2 years is the usual Connecticut deadline to sue under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-584, but giving the insurer an old MRI can change the claim long before that.

From the insurance company's perspective, the old MRI is gold. They want to say the crash on I-84, Route 8, or the Waterbury Mixmaster did not cause your husband's pain at all - it just revealed a condition he already had.

That is why they ask for broad medical authorizations instead of just the records tied to this crash. Once they have prior imaging, they often argue degenerative changes, old disc issues, or "same complaints before the wreck." Then come the lower offers, delayed payments, and the suggestion that tax-season medical debt is somehow your family's problem, not theirs.

Reality is different.

Connecticut law does not let a driver off the hook because the injured person was vulnerable before the crash. If the collision aggravated a pre-existing condition, the at-fault party is still responsible for the worsening they caused. That is the eggshell-plaintiff rule in plain English: they take the injured person as they find them.

So the old MRI is not automatically bad. It can also show a baseline.

What matters is the before-and-after story:

• symptoms before the crash versus after it
• whether treatment increased after the pileup
• whether doctors document a new aggravation
• missed work, new restrictions, injections, surgery recommendations, or stronger medication

If the insurer sees only old records, they tell one story. If the file shows he was functioning before and is now worse, that is a different case.

One important Connecticut wrinkle: if the pileup involved a military vehicle or other federal vehicle, the claim may fall under the Federal Tort Claims Act, and an administrative claim must usually be filed within 2 years before any lawsuit.