My doctor recently found another injury from an accident and lawsuit from years ago. Can I still get compensation?

You don’t mention which state you are in, which could make a difference: each state is free to set its own “statute of limitations,” or the time period after an accident during which an injured party may bring a lawsuit. As a general matter, several years is too long for most non-medical malpractice personal injury claims, so odds are that you your vision problems have been diagnosed after the statute of limitations has expired. That would often act to bar you from bringing a claim for them.

However, sometimes when discovering an injury years after an accident, there are grounds that would allow a claim to be brought, whether some lawsuit has already been filed or not filed. These grounds “toll” the statute, or suspend it for a time. One of the more common bases on which to toll the statute of limitations is that the injured party had no way of knowing about the injury until recently. (It’s not merely that the person did not know; it’s that they could not have known.) If the nature of your vision problem is such that it did not surface or could not have been diagnosed until recently, that may be enough to toll the statute.

Also, in a case yours, discovering an injury years after an accident and lawsuit has been filed, there may be an additional way to add the claim for the vision problems. If you have already, as seems to be the case, filed a lawsuit within the statute of limitations, while you could not bring a wholly new claim, you may be able to amend your complaint to seek additional damages or compensation. The idea is that the defendant already knows he’s being sued for physical injuries arising out of the accident, so the purpose of the statute has been served. All you would be doing is updating the claim based on newer evidence of the extent of your injuries, the same way the claim could be updated to account for continuing or escalating medical costs.

Clearly, you need to discuss this more with your attorney, but there do seem to be ways he could at least try to add a claim for your vision problems.