What Are the Common Effects of Traumatic Brain Injury?

How Can a Lawyer Help a Traumatic Brain Injury Patient?

It requires a great deal of effort, money, and time to deal properly with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI patients and their loved ones may experience genuine financial hardship. In Southern California, however, in many cases, a Pasadena brain injury attorney can offer practical help.

What constitutes a traumatic brain injury? What are the common symptoms and effects of TBI? What is your recourse if you’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury because another person was careless or negligent? How will a lawyer help you? Keep reading for the answers you may need.

How Common Are Traumatic Brain Injuries?

Every brain injury is unique. A TBI may affect one part of the brain, several areas, or all of the brain. The severity of a TBI depends on the location of the impact and the amount and type of force behind the impact.

Over 1.5 million people in the U.S. sustain TBIs each year. Most TBI victims are treated by a doctor and released, but TBIs are responsible for approximately 50,000 fatalities each year, and roughly 125,000 people annually are permanently disabled by brain injuries.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over three million people in the U.S. currently live with a permanent disability because of a traumatic brain injury.

What Are the Causes of Traumatic Brain Injuries?

Traumatic brain injuries are complicated injuries that may cause a wide range of symptoms and effects. The most common causes of traumatic brain injuries are traffic crashes, falls, sports injuries, explosions, and intentional violence.

Slipping or tripping and falling is the leading cause of traumatic brain injuries in the United States. Falls are linked to over one in three brain injuries. Traffic accidents are the second leading cause (17 percent), and assaults are the cause of approximately 11 percent of TBIs.

The leading cause of TBI in the military is explosions. Sports injuries are the leading cause of TBIs suffered by persons under age 21.

What Are the Symptoms of TBI?

Because every TBI is different, the symptoms of traumatic brain injuries are also different. Many TBI patients find it difficult to focus or concentrate. Symptoms of TBI may also include headaches, mood swings, partial memory loss, sleep disorders, and depression.

Some TBI victims recover swiftly and completely. Others take months or even years to recover, and some patients never entirely recover from a traumatic brain injury.

What Are the Effects of TBI?

A TBI may affect someone’s emotions, and some TBI patients may have unexpected, occasional emotional outbursts. Some TBI patients may also suffer post-traumatic stress syndrome, clinical depression, and other serious psychological conditions.

TBI patients may also struggle with epilepsy and seizures. Medications can be used by some patients to manage epilepsy, and a TBI patient’s caretakers should be trained to handle seizures.

If the area of the brain that controls language has been damaged, a TBI patient may struggle with aphasia, which makes speaking, writing, and understanding the writing and speech of others difficult or impossible.

A TBI may also impair someone physically. Patients may need to use a walker, a cane, or a wheelchair. These physical effects may be temporary or permanent.

How Was Your Traumatic Brain Injury Sustained?

If you suffer a TBI in Southern California because another person was negligent in a car crash or in some other type of accident scenario, arrange at once to discuss your legal options with a Pasadena TBI lawyer.

An injury claim based on a traumatic brain injury will depend on the specifics of how the injury occurred. In some cases, a brain injury that negatively and permanently affects your life may make you eligible for a considerable amount of compensation.

The most serious brain injuries require years of treatment, counseling, and therapy – care that exceeds the financial capability of most TBI victims and their families.

How Will an Attorney Help You?

An injury claim can offer TBI patients and their loved ones the financial resources they need. In Southern California, if you suffer a traumatic brain injury because someone else was negligent, schedule a free first legal consultation at once with a Pasadena brain injury attorney.

TBI patients lose nothing – and may have much to gain – by speaking with an attorney. Personal injury attorneys work on a contingent fee basis, so you pay no lawyer’s fee upfront and no fee until and unless your attorney recovers compensation on your behalf.

Your attorney will determine if another party can be held liable for the accident that injured you. If you and your attorney can prove the other party was negligent, you’ll be compensated, and the law will be on your side.

How is a Brain Injury Claim Handled in California?

Most injury claims based on TBIs are settled when attorneys for both sides negotiate out-of-court. Most TBI patients won’t even have to make a courtroom appearance. Your case will go to trial only if liability is disputed or if no reasonable settlement offer is forthcoming.

At a personal injury trial, your Pasadena TBI lawyer will tell a jury how you were injured by negligence, explain the extent of your traumatic brain injury, and ask the jurors to order the liable party to compensate you.

When Should You Reach Out to an Attorney?

Here’s how the California statute of limitations works for traumatic brain injury claims: You have two years from the date of your injury to initiate a claim, but if the injury is latent and not immediately apparent, you have one year from the discovery date to file your injury claim.

This is extremely important for TBI patients, because many traumatic brain injuries are not immediately obvious or immediately detectable.

There are several narrow exceptions to the statute of limitations, so if you have missed these deadlines, a brain injury attorney can determine if your case may qualify as an exception. But if you were injured recently, or if you are injured in the future, contact an attorney at once.

Your personal injury claim will be strong – and more likely to prevail – if your attorney can examine any evidence immediately and speak to any witnesses before their memories fade.

What’s Important to Remember?

If you’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury because another party was negligent, and if you and your attorney can prove it, you may recover compensation for your current and projected future medical expenses, lost wages and projected future lost wages, and related losses and damages.

However, the first step in the process – contacting and scheduling a free, no-obligation consultation with a Pasadena personal injury attorney – is yours to take.