Woman loses £650,000 injury claim after being seen tossing Christmas tree

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Woman loses £650,000 injury claim after being seen tossing Christmas tree
theguardian.com
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I wouldn't be so quick to discount her injuries. Ask anyone with a nagging back injury, some days you feel like an absolute champ and can throw a damn tree, but other days you're bed ridden from pinched up nerves. Thats just the nature of the injury.

I had a friend who got into a car accident, driver drove off a bridge. She's got a permanently fked up back. But you'd never know it from looking at her. Some days she's out and about playing football and cycling, other days she'll take 2 hours to get out of bed because the slightest movement will leave her in tears from her fked up vertebrae.

Thank you.

One picture over riding medical reality is absolutely asinine, but it works often enough that insurance companies hire PIs to follow people around. Or did, before social media and algorithms started doing all the work for them.

She also went to the doctors after the Christmas tree throwing. It's quite possible that the tree throwing aggrevated the injury and left her in a genuinely disabled state.

It's quite possible winning a Christmas tree throwing competition was the sole reason her back got fucked up. I've fucked up my back just putting on socks so it's a bit absurd to assume a car accident was a necessary catalyst to an injury she reported after strenuous physical activity involving her back.

Definitely, though it depends on the type of accident. She was hit from behind, so if it was a relatively slow speed collision near a traffic light or junction or something you'd probably be right.

I agree completely. I have a heritable connective tissue disorder that causes me trouble to no end, especially in frequently used muscles, like those in my forearms. I have to be very careful of what I do - not lift too much or grip too hard, avoid too much repetitive motion like typing or gaming, don't hold things a certain way, etc. Once in awhile, I'll forget and just do something like I used to, like catching something heavy, and I'll be fine. Until the next morning, when I wake up in pain. Even then it's still not awful, it's the accumulation of multiple events that causes trouble. This isn't in line with what most people consider a physical disability, so I occasionally get flack from people who think I'm faking. Sometimes I choose to deal with some pain so I can do normal things for a bit, but there's no way I could do them every day for hours.

My point is a lot of people don't understand how physical disabilities actually work and seem to love "disproving" your limitations. Especially lawyers fighting against your disability claims.

RA and my wrists are kind of similar, but it's not all in the same direction. I can push shit around half the day and be fine. Two hours of sanding and I can't button my pants for two days.

The knee pain got worse throughout the day, but always rest at night. No clue why my wrists don't, the janky fucks.

You also shouldn’t be doing things that exacerbate it as well. If she has a nagging back injury, nothing good would ever come from throwing a christmas tree, but future further pain. She was caught doing stuff she shouldn’t have been, and likely wasn’t going to therapy either. Theres more to the story.

So let's just stay in bed the rest of our lives and not try to live a normal life. It's absolute bullshit that insurance is allowed to shirk their obligations by pretending be investigative journalist or playing doctor.

If you want to dispute a claim, it should be an independent medical panel pf doctors. Not just photos on a website or social media.

No doctor would recommend doing this if you have a nagging back injury.

There is some stuff you can’t enjoy when you are sick or injured, fact of life, sorry. No reason she couldn’t watch and enjoy, or go ice skating instead, lots of options. She choose something that would injure her back, full stop.

And maybe don't do that stuff anyway while you have an insurance claim ongoing.

There's a major difference between doing low impact activities like going on walks or riding a bike/recumbent and throwing fucking trees.

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