How Do You Work With Brain Injury Cases?

When a person comes in with a traumatic brain injury, they are usually diagnosed with a concussion. They’ve been in some kind of automobile crash or some other injury as a result of the negligence of another person. The way we handle it from the start is we use a checklist to assess what’s going on in that person’s life. We want to make sure that they have been seen by a neurologist. If it goes on for more than the 90 days, we want to make sure they see a neuropsychologist.

If this is having long lasting effects on it, we want to establish all the damages in the case, all the losses. A lot of people think in terms of just medical bills and lost wages. But when we see a traumatic brain injury, very often it’s going to be a permanent, long-lasting effect on that person’s life. So one thing we want to make sure we recover for that person is what’s called their diminished earning capacity. That means you guys out there, anybody that suffers a traumatic brain injury, their ability to work and earn money over there remaining lifetime has to be recovered. And we will bring in vocational economists to do that.

It’s always tricky in a genetic brain injury because usually it’s a closed head injury where the skull has not been fractured and yet the person has profoundly been changed. And our job as a lawyer is to establish the cause and effect, the medical linkage to persuade a judge or a jury or an insurance company that this is a real and profound injury that merits a very high award.