The Future of Personal Injury

While browsing the web, we came across a particularly interesting recent article that begs the question, does damage to prosthetic limbs count as personal injury or property damage? According to the law, you and your cell phone are two separate entities, but as integration between humans and machines becomes closer, will new laws be put into place that reflect this? As personal injury attorneys we do a great deal of work in this field, so we are especially curious to see what may develop further down the road.

However, according to the article, today’s prostheses are becoming increasingly integrated with the body and can even be activated by electrical signals from muscles, so at what point may they be considered as inseparable from the body itself? It leaves us to wonder: in the case of a car accident where a prosthetic limb is damaged, could that be seen as a case of personal injury, or simply damaged equipment? Especially considering cases of mobility, as with the prosthetic legs in the attached image, the damage can be perceived as much more "personal" than when, say, a person's smart phone is damaged.

Nonetheless, the jury's out as to whether personal injury laws will change in relation to this matter in the near future.