By Hon. (Ret.) Ken E. Adair 
And Don’t Be Afraid of Soft Tissue Cases
Video Transcribed: I’ve never understood why lawyers are afraid of chiropractor cases and soft tissue injury cases. If a bullet goes through and through and never strikes a bone, it’s a soft tissue injury. I injured my ankle a couple of times, when I was younger when I was a teenager, and when I was in my early to mid-twenties, and I just tore the crap out of the ligaments and tendons on the side of my ankle.
And it would swell up the size of a softball and turn bright purple and red, and then it would turn purple and yellow and then green and yellow, my whole foot would change color. And the doctors would always tell me, you’d have been better off if you broke the ankle, instead of tearing all these ligaments, because it’s going to affect you for the rest of your life. They never grow back with the linear healing connection that they are supposed to have.
And if you’ve broken a bone, the calcium would have formed a big ball around it twice or three times the thickness and density of the original bone and it becomes stronger, but tearing all those ligaments will affect you the rest of your life. And one of the things that I’ve learned in handling soft tissue injury cases and dealing with chiropractic care, you don’t have to like it. I used to call them chiro-quackers for many years until I went to one.
And I believe in it in the sense that manipulation and massage, using things other than muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories will aid the healing in a way that you have organized linear scar tissue that has some elasticity to it, as opposed to disorganized scar tissue. Because when you take the inflammation away, that blood is designed to feed nutrients and oxygen to the wound, it’s designed to carry away dead sales, it’s designed to help the healing process.
And so when you stifle pain and inflammation, too much disorganized scar tissue, it heals, it heals fast, it heals strong, but you lose the elasticity. And when you’re talking about a spine or a hip or a knee, that lack of elasticity will affect adjacent ligaments and musculature and will make you prone to other injuries. That, by definition, is a permanent injury.
So I would encourage you to study about the effects of anti-inflammatories and the effects of pain medication on the creation of organized linear scar tissue, as opposed to disorganized scar tissue. Sit down and visit with a chiropractor. Don’t be afraid of these cases. The fact that people are afraid of these cases makes settlement of these cases almost impossible and then I ended up having to go to trial and beat up on a poor injury defense lawyer, because I’m not afraid of chiropractor cases at all.
So I’d highly recommend, make yourself knowledgeable about what chiropractic care is. Yeah, they promote … some chiropractors promote some stuff that most people consider to be a bit goofy, but that doesn’t mean that your client doesn’t have a choice. And I’ll say this, I have many juries about chiropractors. How many of you don’t like chiropractic care? And I’ll get a few people raise their hand.
How many of you believe that a person ought not to be able to select chiropractic care over traditional medical care, that they should go to a regular medical doctor? And with the very rarest of exceptions, everybody believes that a person should be able to go to acupuncture, they should be able to go to reflexology.
They should be able to choose conservative treatment that doesn’t involve narcotics, that doesn’t involve a nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs, that doesn’t involve other anti-inflammatory medicine. Things that will alleviate symptoms but don’t actually aid in the healing like chiropractic care does, because manipulation and massage and those sorts of things will cause increased blood flow and aid and healing.
If you understand how to articulate it, and you understand how to talk to a chiropractor about it, and you sit down and visit your chiropractors on how to articulate soft tissue injuries, you won’t be afraid of those types of injuries anymore. I’m not. I love trying chiropractic cases.
I love trying soft tissue injury cases. Because those permanent injuries like I have on my ankles, I have problems with them to this day. I have little old spindly ankles on my big old body. And I have to be very careful and I always wear high top or semi high top tennis shoes because of it. That’s a permanent injury. It affects me for the rest of my life. And if it’s on your spine, in your neck, you lower back, it can be devastating and create overcompensation in other parts of your body. And I don’t want to get too technical about it.
I hope this has been a little bit helpful. Don’t be afraid of chiropractic cases. Don’t be afraid of soft tissue cases. And thank you again and I look forward to seeing you again.
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