A spinal cord injury claim in Nebraska is the primary financial vehicle available to secure the resources needed for a lifetime of care. Under Nebraska's civil justice system, a successful claim is the most effective way to recover the funds needed to cover what amounts to millions of dollars in lifetime costs associated with paralysis.
This path is not a simple one. Insurance policies have limits, and those limits are typically far below the actual cost of lifetime care for a serious spinal cord injury. Furthermore, Nebraska’s negligence laws create significant hurdles for victims seeking fair compensation. If an insurance company successfully argues you were substantially at fault for the incident, your ability to recover any funds at all could be eliminated, which is why guidance from a Lincoln personal injury lawyer becomes essential.
Despite these challenges, Nebraska law provides a clear pathway for victims to recover compensation for their current medical bills, the projected costs of all future care, and the loss of their ability to earn a living. A well-prepared legal strategy secures the financial foundation necessary to live with dignity and independence.
If you have questions about the long-term costs of an injury or an insurance offer you’ve received, call Steffens Law Offices, P.C. at (402) 414-4896 for a straightforward conversation about your situation.
Key Takeaways for Spinal Cord Injury Claims in Nebraska
- Initial insurance offers rarely cover the true lifetime cost of a spinal cord injury. These injuries require millions of dollars for ongoing care, medical equipment, and home modifications, which early settlement offers fail to include.
- Nebraska law bars any financial recovery if you are found 50% or more at fault. Insurance companies use this rule to deny claims, making a prompt and thorough accident investigation essential to protect your rights.
- Strict deadlines apply for filing a claim, with a much shorter one-year notice required for claims against government entities. Waiting too long to act may permanently prevent you from recovering any compensation.
The “Lifetime Value” Calculation: Why Most Initial Offers Are Insufficient
The first check an insurance adjuster offers may seem substantial. It typically covers the obvious, immediate expenses: the ambulance ride, the initial surgeries at a major hospital, and maybe a few weeks of missed work. However, this first offer almost never accounts for the true lifetime cost of a spinal cord injury, which is why many people start looking to find the best personal injury attorney before accepting anything.
The real costs appear months and years down the road:
- Durable Medical Equipment: A sophisticated power wheelchair may cost tens of thousands of dollars and needs to be replaced every five years.
- Home and Vehicle Modifications: Older homes in Nebraska typically require significant renovations, such as installing ramps, widening doorways, and creating accessible bathrooms. A specially equipped van costs more than a luxury car.
- Secondary Medical Complications: Life with paralysis typically involves treating a host of secondary health issues. These include chronic pain, spasticity, pressure ulcers, respiratory infections, and urinary tract infections, all of which require ongoing medical management.
- Daily Living Assistance: Depending on the level of injury, you might require daily assistance from home health aides for tasks that were once routine.
These expenses add up to staggering lifetime figures, frequently ranging from $1.2 million to over $5 million in our experience, depending on the victim's age and the severity of the injury.
When an insurer makes a low initial offer, they are banking on you not understanding this long-term financial reality. At Steffens Law Offices, P.C., we calculate damages differently. We collaborate with life care planners, physicians, and economists to build a comprehensive projection of every anticipated cost over your lifetime. Our focus is on securing the full future value of your claim, not just settling for the past expenses.
Navigating Liability: Nebraska’s 50% Modified Comparative Negligence Rule
To secure compensation, you must prove that another party was legally at fault. In Nebraska, this process is governed by a strict legal standard known as modified comparative negligence.
The law is detailed in Nebraska Revised Statute § 25-21,185.09. Put simply, it works like this:
- If you are found to be 49% or less at fault for the accident that caused your injury, you recover damages. However, your final award will be reduced by your percentage of fault.
- If you are found to be 50% or more at fault, you are completely barred from recovering any compensation. You get zero.
Insurance companies and their defense attorneys are intimately familiar with this 50% bar. Their investigators will scrutinize every detail of the accident, looking for any piece of evidence they use to shift blame onto you. They might argue that you were speeding on I-80, that you made an improper turn on a rural road, or that you were not paying full attention. Their goal is to push your percentage of fault toward that 50% threshold to reduce their payout or eliminate it entirely.
A thorough and immediate investigation on your behalf is necessary to preserve evidence. At our firm, we move quickly to preserve evidence. We work with accident reconstructionists to analyze the crash scene, retrieve black box data from commercial trucks, and interview witnesses before memories fade. Our objective is to build a factual case that accurately assigns fault and protects your right to the compensation you need, the foundation of any personal injury lawsuit.
Economic vs. Non-Economic Damages in Nebraska Courts
The compensation you seek is broken down into specific categories of losses, or damages, that are recognized and permitted by Nebraska's courts. These damages fall into two main types: economic and non-economic.
Economic Damages: The Tangible Costs
Economic damages are the measurable financial losses that result from your injury. This includes:
- Past and Future Medical Expenses: This covers everything from the initial emergency room bills and surgical costs to the lifelong expenses for physical therapy, medication, and potential care at renowned rehabilitation facilities like QLI or Madonna.
- Lost Wages: This is straightforward reimbursement for the paychecks you missed while unable to work.
- Loss of Future Earning Capacity: This is a more difficult and significant component. If a farmer or a construction worker from rural Nebraska suffers a spinal cord injury, they may never be able to return to their profession. This damage category compensates for the total loss of their ability to earn a living over their entire working life.
- Vocational Rehabilitation: These are the costs associated with training for a new line of work that accommodates your physical limitations.
Non-Economic Damages: The Human Costs
Non-economic damages address the intangible, but very real, human suffering caused by a catastrophic injury. These losses don’t come with a receipt, but they represent the impact the injury has on your quality of life. This includes compensation for what you endure and reinforces why many people choose to hire a personal injury lawyer to clearly present these losses.
- Pain and Suffering: For the physical pain endured from the moment of injury and throughout your life.
- Loss of Enjoyment of Life: Compensation for the inability to participate in hobbies, activities, and life experiences you once cherished.
- Emotional Distress: For the anxiety, depression, and mental anguish that accompany a permanent disability.
- Loss of Consortium: This is a claim for the impact the injury has on your marital relationship, recognizing the loss of companionship, support, and intimacy.
While Nebraska law does place caps on damages in medical malpractice cases, there is generally no statutory cap on non-economic damages in standard personal injury claims, such as those arising from a car or trucking accident. This allows a jury to award compensation that fully reflects the immense human cost of the injury
The Role of Life Care Planning in Your Case
For spinal cord injury claims in Nebraska, one of the most powerful tools for demonstrating the full extent of future needs is a Life Care Plan. A Life Care Plan is a comprehensive, dynamic document that serves as a roadmap for a victim's medical and personal needs for the rest of their life, and it becomes a core part of the personal injury lawsuit work needed to prove long-term damages.
A Life Care Plan is meticulously prepared by a certified professional, a nurse or rehabilitation specialist, who conducts an exhaustive evaluation of your medical condition and prognosis. The plan outlines, in detail, every anticipated medical and non-medical need, along with its projected cost. This includes:
- Future surgeries and physician consultations.
- Medications and medical supplies.
- Physical, occupational, and recreational therapy.
- Wheelchairs and other assistive devices, including replacements.
- Architectural renovations to your home.
- Transportation needs, such as a modified vehicle.
- In-home nursing or attendant care.
- Projected costs for managing potential secondary health complications.
Without a certified Life Care Plan, an insurance company or a jury is left to guess what your future costs might be. This uncertainty almost always benefits the insurance company.
A professionally drafted plan removes that guesswork. It grounds your request for future damages in medical science and economic data, making it far more difficult for the defense to dispute the necessity and cost of your long-term care. We have deep experience working with life care planners who understand the specific costs of medical care and services here in Nebraska, ensuring the plan presented in your case is accurate and defensible.
Dealing with Insurance Adjusters: Steps to Take from Home
Soon after your injury, you will be contacted by an insurance adjuster from the at-fault party's company. Remember their role. The insurance adjuster is not your case manager, and they are not your friend. Their primary responsibility is to their employer, and their objective is to resolve your claim for the lowest possible cost, which is why it matters to choose the best Lincoln personal injury lawyer before engaging with them.
Adjusters are trained in tactics designed to minimize payouts. They may seem friendly and concerned, but they are also listening for any information that could be used to devalue your claim. While you are recovering, take a few simple steps to protect your rights.
- Do Not Give a Recorded Statement. An adjuster will likely ask you to provide a recorded statement about the accident and your injuries. You are not obligated to do this. They use seemingly innocent comments from that recording against you later. Decline this request until you have spoken with an attorney.
- Do Not Sign Blanket Medical Authorizations. The insurance company will ask you to sign a HIPAA release form giving them access to your medical records. However, these forms are typically overly broad, allowing them to dig through your entire medical history to look for pre-existing conditions they use to argue your injuries weren't caused by the accident. We provide a limited authorization that only pertains to the injuries from this specific incident.
- Keep a Journal. This becomes powerful evidence. Each day, make a few notes about your pain levels, the challenges you face with daily tasks, activities you can no longer do, and the help you need from family members. This diary provides a human context to the medical records and helps demonstrate the real-world impact of your injury.
Nebraska Statutes of Limitations: Why You Cannot Wait
In any personal injury case, time is a significant factor. The law sets strict deadlines for filing a lawsuit, known as statutes of limitations. If you miss this deadline, you lose your right to pursue compensation forever, regardless of how strong your case is.
For most personal injury claims in Nebraska, including those from car accidents, the deadline is four years from the date of the injury. This is established by Nebraska Revised Statute § 25-207. While four years might sound like a long time, it is a mistake to wait. Evidence has a way of disappearing quickly after an accident. Witnesses move, their memories fade, security footage gets erased, and physical evidence from an accident scene is lost.
A much shorter deadline could also apply in certain situations. If your injury was caused by the negligence of a government entity (for example, if you were hit by a city bus, or injured on poorly maintained public property), the rules are different. Under the Political Subdivisions Tort Claims Act, you may be required to file a formal written notice of your claim within just one year of the incident. Missing this one-year notice deadline will permanently bar your claim.
FAQ for Spinal Cord Injury Claims in Nebraska
How does a pre-existing back injury affect my SCI claim?
Nebraska law generally follows the Eggshell Plaintiff doctrine. This legal concept means the at-fault party must take the victim as they find them, which means you may recover for the aggravation or worsening of a pre-existing condition. However, it requires clear medical evidence to distinguish the effects of the old injury from the new damage caused by the defendant's negligence.
Does workers' compensation cover permanent paralysis in Nebraska?
Yes, but workers' compensation benefits are limited. Workers' comp will pay for your medical bills and a portion of your lost wages, but it does not provide any compensation for pain and suffering or loss of enjoyment of life. If a third party (someone other than your employer or a coworker) was responsible for your on-the-job injury, you might have both a workers' comp claim and a separate personal injury claim against that third party, which could be worth significantly more.
What happens if the driver who hit me doesn't have enough insurance?
This is a common and serious problem in catastrophic injury cases. If the at-fault driver's insurance is insufficient to cover your damages, we would then look to your own auto insurance policy for Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist (UM/UIM) coverage. Nebraska law requires drivers to carry this coverage, which is designed to protect you in exactly this situation.
Securing Your Future After a Catastrophic Injury
A spinal cord injury forces you and your family to confront a future you never imagined. Financial ruin does not have to be a part of that future. While the legal system seems complicated and insurance companies are focused on their bottom line, Nebraska law provides the tools to build a secure financial foundation for the rest of your life.
This requires a strategy that looks decades into the future, anticipating every need and building a case based on fact, medical science, and economic reality. At Steffens Law Offices, P.C., we handle the legal work so that you can focus all your energy on your physical rehabilitation and emotional recovery.
You may be worried about the cost of hiring an attorney. We handle spinal cord injury claims on a contingency fee basis. This means our interests are perfectly aligned with yours: we only receive a fee if we successfully secure a financial recovery for you, and there are no upfront costs to you.
Do not let an insurance company dictate the value of your life and your future. Let us help you take control. Call Steffens Law Offices, P.C. today at (402) 414-4896 to discuss your situation in a free, no-obligation consultation.
William "Bill" Steffens
Personal Injury Attorney
William “Bill” Steffens, originally from Kearney, Nebraska, is the senior partner attorney at Steffens Law Office. He has practiced law in Nebraska for 40 years, specializing in injury law for the last 25 years. Bill has been involved in many community organizations, both civic and religious, holding both appointed and volunteer positions.
Author's Bio