Is a Whiplash Neck Injury Serious Enough To Get A Lawyer?

Getting into a car accident can be devastating, resulting in costly repairs to your vehicle and body work and injuries that can change your life. A common injury from car accidents is a whiplash neck injury. Whiplash is when your head or neck moves in one direction and then quickly 'whips' in another, resulting in damage to the bones, joints, ligaments or muscle in the neck. This type of injury can be quite painful but many people wonder if a whiplash injury is a serious enough injury to try and collect compensation from the insurance company or person that caused the accident.

Potential for Long-Term Injury

The first thing that you should know about any neck injury is that it can potentially be very serious, and symptoms like pain or stiffness in the neck can sometimes be the result of neurological trauma. However, even with a whiplash injury, there is potential for serious, long term injury. Most people eventually recover from a whiplash injury, although it may take several months or even years to do so, but one out of every six or seven that sustained a whiplash injury will never recover, resulting in pain or symptoms lasting the rest of their life.

"Hidden" Whiplash Injury After an Accident

Another thing that you should be aware of is that the symptoms of whiplash may not present right away. In some cases, it can take months or years for the whiplash injury to begin affecting you. If you have been in a car accident, there are some tests that you can have your doctor run to determine if there is a possibility that you have a whiplash injury. Your doctor will ask you some basic questions and very likely do an X-Ray. However, even with an X-Ray, whiplash injuries may not be readily seen and your doctor may do an ultrasound or other test to see soft tissue damage.

Will the Injury Affect Your Lifestyle?

The question of whether or not a whiplash injury is serious enough to seek compensation rests with you. The question that you'll want to ask yourself is, if the whiplash injury symptoms is affecting your life or diminishing the quality of your days, or if the injury has affected your livelihood and made you unable to work, or unable to work the same way. You'll also want to make sure that you take into account whether or not the whiplash injury will affect you in the future, or whether the symptoms will worsen when making your decision.

If you do decide that it is a good idea to obtain the services of a lawyer to seek compensation for a whiplash claim, attorney Emery Ledger has been helping those who are victims of a car accident based upon the negligence or carelessness of another for more than ten years. Whether your accident was caused by a drunk driver, or someone not paying attention to the road, you should contact Southern California accident attorney Emery Ledger for a consultation regarding your claim and whether or not you can pursue a personal injury claim for your whiplash injury.