The insurer says my injuries are from a pre-existing condition. Is my case dead?
- Texas Attorney
- Yale B.A. · University of Houston Law Center J.D.
- Habla español
- Updated October 1, 2026
No. Under Texas law, a negligent driver takes you as they find you — this is the 'eggshell plaintiff' rule. If the crash worsened a prior condition or made a vulnerable part of your body more susceptible to injury, you can still recover for that aggravation. Insurers raise pre-existing conditions to scare people into dropping claims. Don't let that tactic work; let a lawyer evaluate it.
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No, and the rule is older than the insurance company
The Texas Supreme Court has put it plainly: a tortfeasor takes a plaintiff as he finds him. That is Coates v. Whittington, and the principle behind it has been settled Texas law for generations. Lawyers call it the eggshell-plaintiff rule.
It means a negligent driver does not get a discount for hitting someone who was already vulnerable. If your spine, your knee or your shoulder was more susceptible to injury than the average person's, that is the driver's problem, not yours. You take your damages as they actually fell on you.
What you can and cannot recover
Being precise here matters, because the rule is not a blank check and an honest lawyer will tell you where it stops.
You do not recover for the condition you already had. You recover for the aggravation — the difference between where you were and where the crash put you. The Texas pattern jury charge handles this as a subtraction: the jury is told not to include any amount for a pre-existing injury or condition that was already causing symptoms, except to the extent it was made worse by the collision.
So the fight is almost never about whether you had a prior problem. It is about how much of today's problem the crash is responsible for. That is a medical question with a real answer.
How aggravation actually gets proved
Four things do the work, and the first one is the one people assume will hurt them.
Your prior records. They establish the baseline. If the chart shows you were working, lifting, sleeping and not seeking care in the year before the wreck, that is powerful. An insurer waving an eight-year-old chiropractic visit at a chart that shows nothing since is making your argument for you.
The gap. How long had it been since you treated for that body part? A long quiet stretch before the crash, followed by consistent treatment after it, is the clearest pattern there is.
A comparison, not a snapshot. Prior imaging read against post-crash imaging by a physician willing to state what changed. Where there is no prior imaging, the comparison is functional: what you could do before and what you cannot do now.
Your treating doctor's opinion. Not a hired expert. The physician who has actually managed your care, saying in the record that the collision worsened a condition that was stable.
About "degenerative changes" on the MRI
This is the single most common version of this tactic, and it is weaker than it sounds.
Disc desiccation, bulging, facet arthropathy and mild stenosis are extraordinarily common on imaging of adults with no symptoms whatsoever. Radiologists find them routinely in people who feel fine. An MRI report listing degenerative findings does not establish that you were in pain before the crash. It establishes that you have an adult spine.
The medically relevant question is not what the image shows. It is whether you were symptomatic, and the answer to that lives in your treatment history and in what you were doing with your life.
Why the argument gets made anyway
Because it works on unrepresented people. It is delivered as though it were a legal conclusion — your injuries are pre-existing, we are closing the file — when it is an opening position. Nobody at an insurance company has authority to decide the aggravation question. A jury does, under an instruction that expressly preserves your right to recover for it.
Do not let a letter do what a judge would not.
Authority: Coates v. Whittington, 758 S.W.2d 749 (Tex. 1988) · Texas Pattern Jury Charges — Negligence (State Bar of Texas)
Your next steps, and ours
Call Jimmy
713-600-6233A pre-existing condition does not end a Texas claim; you can recover for the aggravation. A free call gets the insurer's argument reviewed.
Tell your doctor what changed
What you could do before the crash and what you cannot do now. Be open about any prior problem; it comes out anyway.
We gather your prior records
Records from before the crash usually prove your baseline: a quiet stretch before, consistent treatment after.
We prove the aggravation
We compare prior and post-crash imaging and get your treating doctor's opinion on what the collision made worse.
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