Car Accident Injuries in Virginia: Why Your Injury Decides Your Case

Car Accident Injuries in Virginia: A Complete Guide to Injury Types, Proof, and Compensation

By Anthony I. Shin, Esq., Shin Law Office, Leesburg and Fairfax, Virginia

1. How Virginia Law Frames Every Car Accident Injury Claim

Before we talk about specific injuries, you need to understand the legal frame every one of them sits inside. Virginia handles motor vehicle injury claims differently from most states, and the differences are not academic. They decide cases.

Virginia Is an At-Fault State With an Unforgiving Fault Rule

Virginia does not use no-fault insurance. The driver who caused the crash, through that driver's liability insurer, pays for the harm. That sounds simple until you reach the rule that makes Virginia one of the hardest places in the country to bring an injury claim.

Virginia follows pure contributory negligence. Only a small number of jurisdictions still apply it. Under this doctrine, a plaintiff who contributed to the accident in any degree is generally barred from recovering anything. There is no percentage reduction. There is no fifty percent threshold. If the defense convinces a jury that you were speeding slightly, or looked down for a moment, or stepped off a curb outside a crosswalk, the verdict can be zero even where the other driver was overwhelmingly at fault.

This is why insurance adjusters in Virginia investigate your conduct with more intensity than adjusters in neighboring states. They are not building a case to reduce your recovery. They are building a case to eliminate it.

Last Clear Chance and the Limits of the Defense

Virginia recognizes the doctrine of last clear chance, which can rescue a claim where the defendant had a genuine final opportunity to avoid the collision and failed to take it. It is a real doctrine with real applications, particularly in pedestrian and intersection cases, but it is narrow. It is best understood as a limited exception rather than a workaround. Building the case so contributory negligence never gets traction with the jury is far more reliable than counting on the exception.

The Two-Year Clock, and the Traps Inside It

Virginia Code section 8.01-243(A) gives you two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. Virginia Code section 8.01-244 gives a personal representative two years from the date of death to file a wrongful death action. Miss the deadline and the claim is gone regardless of merit.

Two complications matter for injury cases in particular. First, some injuries are not apparent on the day of the crash. A mild traumatic brain injury or a disc injury can take weeks to declare itself, and the clock generally does not wait for your diagnosis. Second, claims involving government entities carry separate written notice requirements that arrive far sooner than two years, which matters when a state or local vehicle, a road defect, or a work zone contractor is involved. If any government body may share responsibility for your crash, that question needs an answer within weeks, not months.

Claims brought on behalf of an injured child follow different timing rules, because Virginia Code section 8.01-229 tolls limitations periods for people who were minors when the cause of action arose. That does not mean waiting is wise. Evidence decays on its own schedule.

Why Injury Type Drives the Timeline

People expect the severity of the crash to determine how long the case takes. In practice the injury category matters more. A soft tissue claim that resolves in three months can settle within a year. An injury requiring surgery cannot be valued until the surgeon knows the outcome, which often means eighteen months or longer before a demand makes sense. A catastrophic injury requiring a life care plan takes longer still, because the future cost projection is the case.

Settling before the injury has declared itself is the most common avoidable error in Virginia crash claims. A release signed at month four cannot be reopened at month fourteen when the disc herniation requires fusion.

One Rule That Works in Your Favor

Virginia Code section 46.2-1094 addresses seat belt use, and its non-admissibility provision keeps failure to wear a seat belt out of a civil case as evidence of negligence or in mitigation of damages. This is meaningful in serious injury cases, because it removes an argument that would otherwise be raised in nearly every claim involving significant trauma. The rule is narrow, though. It does not extend to helmet use for motorcyclists, and Virginia Code section 46.2-910 does require helmets, which is why rider claims face a different set of pressures. We cover that dynamic in our discussion of how contributory negligence hits motorcycle riders hardest.

For a wider view of how injury cases move through Virginia courts, our Virginia personal injury guide walks through procedure, and how personal injury cases work in Fairfax County follows a case from intake through trial.

2. How the Type of Collision Shapes the Injury You End Up With

Crash mechanics predict injury patterns. The direction of force, the point of impact, whether the occupant was restrained, and how much the passenger compartment intruded all shape what the body absorbs. Understanding the pattern helps you anticipate what the defense will argue.

Rear-End Collisions

Rear impacts drive the torso forward while the head lags, then snaps back. That sequence produces the cervical injuries discussed in Chapter 4 and, at higher speeds, lumbar disc injuries. Liability often looks straightforward, which is precisely why the fight moves to causation and damages. Insurers concede the impact and attack the injury instead, usually through low property damage arguments. Our coverage of the rear-end trap at the Pentagon City interchange and rear-end collisions on the Beltway shows how these cases develop in practice.

Side Impact and T-Bone Collisions

Side impacts remove most of the structure between the occupant and the striking vehicle. Pelvic fractures, rib fractures, thoracic injuries, and head strikes against the door frame or window pillar are common. Liability turns on right of way and signal timing, which makes intersection camera footage and event data recorder downloads valuable early. See our analysis of T-bone collisions at Glebe Road and Route 50.

Head-On and High-Speed Rural Collisions

Head-on impacts combine the speed of both vehicles. Lower extremity fractures, chest and abdominal trauma, and catastrophic head injuries dominate. Rural roads add a factor that changes outcomes and cases alike: distance to definitive trauma care. We examine that in how western Loudoun rural roads change your case and in Nokesville rural high speed crash claims.

Multi-Vehicle and Chain-Reaction Crashes

Pileups create sequential impacts, meaning the body absorbs force more than once, and they create a liability problem unique to Virginia. When several drivers point at each other, the contributory negligence defense multiplies. Each defendant has an incentive to argue you did something wrong. See how one text turns into a ten-car pileup on the I-95 corridor and why Springfield Interchange crashes create the hardest liability cases.

Crashes Involving Larger Vehicles and Vulnerable Road Users

Mass differential governs outcome. When a commercial truck strikes a passenger car, or a car strikes a motorcyclist, a cyclist, or a pedestrian, the smaller party absorbs nearly all of the energy. These cases also carry different legal frameworks entirely: federal motor carrier regulations for trucks, layered coverage tiers for rideshare vehicles, and heightened contributory negligence exposure for anyone outside a vehicle.

• Truck and commercial vehicle accidents, and how telematics data proves fault in Virginia truck cases
• Motorcycle accidents, including the motorcycle trap on Route 7 near Leesburg
• Pedestrian and bicycle accidents, and why Annandale pedestrian crashes keep happening
• Rideshare accidents involving Uber and Lyft, and the coverage tiers behind a Tysons Corner Uber crash

Crashes Where the Cause Is Not Another Driver

Some collisions trace back to a road condition, a work zone setup, a vehicle defect, or an automated driving system. Those cases add defendants and add deadlines. See who pays when a work zone setup was wrong, why weather crashes on Route 267 are legally complicated, ADAS crash liability when the car was driving, and our product liability page.

3. Head and Brain Injuries

Head injuries are the category where the gap between what the client experiences and what the file documents is widest. They are also where cases are most often undervalued.

The Range of Head Trauma

• Concussion and mild traumatic brain injury. Often no loss of consciousness, often a normal CT scan, and frequently no emergency room diagnosis at all. Symptoms surface over days: headaches, light sensitivity, word-finding problems, irritability, sleep disruption.
• Post-concussion syndrome. Symptoms that persist well past the expected recovery window. This is where careers stall and relationships strain, and where the medical record needs to be built deliberately.
• Contusion and intracranial bleeding. Subdural and epidural hematomas, subarachnoid hemorrhage. Visible on imaging, urgent, and usually well documented because of the acute presentation.
• Diffuse axonal injury. Widespread shearing of nerve fibers from rotational force. Frequently invisible on standard imaging while producing severe, lasting deficits.
• Skull and facial fractures. Often accompanied by vision changes, dental damage, and permanent scarring.

Why Brain Injury Claims Get Denied

The recurring problem is that a serious brain injury can leave a thin paper trail. A person who walks away from the scene, declines transport, and follows up with a primary care doctor two weeks later has a genuine injury and a weak looking record. The insurer reads the gap and argues that something else caused the symptoms.

The other problem is that the people closest to the injury notice it before the injured person does. Someone with a brain injury frequently underreports, because judgment and self-monitoring are among the functions affected. Statements from a spouse, a coworker, or a supervisor about changes in performance and personality often carry more weight than the client's own description.

Severe head trauma frequently qualifies as a catastrophic injury, which changes how damages are calculated and usually requires life care planning and economic expert testimony.

Sensory and Vestibular Injuries That Travel With Head Trauma

Head impacts frequently produce injuries that are never coded as brain injuries and therefore never valued as part of the claim. Vestibular dysfunction causes dizziness and balance problems that make stairs and driving hazardous. Post-traumatic vision changes include convergence insufficiency, light sensitivity, and tracking difficulty that make screen work exhausting. Tinnitus and hearing loss follow airbag deployment more often than most people realize, because deployment produces a pressure event inside a closed cabin.

These conditions respond to specialized treatment from vestibular therapists, neuro-optometrists, and audiologists. They also require a referral that a general practitioner may not think to make. If your symptoms include dizziness, visual strain, or ringing that started with the crash, say so explicitly at every appointment.

The Employment Consequence

Brain injury cases in Northern Virginia carry a wrinkle that matters here more than in most regions. A large share of the workforce holds positions requiring sustained concentration, security clearances, or professional licensure. A deficit that would be an inconvenience in one job is career-limiting in another. Documenting the specific cognitive demands of your actual work, rather than describing a generic impairment, is what converts a medical finding into an economic loss a jury can measure.

4. Neck Injuries: Whiplash, Cervical Strain, and Disc Herniation

Neck injuries are the most common serious complaint after a Virginia crash and the most aggressively contested. We maintain dedicated resources on this topic, and this section summarizes what the injury category means for your claim.

What Actually Happens to the Cervical Spine

The term whiplash describes a mechanism rather than a diagnosis. Rapid acceleration and deceleration strains the muscles, tendons, and ligaments supporting the cervical spine, and at greater force it damages the discs themselves. The clinical picture ranges from a strain that resolves in weeks to a herniation that compresses a nerve root and produces radiating pain, numbness, and weakness into the arm and hand.

• Cervical strain and sprain. Soft tissue injury, usually not visible on imaging, usually treated conservatively.
• Facet joint injury. A frequent source of persistent neck pain that standard imaging can miss.
• Cervical disc herniation or bulge. Visible on MRI, though the defense will argue the finding is degenerative rather than traumatic.
• Radiculopathy. Nerve root involvement producing symptoms down the arm, often the finding that moves a claim from routine to serious.
• Injuries requiring surgical intervention. Fusion or disc replacement, which carry permanent restrictions and substantial future care costs.

The Two Arguments You Will Face

The first is the property damage argument. If your bumper looks fine, the adjuster will insist the forces were too low to hurt you. This argument ignores how modern bumpers are designed and ignores individual variation in vulnerability, but it is persuasive to juries unless it is addressed directly.

The second is the degenerative changes argument. Most adults past their twenties have some degeneration visible on a cervical MRI. The defense will point to it and claim the crash found a preexisting condition rather than causing an injury. Virginia law does not require a defendant to find you in perfect condition. A defendant takes the plaintiff as found, and aggravation of a preexisting condition is compensable. Proving it requires a treating physician who will explain the difference between an asymptomatic finding and a symptomatic injury.

For depth on this category, see neck injury claims in Virginia, what a Northern Virginia neck injury case is worth and how to prove it, whiplash injuries after car accidents in Loudoun and Fairfax, and how to prove a neck injury in a Fairfax County lawsuit.

5. Back and Spinal Cord Injuries

Back injuries follow similar contested ground to neck injuries, with one difference. When the spinal cord itself is involved, the case changes character entirely.

Soft Tissue and Disc Injuries

Lumbar strain, facet injury, and disc herniation at L4-L5 or L5-S1 are the common findings after rear impacts and side impacts. Radiating pain into the leg indicates nerve involvement. Treatment often escalates through physical therapy, injections, and in some cases surgery. Our discussion of herniated discs after a rear-end crash in Loudoun County and proving negligence in a Fairfax back injury case addresses the proof problems specific to this category.

Vertebral Fractures

Compression fractures, burst fractures, and transverse process fractures appear on imaging and therefore avoid the objectivity fight that dogs soft tissue claims. They carry their own problems: chronic pain, hardware complications after surgical stabilization, and permanent activity restrictions that end certain careers.

Spinal Cord Injury

Damage to the cord itself produces paraplegia, quadriplegia, or incomplete injury with partial function below the level of damage. These cases are not primarily about proving the injury. They are about proving the lifetime cost of it.

A spinal cord injury case requires a life care plan, an economist to reduce future costs to present value, vocational analysis, and evidence about home modification, attendant care, adaptive equipment, and secondary medical complications. The available insurance is almost always inadequate, which pushes the analysis toward every possible coverage source: the at-fault driver's policy, your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage, an employer's policy if the at-fault driver was working, and any product or road design claim the facts support.

Complete Versus Incomplete Injury

The distinction matters medically and financially. A complete injury means no motor or sensory function below the level of damage. An incomplete injury preserves some function, and the degree of preservation drives both the rehabilitation plan and the lifetime cost projection. Two people with injuries at the same vertebral level can face very different futures, which is why generalized damage estimates are close to useless in this category.

Secondary complications drive much of the long-term cost and are routinely omitted from settlement demands: pressure injuries, urinary tract infections, autonomic dysreflexia, respiratory complications at higher injury levels, chronic neuropathic pain, and the shoulder degeneration that follows years of manual wheelchair use. A life care plan that does not account for them understates the claim substantially.

6. Fractures, Joint Damage, and Soft Tissue Trauma

Orthopedic injuries occupy useful middle ground. They are objectively documented, which avoids the credibility fight, but they are routinely undervalued because insurers treat a healed fracture as a resolved injury.

Common Fracture Patterns in Vehicle Crashes

• Wrist and forearm. Bracing against the steering wheel or dashboard at impact.
• Ribs and sternum. Seat belt and airbag loading, sometimes with underlying lung injury.
• Pelvis and acetabulum. Side impacts and high-energy frontal collisions, often requiring surgical fixation.
• Femur, tibia, and ankle. Footwell intrusion in frontal impacts, frequently requiring hardware and multiple procedures.
• Clavicle and shoulder. Seat belt loading across the chest, including rotator cuff and labral tears.
• Knee. Dashboard contact producing meniscal and ligament tears that may not appear on initial imaging.

Why Healed Does Not Mean Resolved

A fracture that unites on X-ray can still leave post-traumatic arthritis, hardware that aches in cold weather, reduced range of motion, and a permanent restriction on lifting or standing. For someone whose income depends on physical capacity, a healed ankle fracture can be a career-ending event even though the imaging looks reassuring.

Complex regional pain syndrome deserves separate mention. It can follow a relatively minor extremity injury and produce disproportionate, persistent pain. It is genuinely difficult to prove and genuinely devastating, and it requires specialist documentation from the start.

The damages analysis for orthopedic injuries turns on permanency and on lost earning capacity rather than on medical bills alone. A treating orthopedist willing to state a permanent impairment rating and specific work restrictions is worth more to the case than another round of imaging.

Children and Older Adults Are Different Cases

A growth plate fracture in a child can affect limb development for years, which means the injury cannot be fully valued at the time it heals. Pediatric claims need pediatric orthopedic input and often need time before settlement makes sense. Because Virginia Code section 8.01-229 tolls limitations for minors, there is usually room to wait, but the medical documentation still has to be built contemporaneously.

Older adults face the opposite problem. A hip fracture in a person over seventy is a different event from the same fracture at forty, carrying meaningful risk of permanent loss of independence. Insurers respond by arguing that osteoporosis or age-related fragility caused the injury rather than the crash. Virginia law does not support that argument. A defendant takes the plaintiff as found, including a plaintiff who was more vulnerable to injury than an average person would have been.

7. Internal Injuries, Burns, and Permanent Disfigurement

This category covers injuries that are either immediately life threatening or permanently visible, and sometimes both.

Internal Organ Damage

Blunt force to the abdomen and chest produces splenic and liver lacerations, kidney injury, bowel perforation, pulmonary contusion, and in severe cases aortic injury. Seat belts save lives and occasionally cause the injuries themselves, a pattern well recognized in trauma medicine. These injuries are usually diagnosed immediately because the presentation is acute, so causation is rarely disputed. The dispute moves to long-term consequences: adhesions, hernias at surgical sites, reduced organ function, and increased infection risk after splenectomy.

Burns

Vehicle fires, airbag deployment, hot fluid contact, and friction from restraint systems all produce burns. Severity is assessed by depth and by percentage of body surface involved. Serious burns carry a treatment course measured in years, including grafting, scar revision, contracture release, and physical therapy to preserve function.

Burn cases also carry a psychological dimension that is easy to underdocument. The injury is visible, permanent, and frequently changes how a person moves through public life. Our burn injury page addresses this category in more detail.

Amputation and Permanent Disfigurement

Traumatic amputation, surgical amputation following unsalvageable injury, and permanent scarring to the face, neck, or hands all fall here. Virginia allows recovery for disfigurement as a distinct element of damages, separate from pain and separate from economic loss. Documenting it properly means photographs over time, prosthetic and revision cost projections, and testimony about the specific ways the injury altered daily life and work.

Cases in this range almost always belong in the catastrophic injury category, where the calculation is driven by future costs rather than by bills already incurred.

8. Psychological Injuries After a Crash

Virginia recognizes emotional and psychological harm as a compensable element of a personal injury claim, but the rules around it are narrower than many people expect, and the proof requirements are specific.

The Common Presentations

• Post-traumatic stress disorder. Intrusive memories, avoidance of driving or of the crash location, hypervigilance, and sleep disruption.
• Depression and anxiety. Often secondary to chronic pain, loss of function, or loss of income rather than to the crash event itself.
• Driving phobia. Genuinely disabling in a region where commuting is unavoidable, and frequently dismissed by adjusters as an inconvenience.
• Sleep disorders. Which compound every other symptom and slow physical recovery.

How These Claims Are Proven and Attacked

Psychological injury requires treatment records from a qualified provider. A client who describes anxiety but never sought care has a claim that is difficult to value and easy to dismiss. Conversely, consistent treatment with a psychologist or psychiatrist who connects the symptoms to the collision produces a documented, defensible element of damages.

The defense response is predictable. They will seek your prior mental health history and argue that everything you describe predates the crash. This is uncomfortable and it is also survivable, because aggravation of a preexisting psychological condition is compensable on the same principle that applies to physical conditions. What defeats the claim is not a prior history. It is the absence of any contemporaneous record connecting the crash to the change.

Loss of Consortium and Family Impact

Virginia's treatment of a spouse's claim for loss of companionship and services differs from the approach in many states, and the practical effect is that the injured person's own damages carry more of the family's loss. That makes it important to describe, in the injured person's own claim, the specific ways the injury changed household roles, parenting capacity, and daily function. Vague statements about quality of life do not survive cross-examination. Concrete accounts do.

9. Proving the Injury Under Virginia Rules

Every injury category above shares the same proof structure. You must establish duty, breach, causation, and damages by a preponderance of the evidence, and you must do it while the defense argues that you caused the crash yourself.

The Medical Record Is the Case

Three things about the medical record decide more Virginia injury claims than any other factor.

• Timing of the first evaluation. A gap between the crash and the first medical visit is the most common argument against causation. It is not fatal, but it has to be explained.
• Consistency of treatment. Gaps in the middle of treatment get characterized as recovery. If you stopped because of cost, transportation, or work schedule, that reason belongs in the record.
• Completeness of reporting. Injuries you do not mention to your doctor are injuries the file does not contain. People routinely report the worst pain and omit everything else, then find the omitted complaints disputed later.

Evidence Beyond the Medical File

• Event data recorder downloads, which capture speed, braking, and restraint use in the seconds before impact.
• Commercial vehicle telematics and electronic logging data, addressed in our guide to proving fault with telematics in Virginia truck cases.
• Intersection, business, and residential camera footage, which is frequently overwritten within days.
• Cell phone records where distraction is suspected.
• Accident reconstruction, which becomes necessary when the mechanism of injury is disputed.
• Testimony from people who knew you before the crash, which is often the most persuasive evidence of how function changed.

What You Say Early Matters More in Virginia Than Elsewhere

Because contributory negligence is a complete bar here, recorded statements carry unusual risk. An adjuster who asks whether you saw the other vehicle before impact is not being conversational. Our guide on what to text after a car accident in Northern Virginia covers the communication problem in detail, and why one small mistake can end a Virginia injury case explains why the standard is so unforgiving.

The Defense Medical Examination

Once a lawsuit is filed, the defense will typically seek an examination of the plaintiff by a physician of its choosing. These examinations are short, they are not treatment, and the report is written for litigation. The recurring findings are predictable: symptoms attributed to degenerative change, treatment characterized as excessive, and restrictions described as self-imposed.

The response is not to argue with the examiner during the appointment. It is to arrive with a treatment record so consistent and so specific that the report has little to work with, and to prepare the treating physician to explain why the examiner reached a different conclusion after a single visit.

Social Media and Surveillance

Assume that public posts will be reviewed and that surveillance is possible in cases with significant claimed limitations. The problem is rarely fabrication. It is context. A photograph of you at a family event says nothing about what the following two days cost you, but stripped of that context it becomes a defense exhibit. The safest approach during a claim is to post nothing about your activities, your health, or the crash.

10. Damages, Coverage, and When an Injury Becomes a Wrongful Death Claim

Once the injury is established, the case becomes a valuation exercise constrained by available coverage.

What Virginia Allows You to Recover

• Past and future medical expenses. Including projected surgery, therapy, medication, and assistive equipment.
• Lost wages and lost earning capacity. Earning capacity is the larger number in serious cases and requires vocational and economic proof.
• Physical pain and mental anguish. Past and future.
• Disfigurement and deformity. A separate element, not folded into pain.
• Inconvenience. A recognized element in Virginia that is regularly overlooked in settlement demands.
• Property damage. Repair or fair market value, plus related loss of use.

Virginia follows the collateral source rule, meaning payments from your own health insurance generally do not reduce what the at-fault party owes. Health insurers and medical providers may assert liens or subrogation rights against the recovery, so resolving those claims is part of finishing the case properly.

How Insurers Actually Value These Claims

Most first offers are generated from software that weighs billed medical charges, treatment duration, diagnosis codes, and the presence or absence of objective findings. The output systematically undervalues three things: injuries without imaging correlates, future care that has not yet been incurred, and lost earning capacity for people whose work is physical or whose cognitive demands are high.

That is why the composition of a demand matters as much as its total. A demand supported by a physician's permanency opinion, a vocational assessment, and a specific future care projection is evaluated by a person. A demand that consists of medical bills and a multiplier is evaluated by a formula.

Punitive Damages

Punitive damages are available in a narrow set of Virginia crash cases. Virginia Code section 8.01-44.5 provides a specific path in drunk driving cases meeting defined criteria, and Virginia Code section 8.01-38.1 caps the total punitive award a plaintiff may recover. See drunk driving victim claims, how the punitive damage rule changes a case in Arlington, and punitive damages under section 8.01-44.5 in Hampton Roads.

Finding the Coverage

Virginia requires uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage in auto policies, and in serious injury cases that coverage is frequently what makes recovery possible. Underinsured coverage applies when the at-fault driver has insurance that is not enough. Uninsured coverage applies when there is no policy at all, or in hit and run cases where the driver is never identified.

• Uninsured and underinsured motorist claims explains how the coverage works.
• What Virginia law lets you do when the driver who hit you has no insurance.
• The underinsured driver problem, where policy limits fall far short of the harm.
• Hit and run claims, and the reporting steps that preserve them.
• Family purpose doctrine claims, which can reach a vehicle owner when a household member was driving.

When the Injury Is Fatal

If a crash injury results in death, the claim converts to a wrongful death action under Virginia Code section 8.01-244, brought by a personal representative of the estate for the benefit of statutory beneficiaries. The damages framework is different, the parties are different, and the two-year clock runs from the date of death rather than the date of the crash.

For that path, see our wrongful death page, the guide to twenty types of wrongful death cases in Virginia, and how a wrongful death case is valued in Northern Virginia. Where a family member died in a crash outside Virginia, our multi-state wrongful death guide addresses which state's law applies.

Summary

Car accident injuries in Virginia divide into categories that each carry a distinct proof burden. Head and brain injuries are frequently underdocumented and require early neurological evaluation and testimony from people who knew you before. Neck and back injuries are objectively common and subjectively contested, and they live or die on the treating physician's ability to separate a symptomatic injury from an incidental degenerative finding. Orthopedic injuries prove themselves but are undervalued unless permanency and lost earning capacity are documented. Internal injuries, burns, disfigurement, and spinal cord damage shift the case from proving harm to proving lifetime cost, and from liability analysis to coverage analysis. Psychological injuries are compensable and require actual treatment records.

Underneath all of it sits Virginia's contributory negligence rule, which converts any argument about your own conduct into an argument that you should recover nothing. That is why the early handling of a Virginia crash claim matters more than in almost any other state, and why what you say in the first weeks can determine the outcome years later.

Frequently Asked Questions