Attorney Michael Rehm - (916) 233-7346
According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, approximately 18,421 new traumatic spinal cord injuries occur in the United States each year — 54 per million people. That figure excludes those who die at the scene. Vehicle crashes account for 38 percent of all new traumatic SCI cases. Falls account for another 32 percent.
Spinal cord injury is different from most injuries a lawyer handles. The injury itself often takes seconds. The consequences are measured in decades. The majority of traumatic SCI cases result in permanent neurological impairment — tetraplegia or paraplegia — and the financial costs begin immediately and do not stop. Those costs continue for the rest of the person's life. The financial cost is nothing compared to the pain and suffering experienced by the victim of these injuries, but in the civil justice system, the only thing that can be recovered is unfortuntaely for the victim, financial compensation.
When a spinal cord injury results from someone else's negligence — a crash, a fall caused by unsafe conditions, a defective product — California law allows full recovery for what the injury has cost and what it will cost. Attorney Michael Rehm provides representation on spinal cord injury cases in Sacramento County.
What You Can Recover
SCI damages cases are among the largest in personal injury litigation because the injury is permanent and the lifetime costs are documented and quantifiable. California law provides for both economic and noneconomic damages.
Economic damages are the measurable financial losses. In an SCI case they typically include past medical expenses, future medical expenses, life care costs, lost earnings to date, and impaired earning capacity going forward.
Future medical expenses must be proven with reasonable certainty. California Civil Code § 3283 allows recovery for detriment certain to result in the future. For SCI, this requires a life care planner to establish the scope and projected cost of future care — attendant care, adaptive equipment, power wheelchair replacement schedules, catheter supplies, pressure ulcer management, and the many other ongoing medical needs that vary by injury level. A medical expert establishes the prognosis. An economist projects those costs and reduces them to present value (CACI 3904A). Future damages must be reduced to present value.
California law also recognizes that when a family member — a spouse, parent, or other relative — provides home nursing and attendant care to an SCI victim, that care has compensable value even though no money changed hands. The plaintiff is entitled to recover the reasonable market value of gratuitously furnished home attendant care necessitated by the defendant's conduct. Hanif v. Housing Authority of Yolo County (1988) 200 Cal.App.3d 635, 644–646.
Noneconomic damages include pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life. For SCI victims, loss of enjoyment of life is often the most significant component of noneconomic damages — the permanent loss of mobility, independence, physical activities, and the quality of daily life that the injury has taken. There is no statutory cap on noneconomic damages in personal injury cases in California (CACI 3905A).
Loss of consortium is an independent claim available to the spouse or registered domestic partner of a seriously injured person. A spinal cord injury that permanently affects mobility, physical intimacy, and the dynamics of a marriage or domestic partnership causes real, compensable harm to the uninjured partner. Loss of consortium is a separate tort under California law (Civil Code § 1714, CACI 3920).
Liability and Causation
Under Civil Code § 1714(a), every person is responsible for injury caused to another by want of ordinary care or skill. The plaintiff must prove duty, breach, causation, and damages (CACI 400, CACI 401). The applicable theory depends on how the injury occurred.
Vehicle crashes (38 percent of SCI cases) — the driver who caused the crash owed a duty of reasonable care to everyone on the road. A rear-end collision, a T-bone at an intersection, a head-on caused by lane departure — each involves a straightforward negligence claim. Where the crash involved a commercial vehicle, employer liability under respondeat superior may also apply.
Falls (32 percent of SCI cases) — when a fall results from an unsafe property condition, premises liability applies. Landowners and possessors of land owe a duty to maintain their property in reasonably safe condition. Construction site falls, falls from unguarded elevations, falls on defective stairs or surfaces — each implicates the property owner's or general contractor's duty to the injured person.
Violence (15 percent of SCI cases) — spinal injuries resulting from assault may give rise to claims against the assailant and, depending on the circumstances, against third parties who had a duty to prevent the harm — employers, security contractors, premises owners with knowledge of prior similar incidents.
Sports and recreation (8 percent of SCI cases) — diving accidents, contact sports injuries, recreational equipment failures. Liability analysis in these cases turns on whether the specific hazard was an inherent risk of the activity or a condition the defendant had a duty to address.
Product defects — where a vehicle component, sports equipment, medical device, or other product contributed to the injury, California's strict product liability doctrine applies. Under Greenman v. Yuba Power Products, Inc. (1963) 59 Cal.2d 57, a manufacturer is strictly liable when a product causes injury during reasonably foreseeable use. Every company in the distribution chain is subject to liability. Vandermark v. Ford Motor Co. (1964) 61 Cal.2d 256.
Causation and preexisting spinal conditions. SCI defendants frequently argue that degenerative disc disease, prior spinal surgery, osteoporosis, or other preexisting spinal conditions — not the defendant's conduct — caused the injury or that the injury would have been less severe in a person without that history. California's substantial factor causation standard (CACI 430) does not require the defendant's negligence to be the only cause of the injury. It must be a substantial factor.
More directly: the eggshell skull rule applies. In Rideau v. Los Angeles Transit Lines (1954) 124 Cal.App.2d 466, 471, the Court of Appeal stated the governing principle: "The tortfeasor takes the person he injures as he finds him. If, by reason of some preexisting condition, his victim is more susceptible to injury, the tortfeasor is not thereby exonerated from liability." A defendant whose negligence caused or aggravated a spinal cord injury is responsible for the full extent of that harm, even if a preexisting spinal condition made the injury worse than it would have been for someone without that history (CACI 3927 — Aggravation of Preexisting Condition; CACI 3928 — Unusually Susceptible Plaintiff).
California's pure comparative fault system means that even if a plaintiff shares some responsibility for the accident, recovery is not barred. Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804. Damages are reduced in proportion to the plaintiff's own fault — not eliminated (CACI 405).
The UC Davis SCI Program
For most SCI cases originating in Sacramento or inland Northern California, acute care begins at UC Davis Medical Center, 2315 Stockton Boulevard — one of approximately 20 Level I trauma centers in the United States verified by the American College of Surgeons for both adult and pediatric trauma, and the only such center in California north of San Francisco. The 33-county, 6-million-resident catchment area means that Sacramento is the regional hub for the most serious traumatic injuries across a wide swath of inland Northern California.
Ongoing SCI care is provided through the UC Davis SCI Clinic at the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center, 4860 Y Street, Sacramento. This is the only clinic in Northern California offering the full spectrum of SCI services — one of only four such programs in all of California. The clinic provides comprehensive outpatient evaluation, urological care, spasticity management, pain management, and coordination of the long-term medical needs that define life after SCI.
Inpatient SCI rehabilitation is provided at the UC Davis Rehabilitation Hospital, which operates a dedicated SCI rehabilitation program. The NSCISC reports an average inpatient rehabilitation stay of 37 days following acute care of approximately 19 days — more than eight weeks of intensive inpatient treatment before most SCI patients return home.
The UC Davis records — acute trauma documentation, surgical notes, neurological assessments, rehabilitation progress, functional independence measures — are the medical foundation of an SCI damages case. The life care plan that projects lifetime costs is built on those records, and it is the single most important document in the damages phase of the litigation.
Statute of Limitations and Tolling
California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 gives an SCI victim two years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit. Miss that deadline and the claim is barred.
California Code of Civil Procedure § 352(a) tolls — stops — the statute of limitations during any period in which the plaintiff lacks the legal capacity to bring the action due to physical or mental incapacity. An SCI victim who is in acute care at UC Davis, undergoing spinal stabilization surgery, and then moving through weeks of inpatient rehabilitation is not in a position to file a lawsuit during that period. The clock does not run during the incapacity. It resumes when the incapacity ends. At the same time, do not rely on this argument in Court, file the lawsuit within the two years from the date of the injury, there is no point in delaying.
This is not a technicality. The NSCISC reports an average of 56 combined days of acute care and inpatient rehabilitation for SCI patients — and for high cervical injuries the acute phase is often significantly longer. The § 352(a) tolling provision exists precisely for situations like this.
There is a critical exception for cases involving government entities. If the defendant is a public agency — a city, a county, CalTrans, a public employer — a separate administrative claim must be filed within six months of the date of injury under Government Code § 911.2. The six-month deadline is separate from and harsher than the two-year statute of limitations. Missing it is almost always fatal to the claim. If a government-owned vehicle, a CalTrans road defect, or a public facility's negligence may have contributed to the injury, call immediately. The six-month window does not pause.
Filing a Spinal Cord Injury Case in Sacramento
Spinal cord injury cases in Sacramento County are filed at the Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse, 720 Ninth Street, Sacramento. In FY 2023–24, the Sacramento County Superior Court handled 2,232 motor vehicle personal injury filings — SCI cases arising from vehicle crashes represent some of the highest-value claims in that inventory.
SCI cases with large damages, multiple defendants, and extensive expert testimony frequently warrant complex civil designation under California Rules of Court, Rule 3.400. Complex designation assigns the case to a single judge for its entire duration, producing more structured management of the discovery disputes and expert witness issues that define SCI litigation.
The expert requirements are substantial: a physiatrist or spinal surgeon to establish the diagnosis, neurological level, prognosis, and future medical needs; a life care planner to project lifetime costs by category; a vocational rehabilitation expert where earning capacity has been affected; and an economist to reduce future damages to present value and project wage loss. Identifying and retaining those experts early — well before the statute of limitations runs — determines whether the case is built correctly or scrambled together at the end.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles spinal cord injury cases throughout Sacramento County on a contingency fee basis. No fee without a recovery. Call (916) 233-7346 for a free consultation.