I broke a bone in the crash and need surgery. What can I recover?

A fracture is easy to prove. Its full cost is not.

A broken bone shows up on an X-ray, and no one argues about whether it happened. That is why insurers do not fight fracture cases on whether you were hurt. They fight on how much the injury is worth, and they value it as if the day the cast came off was the day it ended. For many people, it is not.

Surgery changes the case

Many fractures from car, truck, motorcycle and work accidents need surgery: plates and screws to hold the bone together, rods inside a long bone, or pins. Some fractures heal slowly or not at all and need a second surgery. Hardware sometimes has to come out later. And fractures that involve a joint — the wrist, ankle, knee, hip or shoulder — can leave lasting stiffness and raise the risk of arthritis in that joint over the years.

None of that shows up in an early settlement offer. An honest valuation of a fracture case looks at what the treating surgeon expects over the long run, not just what has already been billed.

Recovery takes time, and time costs money

A serious fracture can keep someone off work for weeks or months, and some people cannot go back to the same work at all. A welder who cannot grip, a warehouse worker who cannot lift, or a nurse who cannot stand for a shift has lost more than a paycheck: they may have lost an earning capacity. Texas allows recovery for lost earnings in the past and loss of earning capacity in the future, and for self-employed people and those who work cash jobs, proving those losses takes careful records.

What else the claim includes

Beyond medical bills and income, Texas law recognizes physical pain and mental anguish, and physical impairment, as separate parts of a claim, both past and future. Physical impairment covers the loss of the ability to do things you did before — the weekend soccer game, the garden, picking up your child. Where surgery leaves visible scars, disfigurement is its own element as well. In an ordinary Texas injury case against a private person or company, those parts of a claim are not capped. Claims against a government entity or a health care provider follow different rules, including limits on damages.

For medical bills, Texas limits recovery to amounts actually paid or owed, so how your care is paid for matters. Hospital and health-insurance liens also have to be resolved out of a settlement. Planning for both from the beginning is part of the work.

Fractures at work

If you broke a bone on the job, the path depends on your employer. If your employer carries workers’ compensation, the claim generally runs through that system, although a third party who caused the injury — a driver, an equipment maker, another company on the site — can often be sued separately. If your employer is a non-subscriber, you may be able to sue the employer directly.

Do not decide the value before the doctor does

The biggest mistake in a fracture case is settling before the treating doctor has said whether you will need more surgery, whether the joint will fully recover, and whether you can return to your job. Those answers can take months. The two-year deadline gives you time to wait for them.

When a child breaks a bone

Children’s bones heal faster than adults’, which insurers sometimes use to argue a child’s fracture is minor. But fractures near the ends of a child’s long bones can involve the growth plate, the area where the bone grows. An injury there can occasionally affect how the bone grows, leading to a difference in limb length or angle that only becomes clear months or years later. A child’s fracture case should be valued with the pediatric orthopedist’s view of future growth in hand. A minor’s claim also has special rules: a settlement generally needs court approval, and the money is protected, usually until the child turns 18 and sometimes longer.

Authority: Golden Eagle Archery, Inc. v. Jackson, 116 S.W.3d 757 (Tex. 2003) · Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code ch. 41 (damages)