Challenges When Filing a Brain Injury Lawsuit in California
| December 26th, 2022
The impact of a brain injury can be overwhelming at best and life-changing at worst. Many people find themselves buried under massive medical bills in addition to the stress and challenges resulting from the injury itself. In the aftermath of a brain injury, few people can deal with the challenges that arise in brain injury lawsuits.
If you’ve suffered a brain injury due to someone else’s carelessness, a brain injury lawyer with Berg Injury Lawyers can help you recover the compensation you deserve. Learn the common challenges of brain injury lawsuits and how one of our attorneys can help you navigate a complex case.
Why Is It Important to Document a Brain Injury?
Brain injuries can significantly impact your health without leaving visible evidence. Mild brain injuries can cause long-lasting problems with memory, concentration, and mood but don’t appear on conventional imaging tests like CT or MRI scans. Moderate and severe brain injuries can be detected through imaging tests but are more likely to lead to long-term or lifelong disability.
A brain injury’s long-term or permanent effects can interfere with your ability to function in day-to-day life, including working a job or participating in activities you enjoy. Additionally, the symptoms of a brain injury can change or even worsen over time.
In California, if someone’s carelessness caused you to receive your brain injury, you have the right to file a lawsuit against them for your damages. However, proving damages requires documentation of your injury, how it’s changed over time, and how it’s affected you. Without documentation, you won’t be able to win your case.
Difficulties in Identifying a Brain Injury
The symptoms of brain injuries aren’t always instantaneous. In some cases, you may begin experiencing symptoms several hours or days after the injury. Even when you develop symptoms, they may lack externally visible signs, like a headache or ringing in the ears that someone else might notice, or can get overlooked as symptoms of a more common ailment, like tiredness, nausea, or poor balance.
Additionally, mild brain injuries can be missed in a medical setting. Imaging tests like CT or MRI scans detect bruising, bleeding, swelling, or other unusual activity in the brain, which usually only appear in moderate and severe brain injuries.
In recent years, some blood tests have been able to detect mild injuries, but the diagnosis has traditionally been performed through manual assessment of a person’s ability to function.
Medical Experts and Brain Injuries
Medical experts often struggle to give an accurate prognosis for a brain injury, as the rate of recovery is unclear. Some people may recover with enough time and rest, while others require varying rehabilitation lengths. In some cases, the injured person’s condition may not improve and could even worsen.
However, medical experts can accurately say that even mild brain injuries cause permanent damage. Therefore, if you’ve suffered a brain injury, there is always a possibility that you will experience lifelong challenges afterward.
How To Prove a Brain Injury in Court
Proving that you suffered a brain injury can be difficult if there’s no apparent injury on imaging scans. However, there are still ways to show a brain injury in court, including:
- Medical Records and Documentation: Medical professionals run several tests to screen for a brain injury and will document the results in your medical records. For example, you may have images from CT and MRI scans showing a visible injury or ratings on diagnostic tests like the Glasgow Coma Scale and assessments of brain function like memory tests. These results can be used to prove a brain injury.
- Evidence of Past Functional Abilities: The defendant’s lawyer might claim that you weren’t injured, were always impaired, or exaggerated your injuries. To refute this, you can provide evidence that you were not previously impaired, like pictures or videos taken before the injury of you performing tasks that you can no longer do.
- Testimony of Medical Experts: Many people don’t know that certain regions in the brain control specific functions, nor are they familiar with long-term symptoms of brain injuries. Medical professionals can testify that your symptoms are indicative of a previous brain injury, explain what part of your brain was affected, and verify your current treatment with the court.
- Testimony of Witnesses: If somebody else witnessed the accident that caused your brain injury, they can testify about the circumstances and scene of the accident. Witnesses can also attest to your previous abilities and personality versus current limitations and behaviors.
For example, you were a mechanic, and your brain injury made you too uncoordinated to continue working. Your manager at the auto shop could testify that you didn’t have any movement or coordination problems before your TBI and that your current mobility problems prevent you from safely working on cars.
- Hire a Skilled Attorney: Handling a legal case on your own is difficult at the best of times, and even more so after a brain injury. A California brain injury lawyer at Berg Injury Lawyers can help you handle the complexities of your brain injury case and represent you in court.
We can investigate your case, gather evidence, and craft a well-documented claim to get you a fair settlement. If the negligent party’s insurance doesn’t pay your claim, an attorney can fight for maximum damages on your behalf in court.
Berg Injury Lawyers Can Help
Even though you have the right to seek compensation after suffering a brain injury, taking on a lawsuit after a TBI can seem challenging. Your attorney from Berg Injury Lawyers can take over the legal aspects of your case and win you fair compensation so you can focus on recovery.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation.
