It was, in Joe Watkins’ words, a “very mundane” accident. Last October, as he rose to answer nature’s call in the middle of the night, “I got up too fast and fell.”

Watkins, a founding partner of plaintiffs’ boutique Watkins Lourie Roll & Chance, hit his chin on a shelf as he fell, snapping his neck back and suffering “central cord syndrome,” a whiplash-type injury that bruised his spinal cord and left him mostly paralyzed from his chest down.