Published September 2, 2026 · By Terry W. Posey, Esq.

The hardest part of an injury claim is usually not the bills you already have. It is the ones you do not have yet.

If a crash wrecked your spine, your knee, or your shoulder, the most expensive part of that injury may still be years away. Hardware wears out. Fusions fail. A repaired joint develops arthritis and eventually needs replacing. Insurance companies know this, and they have a standard response: that surgery is speculative, he has not even scheduled it, you cannot put a number on it.

On August 28, 2026, Ohio's First District Court of Appeals rejected exactly that argument and left two six-figure future medical awards standing. The case is Krabacher v. Durrani, 2026-Ohio-3368, and it is one of the clearest recent explanations of what Ohio law actually requires to recover for care you have not received yet.

What Happened

Sheila Krabacher and Erin Greelish were both patients of Dr. Abubakar Atiq Durrani, a spine surgeon, and his practice, the Center for Advanced Spine Technologies. Both testified that they were told surgery was their only option and that without it they risked paralysis or death. Both had cervical fusion surgeries. Neither got lasting relief. Krabacher testified that during one operation the surgeon deviated from the planned procedure, and that a later doctor removed the hardware from her neck entirely, after which her pain decreased.

A Hamilton County jury found in favor of both women on claims including negligence and lack of informed consent. Specifically, the jury found the doctor had failed to exercise reasonable diligence by not pursuing conservative care and by not conferring with other medical professionals to resolve conflicting interpretations of the imaging.

Among the damages the jury awarded was money for medical care neither woman had received yet: $120,000 for Krabacher and $100,000 for Greelish in future medical expenses. The defense asked the trial court to throw those awards out as speculative, arguing that the plaintiffs were not currently planning any future treatment. The trial court refused. The court of appeals agreed with the trial court.

The Four Things an Expert Has to Cover

Ohio's rule is that a claim for future medical expenses must be supported by evidence that reasonably establishes the amount to be incurred in the future. The evidence has to demonstrate reasonably certain costs. It cannot be purely speculative.

In practice, the First District has broken that down into four elements an expert must address: the kind of care, its duration, its frequency, and its cost. Leave one out, and the award can be vacated on appeal even after a jury has awarded it.

In this case the plaintiffs' neurosurgeon testified that both women were reasonably likely to develop junctional syndrome, a condition in which the segments of the spine near a fusion degenerate faster as a side effect of the fusion itself, and that both would need future surgery as a result.

Then he did the thing that made the awards survive. He tied the cost to numbers already in evidence, testifying that the corrective procedures would cost about what the plaintiffs' earlier surgeries had cost. And those figures were documented: one plaintiff's billing breakdown showed a prior fusion at $150,000, and the other's three surgeries had been billed at $35,953, $51,229, and $102,357.55.

That is the whole lesson. The jury was not asked to guess. It was handed a medical opinion that future surgery was likely, plus a paper trail showing what that kind of surgery actually costs. The awards it returned came in well below those documented figures.

Past Bills and Future Bills Are Proven Differently

Many injured people assume that if they hand over their medical bills, the damages part takes care of itself. It does not. The two categories are proven in completely different ways.

The Part That Reduces Your Check: Setoff

The plaintiffs did not win everything. The court of appeals agreed with the defense on one point and sent the case back on it: the defendants were entitled to a setoff for money the plaintiffs had already received in settlements with other responsible parties, under R.C. 2307.28.

This matters far beyond medical malpractice. In a multi-vehicle crash, or a wreck involving both a negligent driver and a trucking company, settling with one defendant reduces what you can collect from the one who goes to trial. It is not a penalty, and it is not a reason to refuse a fair settlement. It is a reason to treat the order and the size of settlements as a strategy rather than handling them one at a time as they come.

A Reasonable Settlement Demand Can Earn You Interest

One more piece of this decision is worth knowing. The trial court had awarded the plaintiffs prejudgment interest, and the court of appeals left that in place.

Ohio allows prejudgment interest when a party failed to make a good faith effort to settle. Here, the plaintiffs demanded $1 million, then lowered the demand to $500,000. The defense made no counteroffer in either case, resting instead on a global offer of $4 million spread across roughly 400 remaining plaintiffs, which worked out to about $10,000 each. The court had no trouble concluding that the plaintiffs had tried in good faith to settle and the defense had not.

The practical takeaway: making a real, documented, reasonable settlement demand early is not a sign of weakness. It builds a record, and that record can add interest to your judgment.

What This Means If You Were Hurt in the Dayton Area

Keep every itemized bill. Not the summary statement from your health insurer. The itemized bill, with procedure codes and charges. In this case those documents became the yardstick for the future award.

Tell your doctor about the long term, and ask that it go in the chart. If your surgeon believes hardware will need revision in ten years, that opinion needs to appear in your records, not only in your memory of a hallway conversation.

Do not settle at the bottom of the curve. Adjusters like to close a file while you are still improving. If your injury carries a real risk of future surgery, a settlement that only covers today's bills sells that surgery for nothing.

Watch the deadline while you do it. Ohio generally gives you two years from the date of injury to file suit, and no amount of future damages evidence helps if the claim is filed late. See How Long Do I Have to File a Car Accident Claim in Ohio?

An Honest Word About Limits

This is one appellate district applying an established rule, not a change in Ohio law, and the same court has vacated future medical awards in other cases where the expert testimony was thinner. The decision also sends part of the case back to the trial court, so it is not finished. Every claim rises or falls on its own evidence, and no result in someone else's case predicts what any particular claim is worth.

Talk to Someone Before You Sign a Release

Once you sign a settlement release, it is over, including for the surgery you may need five years from now. If you are being pushed to settle an injury claim and you have any reason to think you will need more treatment down the road, get an opinion first.

At the Law Offices of Terry W. Posey we have represented injured Ohioans for more than 30 years, across the full range of personal injury cases, from car and truck crashes to wrongful death claims. We build damages cases the way this one was built: with records, with the right medical opinions, and with an eye on what the injury will still cost you years from now.

The consultation is free, and you pay no fee unless we win. Call 937-236-6444.