Spinal Cord Injury Claims in Georgia: Seeking Justice for Paralysis and Permanent Disability

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A person left paralyzed or permanently impaired by a spinal cord injury may face decades of future care, and a Georgia claim has to turn that care into a figure a jury can award now. The inputs come from the injury itself: its level on the spine and whether it is complete shape what the person can do, what care will cost each year, and how long that care will last. Georgia law then governs how those future costs are proved and reduced to present value.

How the Injury Happens

MedlinePlus explains that the spinal cord, a bundle of nerves running down the middle of the back, carries signals between the body and the brain, and that an injury disrupts those signals. Spinal cord injuries “usually begin with a blow that fractures (breaks) or dislocates” the vertebrae. “Most injuries don’t cut through” the cord; they cause damage when pieces of vertebrae tear into cord tissue or press down on the nerve parts that carry signals. The National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC) reports that “[v]ehicle crashes and falls account for almost 70% of recent injuries.”

Level and Completeness

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) describes the level of a spinal cord injury as “the lowest point on the spinal cord below which sensory feeling and motor movement diminish or disappear,” named for the vertebra at the injury site, such as C3, T2, or L4. The seven cervical vertebrae (C1 through C7) are in the neck, the twelve thoracic vertebrae (T1 through T12) in the upper back, and the five lumbar vertebrae (L1 through L5) in the lower back, with the sacral vertebrae below them.

  • Tetraplegia, formerly called quadriplegia, “generally describes the condition of a person with an SCI that is at a level anywhere from the C1 vertebra down to the T1,” and can involve loss of sensation, function, or movement in the head, neck, shoulders, arms, hands, upper chest, pelvic organs, and legs.
  • Paraplegia describes loss of feeling in, or inability to move, the lower parts of the body, which may include the chest, stomach, hips, legs, and feet. NICHD states that a person with an injury level “from the T2 vertebra to the S5 can usually be called paraplegic.”

A complete injury is one in which “almost all feeling (sensory function) and all ability to control movement (motor function) are lost below the area of the SCI”; in an incomplete injury “there is some sensory or motor function below the damaged area.” NICHD states that “[t]he closer the spinal injury is to the skull, the more extensive is the curtailment of the body’s ability to move and feel,” and that “someone with a broken neck may be almost completely incapacitated, even to the extent of requiring breathing assistance.” NSCISC reports that “incomplete tetraplegia is the most frequent neurological category” in recent injuries and that “[l]ess than 1% of persons experienced complete neurological recovery by the time of hospital discharge.”

Treatment, Rehabilitation, and Return to the Hospital

NICHD states that “there are at present no known ways to reverse damage to the spinal cord” and that treatment “currently focuses on preventing further injury and empowering people with an SCI to return to an active and productive life.” Acute care can include surgery to relieve pressure on the cord, remove bone or disk fragments, fuse broken spinal bones, or place spinal braces, and traction to stabilize the spine. Rehabilitation can include physical and occupational therapy; wheelchairs, walkers, and leg braces; techniques for bladder and bowel management; strategies for spasticity and pain; and vocational therapy “to help people get back to work with the use of assistive devices, if needed.”

NSCISC reports that since 2015 the average hospital acute care stay has been 18.6 days and the average rehabilitation stay 36.3 days, and that “about 29% of persons with tSCI are re-hospitalized at least once during any given year following injury.”

Lifetime Costs and Life Expectancy

NSCISC publishes average costs “directly attributable to tSCI” (traumatic spinal cord injury) and states that they “vary greatly based on education, neurological impairment, and pre-injury employment history.” Its 2026 data sheet gives these figures in 2025 dollars, with lifetime estimates discounted at 2 percent:

Severity of injury First year Each later year Lifetime, injured at 25 Lifetime, injured at 50
High tetraplegia (C1-C4), AIS A, B, or C $1,446,827 $251,246 $6,419,617 $3,528,112
Low tetraplegia (C5-C8), AIS A, B, or C $1,045,459 $154,128 $4,690,573 $2,885,122
Paraplegia, AIS A, B, or C $705,131 $93,409 $3,139,165 $2,060,139
Motor functional at any level, AIS D $472,190 $57,353 $2,144,693 $1,513,784

The estimates do not include indirect costs such as lost wages, fringe benefits, and productivity, which NSCISC states averaged $97,787 per year in 2025 dollars. The data source NSCISC cites for the estimates is a study published in 2011.

NSCISC also states that life expectancies after the first year of injury “have not changed since the early 1980s and remain substantially below the life expectancies of the general population.” For a person injured at age 40 who survives at least one year, it lists a remaining life expectancy of 29.1 years with paraplegia (AIS A, B, or C) and 20.8 years with high tetraplegia, compared with 40.7 years for a person of the same age without a spinal cord injury.

Proving the Future in a Georgia Claim

The NSCISC figures are averages across people with spinal cord injury, not proof of one person’s costs. Future care is special damages, which the claim must prove rather than assume (OCGA 51-12-2(b)), and for a cause of action arising on or after April 21, 2025, medical special damages are limited to the reasonable value of medically necessary care, treatment, or services (OCGA 51-12-1.1(b)). When an expert projects one person’s future care, the opinion must meet the reliability requirements of OCGA 24-7-702(b).

Life expectancy sets how many years of care a claim covers. Georgia makes the American Experience Mortality Tables admissible as evidence of life expectancy (OCGA 24-14-44) and, in proceedings involving permanent personal injuries, two other named mortality tables for determining the present value of future amounts (OCGA 24-14-45(a)). Those tables are not the exclusive method; they supplement other lawful evidence and methods (OCGA 24-14-45(c)). In a spinal cord injury claim, where the reported life expectancies are shorter than those of the general population, the choice of life expectancy evidence changes the number of years of future care.

The NSCISC lifetime estimates are discounted at 2 percent. Georgia’s statute lets the trier of fact reduce future medical expenses and other economic damages to present value at 5 percent or any other rate it considers appropriate (OCGA 51-12-13(a)), so the same stream of future costs produces a different present figure depending on the rate. Lost earnings are a separate question: NSCISC reports that since 2015 “18% of persons with tSCI are employed at year 1 post-injury,” and the statute governing how damages are argued to a jury defines economic damages to include lost earning capacity and the loss of household and other necessary services the injured person used to perform without pay (OCGA 9-10-184(a)(1)).

When the costs exceed the at-fault driver’s liability coverage, the injured person’s own uninsured motorist coverage can matter. Unless the insured chose the reduced option in writing, Georgia treats the at-fault vehicle as uninsured up to the insured’s full uninsured motorist limits, and that coverage is paid on top of whatever bodily injury and property damage liability coverage is available, as long as the total stays within the insured’s economic and noneconomic losses (OCGA 33-7-11(b)(1)(D)(ii)(I), (II)).

Frequently Asked Questions

What does “AIS” mean in a spinal cord injury record?
NSCISC explains that the “American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) is used to grade the severity of a person’s neurological impairment following tSCI.” Its cost table groups AIS A, B, and C together and lists AIS D as motor functional at any level.

Can a person recover from a spinal cord injury?
NICHD states that “[s]omeone with injury to only a few axons might be able to recover completely from their injury,” while “a person with damage to all axons will most likely be paralyzed in the areas below the injury.”

Why are people with spinal cord injuries re-hospitalized?
NSCISC reports that “[d]iseases of the genitourinary system are the leading cause of re-hospitalization, followed by disease of the skin,” and that the average re-hospitalization lasts about 18 days.

Who suffers traumatic spinal cord injuries?
NSCISC reports that “[a]bout 78.02% of new tSCI cases since 2015 are male” and that “[t]he average age at injury has increased from 29 years during the 1970s to 44.3 years since 2015.”

  • MedlinePlus (National Library of Medicine), “Spinal Cord Injuries” (last updated Jan. 20, 2026)
  • Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, “About Spinal Cord Injury” and “What are the treatments for spinal cord injury (SCI)?” (last reviewed Jan. 25, 2022)
  • National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury Facts and Figures at a Glance (2026)
  • OCGA 9-10-184(a)(1); OCGA 51-12-2(b); OCGA 51-12-1.1(b); SB 68 (2025), as passed, Section 9(b)
  • OCGA 24-7-702(b); OCGA 24-14-44; OCGA 24-14-45(a), (c); OCGA 51-12-13(a)
  • OCGA 33-7-11(b)(1)(D)(ii)(I), (II)

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about spinal cord injury claims under Georgia law. It is not medical advice or legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. How a claim is valued depends on the injury, the evidence, and the specific facts. A person with a spinal cord injury, or a family member, should consult a licensed Georgia attorney promptly about the particular situation.

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