Chicago spinal cord injury lawyer

Why injured families come to Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates

Our firm is a trial-driven, capitalized litigation firm that carries complex cases to their full value. We’ve been a family firm in Illinois since 1924, and our Chicago personal injury lawyer practice is organized into departments by area of law, so a spinal cord case is staffed by attorneys who try catastrophic injury cases.

What that looks like in practice:

• Four generations and more than 100 years in Illinois courtrooms, with over $1 billion recovered for clients.
• A third-party department that keeps the non-employer portion of a work injury case in-house rather than referring it out.
• 20+ injury attorneys, including partners who’ve tried cases in courtrooms across northern Illinois.
• A structure built to support long litigation, which is what a catastrophic injury case usually takes.

Your case won’t be pressured into a quick settlement so a file can be closed. We prepare every case as though it’s going to trial, and that preparation is what gives a client room to negotiate.

Proven track record of results for our clients

Local 393 ironworker Ron Bayer was paralyzed after a fall. His case took five years of litigation and a month-long jury trial. The jury awarded $80 million, found him 20% at fault, and reduced the award accordingly, which is how the $64 million verdict was reached. Past results don’t predict what any other case will do.

What a spinal cord injury does to the body

How much function you lose depends on two things: where the damage to the spinal cord happened, and whether the injury is complete or incomplete. The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke puts the distinction plainly. With an incomplete injury, the spinal cord can still send some messages to or from the brain. With a complete injury, there’s no nerve communication below the injury site.

Where on the cord the damage sits changes the outcome just as much. Damage high on the cervical spine can affect all four limbs, which doctors call tetraplegia. Damage lower down tends to affect the legs and lower body, which is paraplegia. Two people can share a diagnosis and have very different futures, and that’s why the types of spinal cord injuries in a claim get documented in detail rather than summarized.

Symptoms that show up after a spine injury include numbness or tingling, loss of movement, loss of bladder or bowel control, changes in sensation in the hands and feet, difficulty breathing, and ongoing pain or pressure in the neck and back.

Not every serious spine injury damages the cord itself. Herniated discs and vertebral fractures can leave permanent nerve damage without a cord injury, and our Chicago back injury lawyers handle those claims too. A Chicago back injury attorney can tell you which category yours falls into.

What causes most spinal cord injuries?

Nationally, the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center attributes 37.1% of traumatic spinal cord injuries to vehicle crashes and 32.5% to falls, with violence at 15.2% and sports at 7.6%. Roughly 18,482 people suffer one each year.

In Cook County, those categories usually come back to a negligent decision. A driver who runs a light at an intersection. A property owner who leaves a stairwell unlit, which is how a lot of slip-and-fall accidents lead to spinal cord damage. A general contractor who skips fall protection on a West Loop high-rise. A trucking company that keeps an unqualified driver on the road. Falls accounted for 19% of Illinois workplace fatalities in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and construction sites remain one of the most common places a spinal cord injury happens on the job.

What a spinal cord injury costs over a lifetime

This is the number that gets underestimated most often. Using 2025 dollars, the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center estimates first-year costs of about $1.45 million for high tetraplegia and roughly $705,000 for paraplegia, with each following year running from about $57,000 to $251,000 depending on severity.

Over a lifetime, someone injured at 25 with high tetraplegia is estimated at about $6.4 million. Paraplegia at the same age comes to roughly $3.1 million. Those figures cover medical care alone. They don’t include lost wages, and they don’t include what the injury costs a spouse who leaves a job to provide attendant care. We look at the real cost of care with a life care planner and an economist, because a demand built on current bills alone leaves the largest part of the loss off the table.

What you can claim after a spinal cord injury

Illinois generally doesn’t impose a statutory cap on compensatory damages in ordinary personal injury cases against private defendants, so recovery is tied to the losses you can prove. Different limits can apply to certain defendants and certain kinds of claims.

Economic damages are the documented ones: past and future medical care, rehabilitation, attendant care, assistive equipment, home and vehicle modifications, and lost wages or reduced earning capacity. Non-economic damages cover pain and suffering, loss of a normal life, disfigurement, and the emotional harm that follows a serious spine injury. Both belong in the same injury claim, and non-economic damages are often the larger share in a catastrophic case.

Who can be held responsible

More than one party often shares responsibility, and you can bring a claim against each of them. In a construction case, that might be the general contractor, the property owner, a subcontractor, and the company that supplied allegedly defective equipment. In a crash, it might be the driver and the company that employed them. Our Chicago paralysis attorneys work these cases as multi-defendant claims from the start, because a single policy rarely covers a lifetime of care.

Illinois uses modified comparative fault. Under state law, a plaintiff is barred from recovering if the fact finder finds their own share of fault is more than 50% of what caused the injury. Below that line, your recovery is reduced by your percentage. Ron Bayer’s 20% is what took his verdict from $80 million to $64 million.

One rule works in an injured person’s favor here. Every defendant found liable is jointly and severally liable for past and future medical expenses, no matter how small their share of fault. For other damages, a defendant with under 25% fault pays only their own share. So in a case where lifetime medical care is the biggest line item, the full medical award can potentially be collected from any one liable defendant.

Hurt at work? Workers’ comp usually isn’t your only claim

Many injured workers assume workers’ compensation is the end of it. The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act generally prevents you from suing your employer for damages from a covered workplace injury, and that protection reaches certain employer-related parties as well, including the employer’s insurer and, in many situations, a coworker. What it doesn’t automatically reach is an independent third party whose negligence contributed to the injury. If a subcontractor, a property owner, an equipment manufacturer, or a driver who wasn’t your coworker contributed to the injury, that’s a separate third-party work injury claim that runs alongside your comp case.

Workers’ compensation pays medical treatment and partial wage replacement. It doesn’t pay for pain and suffering or loss of a normal life. A personal injury lawsuit against a negligent third party does. This is where our Chicago construction accident attorney department and our third-party department work the same file, and it’s a common reason a spinal cord injury due to a workplace fall is worth more than the comp claim alone suggests.

How long you have to file in Illinois

In most Illinois personal injury cases, the deadline is two years from the date of injury. Once that window closes, a claim generally can’t be brought at all.

Several exceptions can change that deadline. Two come up often in serious injury cases:

• Claims against many local public entities and their employees, including the City of Chicago, Cook County, park districts, and school districts, generally run on a one-year deadline. A personal injury suit against the CTA also has to be filed within one year, under a separate Illinois statute. So a spinal cord injury on a CTA bus or a city sidewalk is on a much shorter clock than a crash with a private driver.
• If the injured person was under 18 when an ordinary personal injury claim accrued, Illinois generally lets them bring it within two years after they turn 18. Other statutes can change that. Medical malpractice involving a child, for example, runs on its own deadline.

You don’t need to work out which deadline applies to you. That’s our job, and checking it is one of the first things we do. If you’d like to read more about Illinois filing deadlines, we’ve covered them in detail.

What happens after you call Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates?

The first conversation costs nothing, and it costs nothing if you decide not to hire us. If we take the case on, we investigate right away, because evidence on a construction site or a roadway doesn’t stay put. That means scene photos, surveillance footage, maintenance and inspection records, phone records, and witness interviews. We build the damages model next, working with treating physicians, a life care planner, and a vocational economist to establish what the injury will cost across your lifetime.

Then we make a demand. If the defense responds with a number that reflects the real loss, a settlement can make sense, and many injury cases resolve there. If it doesn’t, we file and litigate, and the case is prepared for a jury from the start.

Throughout, the same people stay on your file. Our spinal cord injury attorneys and the personal injury attorneys who support them deal with the insurers, the workers’ compensation lien, the medical providers, and the paperwork, so your family can concentrate on treatment and recovery.

Frequently asked questions about spinal cord injury claims

What does it cost to hire a Chicago spinal cord injury attorney?

Nothing upfront. We work on a contingency fee basis, and you pay no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered. The consultation is free whether or not you hire us.

How long does a spinal cord injury case take?

Longer than most claims, and that’s usually by design. Ron Bayer’s case ran five years. A catastrophic injury case shouldn’t be settled before the medical picture stabilizes, because settling early means guessing at the cost of care.

How does a spinal cord injury affect your ability to work?

For many people, it ends the job they trained for, and that loss belongs in the claim. Illinois lets you recover diminished earning capacity, which is the gap between what you would have earned and what you can earn now. A vocational economist puts a figure on it, and for a worker injured in their twenties or thirties, that figure is often larger than the medical bills.

Can I still recover if I was partly at fault?

Usually, yes. Illinois reduces your recovery by your percentage of fault and bars it only if your share is more than 50%. Insurers routinely argue for a higher percentage than the evidence supports, which is one of the things our legal team pushes back on.

What if my family member didn’t survive?

Illinois allows a wrongful death claim brought by the deceased person’s personal representative, generally within two years of death. A survival claim for what your family member went through before death can also be brought when it applies.

Connect with a Chicago spinal cord injury lawyer

Horwitz, Horwitz & Associates has recovered more than $1 billion for injured people in Illinois, including a $64 million Cook County verdict for an ironworker paralyzed on the job. Our Chicago spinal cord attorneys will look at what happened, what it’s likely to cost you over a lifetime, who can be held responsible, and how much time you have left to file, at no charge.

If you’ve suffered a spinal cord injury in a crash, a fall, or on a job site, call (800) 985-1819 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation. We work on a contingency fee basis, and you pay no attorney’s fees unless compensation is recovered.