Brain Injury Attorneys

No, they are quite common. Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), usually caused by a violent blow or jolt to the head or body, constitute a major cause of death and disability in the U.S., leading to more than 2 million visits to hospital emergency departments each year. Around two percent of Americans—roughly 6 million people—live with a brain injury.

The symptoms and effects of a traumatic brain injury can impact every part of a victim’s life, including the ability to work or go to school, to participate in community life, and to sustain personal relationships. At home, a traumatic brain injury can upend family dynamics. The injured person’s spouse or children often find themselves thrust into the role of the victim’s caregiver. Families living with a loved one who has suffered a TBI can feel as though no one else understands what they’re going through.

If you have suffered a brain injury that was caused by someone else’s carelessness or recklessness, generally the process you would use to obtain compensation for your expenses is a personal injury lawsuit. A personal injury lawsuit is a civil action in which the injured person (with the help of an experienced brain injury lawyer) proves someone else’s legal liability and seeks damages (usually money) as compensation. The vast majority of these cases settle out-of-court through negotiation between the injured person’s attorney and the liable party’s insurance provider and/or defense attorney. However, some cases do not settle and instead go to trial, where a judge or jury resolves them in court.

Many individuals who have endured a brain injury struggle to return to work in their former job or capacity. Some might continue working with the help of accommodations by their employer, while others may never work again. Research shows that 60 percent of brain-injured adults are unemployed two years after suffering their injuries.

One of the services an experienced brain injury attorney can provide is to explore a TBI victim’s avenues for replacing income lost because of an inability to work. That may include pursuing disability benefits from public or private insurance plans. It also often includes seeking compensation for that current and future lost income through a lawsuit.

Yes, they absolutely can in many cases. Regardless of the words doctors use to classify a brain injury, there is nothing “mild” about suffering a TBI. So-called mild traumatic brain injuries can inflict permanent damage and cause debilitating problems such as chronic headaches, memory loss, persistent fatigue, brain fog, cognitive and emotional difficulties, and motor impairments, among others. These problems can interfere with a victim’s ability to work or go to school and have widespread impacts on a person’s lifestyle and relationships. These harms deserve compensation no matter how a doctor classifies the severity of the injury that causes them.

Damages refer to (typically) money you might recover to pay for the expenses and life impacts caused by your TBI. In a lawsuit, a lawyer will often seek to obtain two categories of damages for the injured person.

The costs of treating a TBI can range from $85,000 to $3 million by some estimates. These economic damages may include:

• Medical expenses, including the cost of emergency treatment at the scene of the accident or in the emergency department, transport to the hospital by ambulance or aircraft, diagnostic testing, physician and surgical services, hospitalization, prescription medication, physical therapy, and rehabilitation.
• Modifications to your home or vehicle that are necessary due to disabilities caused by the injury. Mobility devices such as a wheelchair or crutches are also considered a recoverable expense.
• Loss of income due to being too injured to work or having to miss work to attend injury-related medical appointments.
• Loss of future earning capacity if your brain injury leaves you unable to work at all or you can’t earn a similar income or perform a similar job as you did before the accident.

Non-economic damages that may include:

• Physical pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Permanent disability
• Loss of the enjoyment of life
• Loss of consortium, which is damage recovered on behalf of the injured person’s spouse for the loss of physical intimacy and companionship due to particularly severe injuries, such as traumatic brain injuries

No lawyer can guarantee you will recover all, or even any, of these categories of damages in a lawsuit. To give yourself the best shot at obtaining compensation, however, work with an experienced brain injury attorney.

First, a lawyer handles the job of proving liability on your behalf. Your job is to focus on healing from your injury.

Lawyers prove someone else’s liability for your injury by collecting and presenting evidence that:

• The at-fault party owed you a duty of care not to act in a way that put you at an unreasonable risk of harm. The nature of this duty depends on the circumstances. A driver has a duty of care not to speed or disobey traffic laws. A shop owner has a duty of care to clean up slippery spills. And so on.
• The party breached the duty of care through dangerous or careless actions that put you in harm’s way.
• The breach caused the accident or incident resulting in your injury.

Generally, an employer’s workers’ compensation insurance protects employees against the costs associated with a workplace injury. Employees covered by workers’ comp usually do not have the option of suing their employer for an injury.

However, an injured worker might have the ability to take legal action against a third party (someone who is not the employer or a co-worker) in some cases. For example, if you suffered injuries in a crash while driving a company vehicle for work, you may have a third-party claim against another driver who caused the accident.

An experienced brain injury attorney studies the details of your case to determine which sources of compensation you may have available for a workplace brain injury.

Contrary to popular belief, the prognosis for children who have experienced a brain injury is not better than that of adults. Many of the symptoms of the injury in children will not become apparent for quite some time, as the child’s brain continues to develop and the child faces increased expectations, both cognitively and socially.

Children with brain injuries often require assistance in school to help them stay motivated, engaged, and socially functional. This may involve giving children additional time to complete assignments or tests; to test orally or through multiple choice rather than essay-format; to access recordings or videos of lessons taught to assist with memory deficits, and to take more frequent breaks to counter fatigue.

Because settlement amounts depend on the expenses and life impacts experienced as a result of a brain injury, there is no average settlement. Brain injuries cause a wide range of health and life complications for victims, making each brain injury case unique.

Factors that can influence the amount of money a victim might receive include:

• The at-fault party’s financial resources. Most personal injury settlements and judgment get paid by insurance, with the remainder coming directly out of a liable party’s pocket). Thus, the amount of insurance a party carries, and the size of that party’s assets, can influence the amount of money a brain injury victim might recover.
• The severity of the injury. While any injury to the brain can cause severe, life-long deficits, more-severe injuries often require extensive treatment, impair the ability to work, and impair every aspect of a victim’s life. These impacts can influence the size of a settlement or jury award.
• The victim’s age. No person’s life is worth more than another. However, the financial impact of a brain injury can differ depending upon the stage of life of the victim. A victim who gets injured mid-career will likely claim more money in the way of lost income than someone just starting out, for example. A child facing a lifetime of therapy and impairment may claim a greater sum than a senior citizen who had already begun to experience cognitive decline.
• Patience. Some people afflicted with brain injuries in a preventable accident get offered a quick settlement by the party at fault. Accepting these quick settlements is often a mistake. A quick settlement typically under-values the full impact of the injury and the expenses the victim will likely face in the future. That is often the point of these offers: to get the liable party off the hook as cheaply as possible. A victim who has the patience and financial wherewithal to say “no” to a quick settlement offer, and to trust our brain injury attorneys to investigate the full value of a claim, and to pursue that claim to the maximum extent possible, can often hope to recover a greater amount of compensation than the person who jumps at fast money.

Yes, you do. In fact, not only do you need an attorney to handle your case, you need legal counsel who has specific experience in representing brain injury victims. Brain injuries are extraordinarily complex and expensive to treat. Lifetime costs of medical treatment alone for a TBI can range from tens-of-thousands to millions of dollars. An attorney experienced in brain injury cases has the know-how to evaluate your present and future financial needs and entitlements, to ensure you seek (and hopefully recover) the maximum amount allowed under the law.

But that’s not all. A skilled brain injury lawyer can also:

• Provide guidance about legal options available to you based on the facts of your case.
• Investigate and identify all parties with legal liability to you, and which of those have the financial resources to pay you damages.
• Prepare and file a lawsuit on your behalf.
• Collect evidence and witness testimony to help prove your case.
• Work with a network of experts, including medical and occupational specialists and forensic scientists, who may offer opinions that bolster your case.
• Advocate for you in court, if necessary.
• Advise you about settlement offers.
• Do the legwork involved in collecting your settlement or award.