Suing for Damages for Soft Tissue Injuries

If you've suffered soft tissue injuries, you can sue for your damages: medical costs, lost wages, even potentially pain and suffering. However, recovering for soft tissue injuries can be more difficult than recovering for many other injuries. That's because, while these injuries and their consequences are very real, they are also less visible or dramatic, which affects how juries and insurance claims adjustors think about them.

What is a Soft Tissue Injury?

All tissue, other than bone, is "soft tissue" in a sense--some of your internal organs, for example, are downright squishy! However, "soft tissue" specifically refers to non-bone supportive tissue: muscles, tendons (connect muscles to bones), ligaments (connect bones to bones), and sometimes cartilage (acts as padding between bones). This tissue is absolutely critical to movement, and when injured or damaged, pain--even debilitating, crippling pain--weakness, and loss of function result. If you've ever had a bad case of tendinitis, pulled a hamstring, had a rotator cuff injury, or suffered a serious strain or sprain, you know how significant a soft tissue injury can be.

Why are Soft Tissue Injuries Serious?

Soft tissue injuries actually take longer to heal than broken bones. Due the nature of the tissue itself, as well as the fact that much of it (e.g. ligaments and tendons) has minimal blood supply, it simply doesn't knit as quickly as a bone. Moreover, while it is ordinarily a very strong tissue--it has to be; it bears all the force of your movement, including running, jumping, contact sports, and lifting heavy objects--when it heals, it often heals weaker; the scar tissue that binds the damaged parts together is not as strong as the original tissue. This is in contrast to bone, which often heals stronger.

Why it’s Tough to Recover for Soft Tissue Injuries

Soft tissue injuries are invisible to x-rays; they simply don’t show. More sophisticated medical scans, like MRIs, can show them, but MRIs are expensive--they're not used in every case of a suspected soft tissue injury. Also, even when they do show on a scan, it's simply not as dramatic as a broken bone--there is no jagged break, just damaged fibers.The external signs are also less dramatic. There's no surface scarring or disfigurement. No gash or bleeding. There's no limb bent in the middle, or depressed fracture, or bone sticking through skin. There's just pain and weakness.Since soft tissue injuries lack the dramatic visible signs that broken bones, or burns, or many other injuries have, it's easy for jurors to imagine that they're not as serious--or even that they are imaginary or made up.

Proving Soft Tissue Injuries: How an Attorney Can Help

However, this is not to say that soft tissue injuries cannot be proven. Medical testimony, not images and scans, is usually the key. Sports medicine doctors, chiropractors, orthopedists, and physical therapists can probe, test, and work with patients, using their experience to build up a picture of the image, which they can share with jurors.Since proving a soft tissue injury hinges on having a compelling, logical presentation by credible experts, an experienced personal injury attorney who knows how to assemble such a case can make the difference between being able to recover for your injuries and not.