bone scans
Causality: proving that a specific incident caused your tailbone injury
  • Factors that support the notion that a specific incident caused your tailbone injury:
    • No tailbone injuries or tailbone pain prior to the incident in question
    • No unrelated medical explanation for your tailbone pain (e.g., the symptoms are not being caused by a pilonidal cyst or a tailbone malignancy).
    • Tailbone symptoms reported relatively soon after the incident (admittedly this is sometimes difficult because patients may initially report general low back pain or buttock pain, so it may not initially be clearly understood that the pain is coming from the tailbone)
    • No previous imaging studies showing that the tailbone abnormality already existed prior to the incident in question.
Book Chapter on Legal Cases for Tailbone Injuries
  • My book, Tailbone Pain Relief Now! has an entire chapter on Legal Cases for Tailbone Injuries.
    • That chapter covers some of the challenges in getting objective evidence confirming the coccyx injury, establishing “causality” (i.e., that a specific injury caused the coccyx problems), etc.
  • If you are in the United States, you can get a copy of my book for free (just pay the shipping/handling) at www.TailbonePainBook.com
  • If you are outside of the United States, you can get the book on Amazon at: Tailbone-Pain-Book-on-Amazon
Determining Financial Compensation for a Tailbone Injury
  • It can be challenging to come to a specific dollar amount for financial compensation for a tailbone injury.
  • You probably should discuss that with an attorney who has expertise in the area of law that this applies
    • if this is a workplace injury then find an attorney who represents injured workers,
    • if this was from an automobile injury then find an attorney who represents auto accident victims
  • Presumably they would need to take into account:
    • medical costs: doctor’s visits, prescription medications, over-the-counter medications, tailbone injections, surgery (coccygectomy), etc.
    • lost work time: how much time did you miss from work due to this injury? Include days missed for medical appointments, etc.
    • long-term disability (if any)
      • Total disability:
        • Total disability means your totally unable to return to any type of work.
        • Compensation for total disability may include consideration for how many years of work you will lose.
        • if we roughly assume that people retire at 65…
          • then if you went out of work at age 60 you only lost five years of paid employment
          • if you went out of work at age 30 then you have lost 35 years of paid employment.
      • “Partial” disability:
        • Partial disability means that you are not able to do all of the same work that you did before.
          • Maybe you are not able to do the same type of job you did before, but you can work doing something else.
            • Perhaps you can no longer do a sitting job like driving a bus or flying a plane, but you can do a different type of work that does not require such prolonged sitting.
          • Maybe you can do the same type of job you did before, but due to decreased sitting tolerance you can only sit for long enough to work part time, instead of full time.
          • Your financial loss from the tailbone injury might take into consideration whether your new job or part-time status results in a lower yearly income than the work that you were able to do prior to the tailbone injury.
Finding an attorney
  • Consider using Google or another search engine to find an attorney in your geographic area who specializes in the type of case that you have.
    • For example:
      • Auto injury attorney in Seattle
      • Injured worker attorney in Chicago
  • Read reviews about the attorney online.
  • Some attorneys will give a free consult so you can see if they are a good fit for you and your case.
  • Attorneys may work on commission, meaning that they keep a percentage of what is awarded. The hope then would be that having the attorney involved increases the award enough to have made it worthwhile to have involved the attorney.
To come to Dr. Foye’s Tailbone Pain Center:
Tailbone Pain Book:

To get your copy of Dr. Foye’s book, “Tailbone Pain Relief Now!” click on this link: www.TailbonePainBook.com

Tailbone Pain Book cover Foye

Book: “Tailbone Pain Relief Now! Causes and Treatments for Your Sore or Injured Coccyx” by Patrick Foye, M.D.

 

Patrick Foye, M.D.
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