General Damages for Chronic Headaches After a Collision

General damages for chronic headaches compensate a symptom that arrives most days and takes hours from each of them. Post traumatic headache is one of the most common lasting complaints after a collision, and it is also one of the easiest to under prove, because a person in daily pain stops reporting it. This chapter states how courts assess the claim and what the record needs to show.

The Type of Headache Changes the Medical Evidence

Cervicogenic headache originates in the neck and refers pain into the head, and it is treated by treating the neck. Post traumatic migraine behaves differently and responds to different medication. Headache arising after a concussion has its own recovery expectations. Which type the claimant has determines which specialist should be reporting, and a neurologist who has classified the headache is far more persuasive than a general note recording that the claimant has headaches.

Frequency and Intensity Have to Be Recorded as They Happen

The single most useful document in a headache claim is a contemporaneous log kept over months, showing how many days carried a headache, how long each lasted, what medication was taken and what the claimant could not do that day. Pharmacy records corroborate it. Without that evidence a judge hears only a general assertion of daily pain, and general assertions produce conservative awards. Medication overuse headache, where the treatment itself perpetuates the cycle, should be addressed in the medical evidence rather than left for the defence to raise.

General Damages for Chronic Headaches Follow the Days Lost

Courts value the claim on what the headaches prevent. Missed work, cancelled plans, an inability to tolerate screens and withdrawal from bright or noisy places are the practical losses. A claimant with two headache days a month is in a different position from one who is functional only in the morning. Awards for headache alone are usually assessed within a broader chronic pain claim rather than separately, and the reported decisions are published on CanLII.

Headaches Rarely Travel Alone

Post traumatic headache usually accompanies neck injury, and the assessment principles are those in the soft tissue injuries chapter. Where dizziness accompanies the headaches, the vestibular injuries chapter applies, and where the headaches interfere with sleep and mood the depression and anxiety chapter does. Whether a headache claim falls inside a provincial minor injury cap turns on the regulation and on whether the condition resolved, which is argued on most car accident files. The guide’s opening chapter sets out the series.