Many times during the course of a litigation, you will hear the term aggravation of a preexisting condition. Well, what does that mean, and why is that important? Basically what that means is you have something going on in your body, could be an old injury from high school when you were playing sports, anything at all that was dormant, wasn’t causing you problems, but then you’re involved in a car wreck and that old condition all of a sudden becomes something that you notice. It’s apparent. It gets aggravated. That pre-existing condition gets aggravated. Well, the law understands that not everybody is in perfect shape at all times. And we, many of us, have these pre-existing conditions that we are living with. And those pre-existing conditions may not be affecting our lives at all.
However, when we get hit or hurt, then it gets aggravated, and it becomes something that we now have to deal with. The law recognizes that that is a compensable injury. Just because you have a preexisting condition doesn’t mean that you cannot collect money for the aggravation of that condition. If it got worse, the law understands that you should be compensated for it and why it did get worse.
