Any injury has the potential to change a victim’s life, but a traumatic brain injury can have widespread impacts that often present much differently than other physical injuries. Traumatic brain injuries are injuries caused by a blow to the head or skull in situations like motor vehicle accidents, assaults, slip and falls, and many more types of personal injuries. Handling a traumatic brain injury case requires a deep understanding of personal injury law to quantify the many long-term damages that a victim will suffer. Therefore, working with experienced brain injury lawyers is one of the most critical steps that victims and their loved ones can take after addressing any immediate medical issues.
A severe TBI, unlike other injuries, may go unnoticed or undiagnosed for a while as a victim writes it off as just post-accident fogginess or headaches. If you have been in an accident and had any sort of trauma to your head or skull, you must meet with your doctor immediately. The sooner a medical professional can address an injury to the brain, the more chance they may have to provide you with effective treatment to mitigate the symptoms and help you move towards the best possible recovery. Waiting to diagnose and treat a victim that has suffered a brain injury is dangerous and can lead to avoidable but long-term severe side effects.
Contact CarAccidentAttorney.com To Connect With a Brain Injury Lawyer in Jacksonville, FL
CarAccidentAttorney.com is an attorney and medical referral service. After a head injury, spending time trying to find a brain injury attorney can seem like too much stress for a victim or their family to take on. In many instances, a victim may ultimately settle with an insurance company for far less than they deserve after never getting around to partnering with a lawyer. CarAccidentAttorney.com makes it easy for personal injury victims to connect with brain injury attorneys in their area so they can keep focusing on their personal and medical needs without the added effort that goes into calling law firms, hoping to find an available lawyer, and going through several initial consultations to find the right attorney.
Take a look below to learn more about traumatic brain injury cases, and contact us as soon as possible to take advantage of our referral service. You do not need to go through the process of recovering damages for your head injuries while you are trying to get your life back on track — personal injury lawyers are available now to help you get the money you deserve while giving you space and peace of mind that can help you focus on recovery.
Types of Traumatic Brain Injuries
The following categories are overviews of the types of brain injuries caused by trauma or sometimes from medical malpractice. This information is meant to give you a general sense of each type of TBI and does not go into great detail about the science or the actual long-term impacts. Ensure that you speak with a doctor immediately if you suspect that either you or a loved one has suffered a brain injury to ensure that a proper treatment plan is developed and executed promptly.
Once your medical care is established, you can start thinking about working with a brain injury attorney in Jacksonville.
Concussions
Concussions are the most common type of injury to the head, caused by a blow to the skull that causes the brain to bounce or rattle and leads to chemical changes in the brain itself. Mild concussions may have symptoms like headaches and mild vertigo for a few days, while serious concussions can take weeks or months to heal and have symptoms like mood changes, memory loss, constant headaches and sensitivity to light, and more.
Intracranial Hematomas
An intracranial hematoma happens when a blood vessel ruptures and the blood pools in any cavity in the area. These can happen either inside or outside of the brain, and like any other TBI, will require immediate medical intervention to keep this brain injury from turning into a wrongful death case.
Skull Fractures
Skull fractures are severe injuries for several reasons. Fragments of bone may cause a secondary brain injury, infections might lead to severe issues with brain function and health, and more. Some skull fractures may not cause any brain injuries at all, but this is an exception — an impact strong enough to fracture the bone is likely strong enough to at least provoke a concussion, if not additional injuries.
Contusions/Coup-Contrecoup
Contusions, or bruises, are often confused with hematomas since they both involve pooling blood. A contusion, however, is not pooling blood in empty spaces — a brain contusion is a bruise on the brain itself, meaning that it causes bleeding and swelling all around the area of the impact or other injury.
Diffuse Axonal Injury
A diffuse axonal injury, or DAI, is an injury caused by the brain twisting or shifting rapidly, often in a motor vehicle crash or a different high-impact collision, that causes the connecting fibers of the brain — known as axons — to break and disconnect. These disconnections can lead to loss of consciousness, ongoing confusion, memory loss, sleep-related problems, nausea and vomiting, and more.
Calculating Damages For a Traumatic Brain Injury
To calculate damages in brain injury cases, Jacksonville brain injury attorneys will need to closely look at the many impacts that the injury victims have suffered. Whether or not the victim will make a full recovery after their Jacksonville brain injury, there are likely long-term damages that go beyond medical bills and lost wages, each of which is extremely important but only tell a small part of the overall story.
Brain injuries have widespread effects on victims and their loved ones, and working with an attorney is one of the best ways to make sure that each of these effects is identified, cataloged, and quantified before your lawyer steps into negotiations with the insurance company or defense attorneys representing the party who is responsible for your brain injuries.
Economic Damages
Economic damages include all impacts of your brain injury that have set and measurable dollar values, including your lost wages and medical bills but extend beyond that to fit a range of others. Any service that you need to pay for that you would have otherwise performed yourself if not for your brain injuries, such as driving, grocery shopping, cleaning, and more, should also be included in this category since you would not need to rely on these services if you were not in an accident caused by reckless or dangerous behavior of the at-fault party.
Non-economic Damages
These types of damages after a brain injury include the “intangible” effects, such as the pain and suffering that victims endure from brain injuries, as well as the emotional issues that are almost certain to come along with these types of wounds. Brain injuries can lead to extensive emotional suffering like depression, mood swings, changes in personality, anxiety, fear, and more. Each of these brain injury symptoms should be compensated fairly, and your brain injury lawyer will fight to ensure that this is the case.