Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyers

A valid traumatic brain injury claim typically requires evidence that someone else’s negligence or wrongful conduct caused your injury and resulting damages. Key factors include establishing that another party owed you a duty of care (such as a driver’s duty to operate their vehicle safely), that they breached this duty through action or inaction, and that this breach directly caused your brain injury.

Documentation of the injury through medical records and evidence of how it has affected your life are also necessary components of a viable claim.

The best way to determine if you have a valid case is to consult with an experienced brain injury attorney who can evaluate the specific circumstances of your situation. Even if liability seems clear to you, there may be complicating factors such as comparative negligence, pre-existing conditions, or limited insurance coverage that affect your claim’s viability.

During your free consultation, our attorneys will review available evidence, discuss applicable laws and time limits, and provide an honest assessment of your case’s strengths and challenges.

The value of a traumatic brain injury case varies significantly based on multiple factors, with injury severity being the most influential. Mild TBIs with good recovery might settle for tens of thousands, while moderate to severe injuries with permanent impairments frequently result in settlements or verdicts in the millions.

The calculation begins with quantifiable damages like medical expenses and lost wages, then incorporates more subjective factors like pain and suffering, diminished quality of life, and emotional distress.

Long-term prognosis plays a major role in valuation, as brain injuries that cause permanent cognitive, behavioral, or physical limitations require compensation for lifetime care needs and lost earning potential. Age also factors into calculations, as younger victims face more years of living with limitations and lost earnings.

The strength of liability evidence affects case value as well, with clearer liability typically resulting in higher settlements. Available insurance coverage or assets of the responsible party may also impact recoverable amounts, regardless of actual damages.

Other factors influencing case value include your pre-injury income (higher earners generally receive larger lost wage components), your role in the accident if any (Florida’s comparative negligence rules reduce compensation proportionally to your fault), and the impact on your specific lifestyle and family situation.

Traumatic brain injury cases typically take longer to resolve than other personal injury matters, with timeframes ranging from one to three years from filing to resolution. This extended timeline reflects the complexity of these cases and the importance of allowing sufficient time for injuries to stabilize before valuing claims.

The early months after a TBI are often characterized by significant recovery, plateau, or sometimes deterioration, making premature settlement potentially detrimental to your interests.

Several factors can extend or shorten this timeline. Cases with clear liability and well-documented injuries may resolve more quickly through negotiated settlements. Conversely, disputed liability, causation challenges, or disagreements about injury severity often lead to protracted litigation.

While most traumatic brain injury cases—approximately 95%—resolve through negotiated settlements before trial, we prepare every case as if it will ultimately be presented to a jury. This thorough preparation often motivates insurance companies to offer fair settlements rather than risk larger jury verdicts.

Your active participation would include providing deposition testimony (questions answered under oath before trial) and possibly attending mediation sessions aimed at reaching settlement, but these proceedings are less formal and stressful than courtroom trials.

If your case does proceed to trial, we will thoroughly prepare you for the experience, explaining courtroom procedures, practicing your testimony, and addressing any concerns. Our attorneys will be beside you throughout the process, presenting the technical and medical aspects of your case while you and selected family members or friends typically testify only about how the injury has affected your life.

Early settlement offers from insurance companies for traumatic brain injuries are almost always insufficient and should be viewed with caution. Insurance adjusters may approach you while you’re still recovering, before the full extent of your injuries is known, offering what seems like a substantial sum to resolve your claim quickly.

However, brain injuries often evolve over time, with symptoms that may worsen or new complications that develop months after the initial trauma. Accepting an early offer means signing away your rights to seek additional compensation for these future developments.

Before responding to any settlement offer, consult with an experienced brain injury attorney who can evaluate whether the amount truly reflects your current and future needs. A proper valuation requires input from medical specialists about your prognosis, neuropsychologists who can assess cognitive impacts, and perhaps life care planners who project future care needs.

Once you accept a settlement and sign a release, you cannot reopen your claim even if your condition deteriorates significantly. Our attorneys can negotiate with the insurance company on your behalf, often securing offers many times higher than initial proposals while protecting you from tactics designed to minimize legitimate claims.

Yes, you can still pursue a claim even if your TBI wasn’t immediately diagnosed. Many traumatic brain injuries, particularly mild to moderate TBIs, aren’t identified during initial medical evaluations after an accident. Emergency rooms typically focus on life-threatening injuries, and without obvious signs like loss of consciousness or abnormal imaging, brain injuries may go undetected. Symptoms often develop or worsen days or weeks after the trauma, when subtle cognitive issues, headaches, mood changes, or sleep disturbances become more apparent.

These delayed diagnoses can complicate but don’t prevent successful claims. Our attorneys work with neurological experts to establish the connection between the accident and your later-diagnosed TBI through medical evidence, symptom progression timelines, and expert testimony about how brain injuries can manifest over time. We counter insurance company arguments that the delay indicates the injury isn’t accident-related by presenting medical literature showing that delayed symptom recognition is actually common with TBIs.

Documentation becomes particularly important in these cases. We advise clients to seek proper neurological evaluation as soon as they notice potential symptoms, maintain detailed records of when symptoms appeared, and inform all treating doctors about the accident regardless of how much time has passed. While delayed diagnosis creates additional challenges, we have successfully handled many cases where TBIs were identified weeks or even months after the causative incident.

Pre-existing conditions can complicate traumatic brain injury claims but don’t prevent recovery. Insurance companies often attempt to attribute current symptoms to pre-existing conditions rather than the accident. For instance, they might argue that previous concussions, migraines, psychiatric conditions, or learning disorders are responsible for your current cognitive difficulties.

The legal principle that applies is the “eggshell skull” doctrine, which holds that defendants must take victims as they find them, including any pre-existing vulnerabilities. If the accident aggravated or worsened a pre-existing condition, you’re entitled to compensation for that worsening, even if someone without your pre-existing condition would have recovered more quickly or completely.

Our approach involves clearly establishing your baseline functioning before the accident through prior medical records, employment history, academic performance, and testimony from people who knew you well. We then document the specific changes that occurred after the trauma. Medical experts help differentiate between pre-existing symptoms and new ones, or explain how the accident exacerbated your condition.

While pre-existing conditions create additional challenges, they often make proper compensation even more important, as people with existing vulnerabilities may suffer more severe consequences from new injuries and have fewer reserves to cope with additional impairments. Our experienced attorneys anticipate and counter these defense arguments, ensuring your pre-existing conditions don’t unfairly reduce your compensation.

Yes, you can still recover compensation for a traumatic brain injury even if you weren’t wearing a helmet, though your compensation may be reduced. Florida follows a comparative negligence system, meaning your recovery can be diminished by the percentage of fault attributed to you. Not wearing a helmet when optional (or legally required in the case of motorcyclists under 21) may be considered partial negligence.

The critical factor is that another party’s negligence must have caused the accident itself. If a driver ran a red light and struck you, they are primarily responsible for causing the collision, regardless of whether you wore a helmet. Your decision not to wear a helmet didn’t cause the accident, though it may have affected the severity of your injuries.

While not wearing a helmet may reduce your compensation, it rarely eliminates it entirely. Many clients without helmets have still recovered substantial settlements and verdicts that provided for their medical care and other damages, particularly when another party’s clear negligence caused the accident.