Broadsided and Rolled in Los Angeles County: When the Defense Calls a Rollover a “Soft-Tissue Case”
Adamson Ahdoot LLP resolved a claim on behalf of our client, a driver who was broadsided at an intersection in Los Angeles County, California, and left hanging upside down in her overturned car until firefighters cut her free. The collision was captured from five camera angles. The defense nonetheless denied liability and argued that her injuries were minor soft-tissue complaints. Our work was to prove, through more than three years of medical documentation, that they were not.
An Afternoon Drive Through an Intersection
During an afternoon in December of 2022, our client was driving her sedan eastbound on a surface street at roughly 35 miles per hour. As she entered an intersection, another driver traveling northbound failed to yield, drove into the intersection, and struck the passenger side of her car.
The impact deployed her airbags and lifted the car off the ground. It rolled onto its driver’s side, then onto its roof, and slid across the pavement before coming to rest upside down in the middle of the road. Our client hung suspended by her seatbelt until the fire department arrived and extricated her. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital trauma center.
The “Soft-Tissue” Defense
The other driver denied liability. Beyond that, the defense position throughout the litigation was that this was a soft-tissue injury case: strains and sprains that should resolve with a few weeks of physical therapy and a modest settlement.
Insurers reach for that label often, and it works when the medical record is thin. It works less well when the record has been built with care from the day of the collision forward.
Why It Matters: Building the Record
Our client’s injuries were not confined to one part of her body. She sustained a mild traumatic brain injury with persistent headaches. Her cervical spine was injured, with pain arising from the facet joints. Her lower spine, both sacroiliac joints, and both hips were injured. Her right shoulder sustained damage to the labrum, the ring of cartilage that stabilizes the joint, and to the bursa beneath the deltoid muscle.
We documented each of those injuries through the treatment she actually received, which followed the progression a serious injury case demands.
Conservative care first. She completed a course of physical therapy. Her symptoms persisted.
Interventional pain management. Over the course of her treatment, she underwent thirteen separate injection procedures: nerve blocks at multiple levels of the cervical spine, a nerve block in the lumbar spine, and platelet-rich plasma injections into the sacroiliac joints, right hip, cervical facets, and right shoulder. Each procedure targeted a specific, diagnosed source of pain, and each was documented by the treating physician.
Surgery. When injections did not resolve the shoulder, she underwent arthroscopic surgery to debride the damaged labrum and bursa and to decompress the space beneath the acromion.
Spinal cord stimulation. For the pain that remained, her physicians recommended a spinal cord stimulator, a device implanted along the spine that interrupts pain signals before they reach the brain. She obtained the psychological clearance the procedure requires and proceeded to a trial placement, with permanent implantation to follow if successful.
By the time the case approached resolution, her treating physicians and retained experts had been deposed, and a life care planner had projected the cost of her future care at approximately $2.7 million. The largest components were the spinal cord stimulator and its long-term maintenance, headache management, therapy services, and continued treatment of the cervical facet pain and right shoulder.
That is not a soft-tissue case. The defense’s characterization did not hold up through expert discovery.
What the Cameras Showed
The collision itself was never in real doubt. Five separate camera perspectives recorded it, including the other driver’s own dashcam, which captured our client’s car airborne after the impact. That footage mattered less for liability than for causation: a defense argument that a patient’s injuries are minor becomes difficult to sustain when the jury can watch her car leave the ground.
Life After the Collision
Before December 2022, our client drove herself through an ordinary afternoon without a second thought. She now manages pain in her neck, back, hips, and shoulder daily, lives with chronic headaches, and has a medical device implanted along her spine to make that pain tolerable. The psychological weight of hanging upside down in a wrecked car waiting for rescue does not lift on its own; her care plan includes psychological services for that reason.
Lessons for Anyone Told Their Injuries Are “Just Soft Tissue”
- The label is a negotiating position, not a diagnosis. Insurers apply it to reduce claim value. Only the medical record can rebut it.
- Follow the treatment progression. Conservative care, then interventional procedures, then surgery when warranted. Each step that fails to resolve the pain is evidence of how serious the injury is.
- Every procedure should be tied to a diagnosis. Injections and surgeries directed at specific, identified pain generators are far harder to dismiss than general complaints.
- Future care is part of the claim. A life care plan prepared by a qualified expert turns years of anticipated treatment into a number the other side has to answer.
- Video helps with causation, not just fault. Footage of the collision’s violence can undercut the argument that the injuries were minor.
About Adamson Ahdoot LLP
Adamson Ahdoot LLP is a personal injury law firm based in Los Angeles, serving clients throughout California. Our attorneys handle motor vehicle collision cases, rollover accidents, and chronic pain and spinal injury matters requiring thorough medical documentation and expert collaboration.
Contact us for a free consultation
