Personal injury requiring surgery twice

maggie1947

Hi
If a person requires surgery twice after an accident,does this have any outcome on the award?

TELLIT01

It would presumably depend on the amount of the original award and what that award was intended to cover.  If it was worded along the lines of 'compensation and medical procedures' that would seem to cover all and any treatment.

maggie1947

there has been no award yet,but 2 surgical procedures had to done within 6 months of each other because of the injury.
i was just wondering do they have any impact on the award.
ie..some tore a  cartilage in there shoulder,but then it did,nt heal accordingly..then had to have 2 separate operations on it (all because of the initial injury).

DullGreyGuy

As always... it depends.

If the second surgery was a result of medical malpractice then unlikely but there'd be a separate claim against the hospital

It would also depend on if the second surgery was planned or not... sometimes surgery will be intentionally broken up into multiple sessions as healing from two modest ops is better than one major op. In which case it would potentially impact the settlement negatively because the PSLA has been mitigated by the treatment plan. 

In your case it seems like it was an unplanned second surgery in which case its more likely to increase the PSLA over if the surgery had gone better on the first try. General damages by their nature however are as much an art as a science so it all comes down to the negotiation and the number will never be split down to say its X for the time it was really bad, Y and Z for the two surgeries, B because you couldn't play with your kid for 5 months etc. 

maggie1947

The first surgery was trying to repair the damaged cartilage and this was unsuccessful,so the surgeon had to take out most of the cartilage in the second surgery.
”not the surgeon fault,just sometimes it works,sometimes it does not repair”.
i am left with very little cartilage now.

[Deleted User]

If anything it should increase the award because your injury is more serious than if it had been repaired. You now have a life long condition, rather than an acute injury.