Some injury victims choose to handle their own insurance claims. While it is your right to do so, there are many reasons why it is a good idea to have a lawyer on your side. It is especially important to hire an expert TBI lawyer when your case involves a brain injury that requires technical medical information, a complicated recovery, or lengthy rehabilitation services.
The experienced brain injury lawyers at Arash Law can protect your legal right to be compensated for all the medical care you require because of someone else’s negligence. What follows are just some of the many reasons why you should hire a lawyer after an accidental brain injury.
Brain Injuries Are Common
According to the Centers for Disease Control, there were approximately 61,000 deaths in the U.S. in 2019 due to traumatic brain injuries. This number does not include the brain injuries that occurred due to medical malpractice, and it also does not include the hundreds of thousands of brain injury victims who survived their injuries.
Here in California, the Department of Public Health reports that more than 32,000 victims were hospitalized due to traumatic brain injuries in 2014. This figure does not include victims who died at the scene of the accident without ever being hospitalized or victims who required outpatient medical treatment, or thousands of other brain injuries (such as those caused by medical malpractice).
The fact of the matter is thousands of Californians will suffer brain injuries every year. If you suffer a brain injury because of someone else’s negligence, you have the legal right to be compensated for all your injuries and losses.
The losses can be significant. Many brain injuries prevent the victim from ever returning to work. The injury might require costly surgeries or in-home care. All of these costs are related to the defendant’s negligence, and you have the right to claim compensation for them in a personal injury lawsuit.
Brain Injuries Are Not Easy to Understand
The brain is arguably the most complex area of the body. It controls the involuntary processes that are necessary to sustain life, such as breathing and keeping your heart beating, as well as the thoughts and actions that define us. There has been no limit to the amount of information that scientists continue to learn about the brain as they research its many possibilities.
Unfortunately, this means that even minor damage to the brain can result in incredibly complex injuries that affect all different areas of life. You must be able to prove the nature of your injuries and the effects they produce in order to be compensated fairly for them. Our experienced brain injury lawyers understand these complex injuries. We work with doctors, scientists, researchers, therapists, and other experts to explain your injuries to a claims adjuster or jury.
Your Symptoms
Right after an accident occurs, you could experience:
- A brief loss of consciousness
- Headaches
- Confusion
- Lightheadedness
- Dizziness
- Blurred vision or tired eyes
- Ringing in the ears
- Bad taste in the mouth
- Fatigue or lethargy
Because the brain controls every other part of the body, an injury can produce all kinds of symptoms. Entire areas of the body can stop working properly if they do not get the right electrical signals from the brain. Neurologists and other specialists are usually required to examine these symptoms further. And in addition to your physical symptoms, you are also likely to experience behavioral changes.
You might be more irritable or easily frustrated. You might feel moodier or have more drastic changes in your mood. You might also experience cognitive symptoms, such as changes in memory or concentration.
(These cognitive symptoms can also exacerbate irritability and moodiness in a vicious cycle.) These symptoms are common after a serious brain injury. You are entitled to compensation for all necessary mental health treatment, as well as your medical treatments and physical rehabilitation.
The Potential Complications of a Brain Injury
In addition to these mental health challenges, you may also face medical complications as a result of your brain injury. The Mayo Clinic reports that these complications can include:
- Headaches
- Vertigo
- Seizures
- Infections
- Blood vessel damage (which can lead to strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, muscle infarctions, and other potentially fatal conditions)
- Fluid buildup in the brain (hydrocephalus)
Sometimes, these complications can reduce a brain injury victim’s overall life expectancy. You are entitled to compensation for this loss, as well. It might seem strange to put a dollar value on the loss of five or ten years of your life, but attorneys work with expert witnesses to do this in order to prove the fair value of your expected loss of life.
Your Prognosis
The prognosis for brain injuries varies greatly. Your case will be affected by how you were injured, how extensive the damage was, how soon you were able to get medical treatment, and any underlying medical conditions you have that complicate your recovery. Fair compensation in a brain injury case is specific to each individual injury victim. Everyone will have a different prognosis for recovery, so it is important to work with an experienced brain injury lawyer who knows how to explain your injuries and prognosis to prove the fair value of your claim.
Brain Injuries Can Happen in Many Different Ways
There are many ways that a brain injury can occur. Your lawyer must prove who was at fault and why, so be sure to hire an attorney with experience handling your particular type of accident case. What follows are some of the most common causes of brain injuries.
Car Accidents
Car accidents involve serious forces that can cause extensive damage. Pedestrians are at a particularly high risk of suffering brain injuries because they have no protection between their heads and the car or road that it is forced against. Bicyclists and motorcycle riders have helmets, though they are not always able to withstand the full force of a collision with a fully-loaded vehicle. Vehicle occupants can also suffer brain injuries, even though they are protected by seatbelts and airbags.
Medical Malpractice
Most accidental brain injury cases involve trauma to the head (as in a car accident or sporting injury). But sometimes, brain injuries are medical in nature. If, for example, a doctor administered the wrong medication and you stopped breathing, your brain could be deprived of oxygen long enough to damage it.
This injury is not traumatic in nature because there was no physical blow to your head. Nonetheless, you have suffered a brain injury, and you are entitled to compensation for it. Medical malpractice claims also arise in cases of brain injuries that result from abuse or neglect in nursing homes.
Premises Liability
Nursing homes and care facilities can be held liable for medical malpractice committed by their staff members. They can also be held accountable for dangerous conditions on the property that lead to brain injuries. If, for example, an elderly patient had trouble getting around, she might be more likely to slip in a puddle of spilled water. Many of these care facilities are hired for the specific purpose of helping patients with physical limitations.
For this reason, they owe their clients a higher duty of care than other business owners, and it can be easier to hold them liable for injuries that occur on their premises. Nursing homes are not, of course, the only business where a customer could suffer a brain injury. Customers slip and fall in grocery stores, especially in the produce section. Children can be injured while running on the wet sidewalks at a waterpark.
The owners and managers of these facilities have an obligation to actively inspect their premises and make them safe for the customers who are invited onto the property for the owner’s financial benefit. Private homeowners do not have to make their land safe for guests, but they have to warn them of any hidden dangers. Landlords must take the additional step of ensuring that the common areas are safe for residents.
In some cases, a brain injury might be the result of a violent crime. Even if your attacker is not prosecuted, it might be possible to file a personal injury claim against the owner of the property where the crime occurred. Imagine, for example, that there is a dark stairwell in a parking garage.
It is poorly lit and not visible by the security cameras. The garage owner knows that crimes have happened in the stairwell in the past but does not want to spend money to improve the area. A victim who is assaulted in the stairwell could hold the garage owner liable for failing to make the premises safe for guests who park there.
Defective Products
Here in the United States, we are all protected by strong consumer protection laws. Any company that sells or distributes a defective product can be held strictly liable for injuries it causes. (“Strict liability” means that the victim does not even have to prove negligence. So long as the product was being used as intended, the manufacturer will usually be strictly liable for injuries it causes.)
Consider the thousands of consumer products that we all use every day, such as soaps, perfumes, shampoo, and conditioner. Beauty products. Towels and clothing. Household cleaners. Electronics and children’s toys. Even your vehicle is a consumer product that can injure you (which is why manufacturers will voluntarily pay for costly recalls rather than waiting to pay injury claims after the vehicles crash).
Strict liability is an effective way to hold a manufacturer accountable for your brain injuries. Whether it is a traumatic injury (as in a car wreck) or a medical injury (such as being exposed to a toxic substance), our brain injury lawyers know how to hold manufacturers accountable for any injuries caused by defective products.
An Experienced Brain Injury Lawyer Knows How to Protect Your Legal Rights
Your legal rights can be in jeopardy the second an accident occurs. Insurance companies try to use anything you say against you and twist it into something that could hurt your case. Even something you blurt out in the confusion of an accident scene could be twisted by the insurance company. There are many, many ways that your legal right to compensation can be threatened throughout the personal injury case process. What follows are just a few of the many things our experienced brain injury lawyers will do to protect your legal rights throughout your case.
1. Your lawyer handles all communications with the insurance company – As soon as the defendant’s insurance company is notified that you have counsel, they are no longer allowed to contact you directly about your case. All communications must go through your attorney’s office, which ensures that you will not say something that could hurt your case or give the insurance company any opportunity to twist your words. It also ensures that your lawyer will be able to monitor the insurance company’s actions and call them out on any inappropriate actions (such as attempting to record your statement or taking too long to make a decision about liability).
2. Your lawyer knows how to find all the losses you have suffered – The largest area of compensation in many personal injury awards is pain and suffering. Pain and suffering is a difficult loss to prove because you do not have receipts to show the exact dollar amount of your suffering. Insurance companies use very simple computer programs to come up with settlement offers. Often, the total of your medical bills and lost wages is simply multiplied by a low amount (usually between one and three) to come up with the value of pain and suffering.
This calculation is an impersonal program that does not account for each person’s individual tolerance for physical pain and emotional state. Brain injuries, in particular, are highly individualized. Your losses will vary greatly, depending on what area of the brain is injured and how severe the injury is.
3. Your lawyer knows what the fair value of your losses really is – Insurance companies spend thousands of dollars every year training their claims adjusters to pay as little as possible on as few claims as possible. When injury victims do not have an attorney, claims adjusters are trained to make lowball offers. They tell victims that their claims are not worth very much, or that their case will not do very well at trial, or any other excuse they can think of for paying less than your claim is worth. Remember that the insurance company is not on your side.
They are actively working against your interests to pay you as little as they can get away with. An experienced brain injury lawyer will be able to tell you what the fair value of your claim really is (based on how similar cases have been done at trial and what those cases have settled for). More importantly, you will not have to sit back and let the insurance company walk all over you. Your personal injury lawyer will fight for compensation that is fair for your unique pain and suffering.
4. Your lawyer knows how to prove the value of your losses – So how does your lawyer prove the value of your pain and suffering? Sometimes an injury lawyer will hire an expert witness to describe the effects of your injuries. Your friends and family might be called to testify about the changes they have observed in you since you suffered your brain injury. Of course, your own testimony can be incredibly compelling to a jury. Jurors are human.
They understand the lost sense of pride that comes with being unable to work or the frustration that comes with being unable to sleep due to pain, or the tension you might feel in your relationships because you are uncomfortable and injured. Our record-setting injury lawyers have experience in presenting these losses to a jury in a compelling manner. By getting jurors to understand your case and connect with your losses, your lawyer will help them understand the true value of your injuries.
5. Your lawyer knows when to settle and when to go to trial – An effective settlement negotiation takes experience. If you hire an accident lawyer who has never handled a brain injury case, they might not understand how these cases sit with juries. Settlement discussions are based on what the value of the case would be if it went to trial. Our lawyers understand the factors that determine how a local jury will view your case and how to advocate for a fair settlement offer during negotiations.
If a settlement cannot be reached, you will face the decision of accepting a low settlement offer or taking your case to trial. Going to trial always carries certain risks. Your brain injury lawyer will discuss all the risks and benefits with you so that you can make an informed decision. Your lawyer can give an opinion about whether you should settle or go to trial, but ultimately, this is your decision to make.
6. Your lawyer knows how to file a lawsuit strategically – Sometimes settlement negotiations break down, not over the value of the claim, but simply because the insurance company does not believe you will actually file a lawsuit and take your case to court. In these cases, the mere act of filing a lawsuit can be enough to get a more fair settlement offer.
This action can be used strategically, but your lawyer must be prepared to back it up with the full litigation process (all the way up to trial, if necessary. The brain injury lawyers at Arash Law are skilled litigators. They know when and how to use lawsuits strategically and how to see them through to a successful jury verdict.
7. Your lawyer knows what your legal options are after a verdict is issued – Unfortunately, not every trial turns out in the injury victim’s favor. There are many reasons why this could happen. Perhaps the judge made unfair rulings about evidence or allowed the defense attorney to make unfair comments that prejudiced the jury. Perhaps the jurors were biased or inadvertently exposed to information about the case in the media.
There are hundreds of procedures that must be followed before, during, and after trial. Violations of any one of these procedures can be grounds for appeal. An appeal is not your only option after a bad verdict, either. An experienced brain injury attorney will know all the options and explain them to you. Again, your attorney can make recommendations about what to do, but the decision to file an appeal is ultimately yours to make.
The Insurance Company Is Not on Your Side
Insurance companies use many tactics to try to pay less than what your claim is worth or even deny your claim altogether. What follows are some of the most common strategies our lawyers encounter.
1. Denying your claim – The simplest way for an insurance company to get out of paying is to deny liability altogether. They might claim that it was your own fault, or that there was a third party involved or any ridiculous theory that does not put the blame on their client. Our acclaimed injury lawyers know how to use expert witnesses and technical data to prove exactly who was at fault for causing an accident.
If an insurance company denies your claim without a valid reason, you might even have an additional claim against the insurance company for bad faith or negligence in its claim handling procedures. The Department of Insurance has strict requirements for its licensees. California insurance companies must accept or deny in a timely fashion an insurance claim and act in good faith in doing so.
2. Blaming you for making your own injuries worse – Negligent defendants are responsible for any injuries they cause to a victim. If, however, an injury victim chooses not to get treatment or refuses to follow medical advice, they can make their own injuries worse. This aggravation is not considered to be the defendant’s fault. Unfortunately, insurance companies have been known to take advantage of this rule.
They might scrutinize every medical treatment you had. Did you get it in time? Was it necessary care? Was it recommended? Did you follow through with each and every suggestion from your doctor? Your lawyer can shut these tactics down with evidence of your medical conditions.
3. Making a lowball offer that is less than you deserve or saying your case shouldn’t go to court – As we have seen, injury victims who negotiate their own claims face hostile claims adjusters who are actively working for the other side. You should never take legal advice from someone who works for the person you are suing. Only an experienced injury lawyer who is on your side can give you a fair, impartial assessment of what your case is really worth or what a jury is likely to do with your case at trial.
The experienced litigators at Arash Law have dealt with many different types of juries throughout the state of California. We know what is likely to happen, and we use this information to help you make informed decisions about your brain injury case.
The Right Lawyer Can Make a Huge Difference in the Compensation You Ultimately Receive
It can be difficult to know how to select the right brain injury lawyer. After all, if you search for an “accidental brain injury attorney near me,” you will get dozens of options for personal injury lawyers in your area. So how do you know which attorney is right for your case? What follows are some of the most important factors to consider.
Experience
There is simply no substitute for experience. An attorney who has experience taking personal injury claims to a jury will be better prepared to win your case. An attorney who has negotiated personal injury claims before will know what the fair value of your case really is and know how to support this figure with evidence to the insurance company’s claims adjuster.
If the claim gets escalated from a claims adjuster to an attorney at the insurance company, your attorney needs the experience to be able to take this other lawyer on. Not just any experience will do, either. You want to find an accident lawyer who has experience handling brain injury cases. An injury attorney who understands brain damage cases will know what experts to consult, how to explain technical medical issues to a jury, and what evidence will persuade a jury of the value of your case.
You can interview prospective lawyers about their experience. Ask them about brain injury cases and how they would handle your particular claim. If the lawyer does not appear to be knowledgeable in this area or have a comprehensive strategy for winning your case, they might not be the right accident lawyer for your particular case.
Location
In today’s digital age, the location of an attorney’s physical office is less important than it used to be. Many clients rarely go to their attorney’s office. It is, however, important to know that your attorney understands the local area where the accident occurred. Accident cases that go to trial are heard by jurors who live in the area where the accident occurred.
Your attorney should understand how these jurors are likely to view your case and what they are likely to decide after a trial. This knowledge is important in the settlement process, even if your case never actually goes to trial. Settlement offers are based on what value a case is likely to be assigned by a jury at trial.
An attorney who knows the local area will be better prepared to negotiate hard and prove what a jury in your area is likely to award in your particular case after a trial. This strategy can elicit more fair settlement offers or simply show that your attorney is prepared for trial.
Language
It’s easy to forget that something as basic as language can be a deal-breaker when hiring an attorney. If you or your injured loved one primarily speaks a language other than English, you would ideally want a bilingual attorney. However, securing such a lawyer is not always possible (especially if your language is less commonly spoken in the California area).
Ask prospective lawyers about any language barriers. Does their staff speak your primary language? Do they have access to interpreters? Is your interpreter able to accurately translate complex legal terms and technical medical procedures? If the attorney does not have a plan to overcome this language barrier, they are not the right attorney for you.
Reviews
The internet has created a wide array of options for reviewing any type of business, including injury law firms. These reviews can provide helpful information about how a particular attorney has performed in past cases. It is important to use caution when considering online reviews. Some customers are simply unhappy no matter what they are given. (Look at any local dining review, and you will find that even the most highly rated restaurants have at least some dissatisfied customers.)
A single negative review should not necessarily be considered a deal-breaker for a prospective lawyer. If, however, you see a concerning pattern or trend in the reviews (for example, former clients consistently say that the lawyer never called them back), this could be an indication that you need to find a different brain injury attorney.
Experienced, Aggressive Accident Lawyers for All Brain Injury Cases
The best accidental brain injury lawyers in California are right here at Arash Law. Our brain injury attorneys have decades of experience, and our skilled legal team has collected over 500 million dollars for clients all across the Golden State. Our California injury lawyers serve clients in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Fresno, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento, Sherman Oaks, the Bay Area, Napa Valley, Chico, Redding, and throughout the state.
Wherever you are in California, our legal team is close by. Call (888) 488-1391 today to schedule your free consultation. The sooner you have a skilled brain injury lawyer fighting on your side, the better protected your legal rights will be.
