Aggravation of an Earlier Injury and General Damages

Aggravation of an earlier injury is compensable. If a new accident makes an old problem worse, the defendant pays for the worsening. The defendant does not pay for the old problem itself, so the argument turns on where the plaintiff stood on the day of the new accident.

What Aggravation of an Earlier Injury Covers

The compensable loss is the gap between the condition the plaintiff would have been in without the new accident and the condition they are in now. That gap can be an increase in pain, a longer recovery, the loss of a function that had returned, or the end of an improvement that was still underway. Each of those is a real loss, and each is valued the way any other general damages claim is valued.

Divisible and Indivisible Injuries

Where the effects of the old and the new injury can be separated, the court separates them and the defendant answers for its share alone. Where they cannot be separated the injury is indivisible, and a defendant who materially contributed to it is liable for the whole of it, subject to reduction for what would have happened anyway. That reduction is the crumbling skull analysis in the pre-existing conditions chapter.

The Baseline Has to Be Documented

A plaintiff who was doing well before the new accident should be able to show it. A gap in treatment, a return to full duties at work, or a season of sport without complaint all establish the baseline. Where the old injury was still under active treatment the defence will argue that the new accident changed little. Records from both periods are produced, and the medical records chapter sets out how.

Successive Accidents in a Short Period

Two collisions within a few years are common, and the claims are often run together. The liability insurer for each accident will point at the other. Courts resolve that on medical evidence about timing and mechanism rather than on the order of the collisions. Appellate decisions on successive accidents are collected on CanLII.

How the Aggravated Claim Is Valued

The award still comes from the comparable cases, using the method in how courts assess general damages, applied to the worsening rather than to the whole condition. The firm runs successive car accident claims together where the facts allow, with no fee unless the claim resolves.