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Frank I. Powers and Shawn M. Cunningham have been selected to the 2019 Super Lawyers® list under the Personal Injury Medical Malpractice Plaintiff category. Each year, no more than five percent of the lawyers in the state are selected by the research team at Super Lawyers to receive this honor.

Super Lawyers®, a Thomson Reuters business, is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. The annual selections are made using a patented multiphase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area.

You were involved in a serious collision, and, days later, the pain started to catch up to you. Your lower back was so stiff that you could barely move to get to your vehicle and drive to the emergency room. Getting there was nearly impossible, causing you pain with every movement.

Once there, you told the medical providers that you'd been involved in a car crash days before. They were not surprised that your back was starting to hurt now, since many symptoms can be delayed after crashes. They took an X-ray, and you quickly learned that you had a fracture that could be extremely dangerous to your health if it's not set. You've been living with a broken back for two days, which could have left you paralyzed.

Due to its treatment in the media and common-sounding name, whiplash is often considered a minor injury by those outside the medical profession. In truth, whiplash refers to a severe soft tissue injury that can lead to chronic pain and a host of other debilitating symptoms.

Whiplash is most commonly suffered in front-end and rear-end vehicle collisions. In this type of accident, the body is violently thrown forward and backward against the interior of the vehicle and the seat belt. This jarring movement can put a significant strain on muscles, tendons and ligaments throughout the body. The neck, however, often bears the brunt of this motion. A cervical strain, commonly referred to as whiplash, might take hours or days to show symptoms.

You went to the hospital for care, but you ended up with an infection that your body can't seem to shake. You've been hospitalized for weeks, taking antibiotics, receiving fluids and generally struggling to survive. You didn't expect your emergency room visit to end up with a severe complication from a hospital-acquired infection, but it has. It may be due to a medical provider making a mistake that led to your infection.

In some cases, a delay in treatment of an existing infection can cause severe complications. When you sought treatment, the staff placed you in the waiting room. You complained that you weren't well, but they kept taking other patients back. After several hours of delays, you nearly collapsed at the front desk and finally got help. By then, you required a series of antibiotics and surgery to stop the spread of sepsis and the deterioration of your body.