How Important Are Experts in Traumatic Brain Injury Cases?
Experts are absolutely necessary in traumatic brain injury cases. This is because it’s the kind of damage that you really can’t see or show to a jury. You can tell a jury that a person has lost function and you can show that they can’t walk, but they don’t understand that the cause is a brain injury. Because of this, specialists and experts in these cases are necessary. You cannot proceed unless you have a diagnosis of a brain injury and a life care plan that shows what the future damages will be. You need a neurologist, a psychiatrist, and a life care planner. Having these experts is how these cases get proven and prosecuted.
How Important Is The Experience Of My Personal Injury Attorney Handling A TBI Case?
It’s very important that your personal injury attorney has experience handling TBI cases. You need an attorney that knows what kinds of experts are necessary in order to prove the case, and you need an attorney that has dealt with cases involving brain injuries before. I’ve dealt with several TBI cases in my career. Having an attorney that understands the nature of brain injuries and can understand medical records may help you understand what’s happening. In a lot of cases, brain injuries may not be initially diagnosed, but an attorney can help identify when it may be appropriate to assist their client in getting to a neurologist or psychiatrist. The attorney may also be involved in helping them find a radiologist that’s going to look at some of the brain images in order to see what might be going on. So, having an attorney that has dealt with that in the past is very, very important. Attorneys who haven’t dealt with these cases before might miss things.
Oftentimes, even if a person’s head struck a window and caused them to lose consciousness, the ER doctors will not order the proper imaging (or any imaging at all) if the client is coherent and speaking. However, symptoms can begin to develop over the ensuing weeks. Maybe their fingers or legs aren’t working right, or they’re not thinking or speaking right. At that point, all they have is the ER record with no evidence that they suffered a TBI.
If you present a situation like this to an attorney that doesn’t really handle traumatic brain injury cases, they are going to say, “We are limited to the medicals that we have.” On the other hand, somebody that has experience with brain injury cases will say, “We need you to see a psychiatrist, and maybe a neurologist.” Oftentimes a psychiatrist will be the first medical professional to perform an evaluation and make a differential diagnosis. If the psychiatrist thinks that there may be post-concussion syndrome going on, then they will refer you to a neurologist. The neurologist may order some images, and evidence of brain damage may be discovered. Then, you can prove your case. So, it’s really important that the attorney is experienced in the sense that he almost becomes a healthcare concierge. You want your attorney to have been through this before with other people.
Oftentimes the attorney ends up having to be very proactive in getting the treatment lined up. Primary care physicians can rarely properly diagnose a traumatic brain injury, so you absolutely need to see a psychiatrist and/or a neurologist. It has to be an expert in the field, and that’s what attorneys do; they make sure that the right people are saying the right things. In other words, you can’t have a dentist diagnose a broken foot. You need a brain doctor for these cases, and an experienced attorney makes sure that that happens.
Additional Information On Traumatic Brain Injury Cases
Each brain injury is very unique. Brain injuries can basically cause any of the functions in your entire body to have problems (physical functions, physical motor skills, speech, the ability to reason, etc.). Psychiatric disorders can sometimes occur when people have concussions, and parts of the brain can die. Every type of traumatic brain injury is different. Of all the TBI cases that I’ve handled, no two clients shared the exact same set of symptoms. So, it’s a very specific type of case that needs to be handled by an experienced attorney that can help navigate a client through that process.
For more information on Experts In Traumatic Brain Injury Cases, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling today.