Brain Injury & Concussion
Brain Injuries are some of the most complex cases. Having a personal injury attorney on your side through your case, and claim makes a big difference in not only your compensation but the long-term ability to take care of yourself and live your life beyond an injury.
Types of Brain Injuries
There are many types of brain injuries that can be caused by a variety of incidents such as oxygen deprivation, being hit in the head with a blunt object, getting a concussion, being in a car crash, a workplace injury and even childbirth.
These injuries can be broken down into two main categories, Toxic, Anoxic or Traumatic. Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) can be broken down into mild, moderate or severe. Concussions usually fall into the mTBI category but in the long run this does not mean it won’t have severe impacts on your life or your ability to do the things you love.
After all, a brain injury is still a brain injury, even if it’s mild.
Brain injuries and concussions are severely underdiagnosed because symptoms are not reported right away, because symptoms develop over time with most brain injuries.
Ultimately, no matter how you are injured, it’s important to document your injury, and even how your life changes after a brain injury. We recommend writing things down or journaling on a regular basis, at a minimum weekly, and daily for the clearest ways to see how your life is being impacteed.
Why are Brain Injury Cases Challenging & What to Do if You Might Have One?
Document, Document, Document. We cannot stress this enough. It is important that after an accident or injury you document how the accident happened, what took place after the injury, whether you were unconscious, and what changes you notice in the days and weeks after the injury occurred. If physical symptoms resolve such as neck pain or stiffness and you are still having headaches, brain fog, struggling to find words, or processing information, even remembering the details like you used to, this is a good indication that you may, in fact, have had a concussion or more severe brain injury.
There is no easy way to objectively diagnose brain injuries. There are different tests that can help medical providers identify deficits or injuries to the brain. The biggest thing here is comparing how you were prior to your accident or injury versus how you are today and the different changes that you or close family and friends have noticed. Most of the time the changes that have been noted are changes that others that are closest to us begin to notice long before we do.
If you think you have a concussion or a brain injury you can use what is called a post-concussion symptom scale and fill one out at the end of each day. This can help you evaluate symptoms on a daily basis along the way. This form is also whats used by many medical providers to understand your recovery progress and can give you insights into your recovery.
Why Would I Need an Attorney if I Got a Brain Injury or a Concussion?
Aside from needing to focus on healing, you may not feel up to dealing with the insurance company and sorting out the documentation needed to keep your case moving, and many times you may not even know you have a case at all.
Your job is to get better and our job is to bring the details of your case together in a clear way so that the claims and lawsuit process is effective. It’s our job to help you through this so the insurance won’t put you through the wringer.
Having someone in your corner and an attorney who can help you know that “you need to get this looked at and documented” is very important because many times our clients do not know exactly what needs to be documented for their claims including the before, during, and after the accident.
Brain injuries caused by carbon monoxide poisoning, motor vehicle accidents, oxygen deprivation, and medical malpractice should all be heavily documented and reviewed by an attorney. These cases can get complex and it isn’t unheard of that insurance companies will try to pair your current symptoms with previous or past complaints or medical challenges from your past. Which is unfair to you, and to what happened to you.
How We Helped Our Clients With Their Carbon Monoxide Causing a Brain Injury
While celebrating their 1 year anniversary, Heather and Jaymeson were poisoned by carbon monoxide leaking from a boiler in their hotel. Heather was 8 months pregnant at the time and everyone was lucky to make it out alive.
Their case was litigated for 7 years before going to trial, where a judge awarded them 4.85 million dollars for the permanent injuries they sustained.
Should I Get Medical Treatment for a Brain Injury? Yes, WHY?
Whether your injury stems from carbon monoxide poisoning, oxygen deprivation, medical malpractice- including injuries that take place during childbirth, a workplace slip or fall, or a motor vehicle accident, it is always important to seek medical attention right away, especially if you have lost consciousness, even if you aren’t immediately experiencing symptoms. If you hit your head and you don’t feel like yourself do not wait to seek out treatment. Don’t wait until you pass out. If you are behaving the way you typically do, speaking the way you typically do, thinking clearly, and no headaches then you should still go get looked at.
Traumatic Brain Injuries have specific guidelines the medical field uses to define mild, moderate, and severe. If you didn’t lose consciousness the insurance will automatically consider it a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).
For serious brain injuries resulting in brain bleeds or hemorrhaging, unless it is an emergency surgery situation, medical providers will often send you home to see if the bleed resolves on its own. Oftentimes when this happens and the bleeding or trauma does resolve on its own people will think their injury wasn’t that severe and that nothing further needs to be done. Brain bleeds even ones that resolve on their own, can drastically influence your quality of life.
Experiencing changes in personality, your ability to think and function how you used too, changes from your normal day to day behavior, visual processing, remembering little details, word-finding, vision problems, and brain fogginess all drastically impact the quality of your life.
Brain injury cases can also be paired with other injuries related to your neck and back, which will mean you will need a personal injury attorney who is familiar with brain injuries and complex cases.
No one should have to navigate these challenges paired with their case alone. We encourage you to work with a personal injury lawyer you are 100% confident will have your best interests in mind as they work with you through your case.
We Focus on The Details of Your Brain Injury Case So You Can Move Forward
At Johnson Livingston, we take our jobs personally. Our attention and passion has been and always will be focused on our clients. We give each case everything we’ve got. We care about the results our clients receive and we work hard to get to know our clients, their challenges, injury, and their ability to recover and live a good life. We are here to take your brain injury and any other injuries you sustained through another’s negligence seriously.
By putting our clients’ needs first we focus on doing what we do best and share your story based on facts and evidence. We communicate with you through every step of the process, making it easy for you to focus on getting better while we focus on your case. To do our best work and successfully tell your story, we rely on full disclosure and honesty from each of our clients.
Brain Injury cases can take more time than other personal injury cases because the details tend to be more complex. We want to ensure that your needs are being fully met. The good news is, that we won’t give up on your case, we will do what’s best for you, no matter what it takes we will stand for you and for your rights.
Steps in the Process for a Concussion or Brain Injury Case
1.
Set up free consultation to meet with one of our attorneys and discuss questions and concerns you have about your case.
2.
After discussing your case and determining if we are a good fit, we will schedule a secondary call or in-person meeting to customize an action plan and discuss the preliminaries of your case.
3.
Following our meeting, one of our experienced personal injury paralegals will reach out and ask any follow-up questions and collect any remaining information needed to get your case started.
4.
We will begin to establish your case. This will involve collecting information about the accident (emergency room and Doctors’ visits, insurance requests), gathering documents pictures, and information regarding the location and surrounding environment where the injury occurred, your injury and the treatment plan, etc.
5.
Your attorney will follow up within 30 days to see how your treatment and recovery are going. Everything will be documented in detail and your progress will be tracked. We follow up with you at let once a month to see how things are going and to keep you in the loop. Once treatment has been complete then we move onto step 6.
6.
We prepare a demand letter and any other necessary paperwork to send it out to file your claim.
7.
We will monitor the status of your claim, and continue to follow up with you and all necessary parties to keep it going forward. This step typically takes anywhere from two weeks to 30 days.
8.
Negotiations will follow, which can take days or weeks to complete. This is where we may settle if it makes sense for your case, move to mediation or arbitration depending on your specfic case needs.
9.
If we choose to move forward with any case that is filed with the court (Arbitration, Jury Trial) we will take the appropriate steps until your case is complete. This process can be challenging and timely and if or when we reach this step we will take you through to completion.
10.
Move forward with confidence and peace of mind knowing that our attorneys did everything within their power to ensure you were rightfully taken care of for the future.
Pricing and Compensation from Case?
Call: (801) 948-9670
Text: (801) 683-5359
When a claim settles, our fee is 1/3 of the settlement value.
For cases that are filed in the court, or litigated, our fee increases to 40% of any money awarded.
Our fees are standard in the Utah personal injury marketplace.
Areas We Serve in Utah
Davis County
Salt Lake County
Sanpete County
Utah County
Johnson | Livingston, LLC
Personal Injury & Trial Attorneys
195 South Orem Blvd, Suite 1
Orem, UT 84058
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Disclaimer: This website and its contents are intended for informational purposes only and do not intend to provide or replace medical or legal advice.