New Orleans Traumatic Brain Injury Attorney
While many people who are injured in accidents recover fully, those with more serious accidents may have lifelong consequences. If you or someone you love suffered a serious head injury in a car accident, collision with a commercial truck, motorcycle accident or another situation such as an anesthesia error at a hospital, our New Orleans traumatic brain injury attorneys can help you obtain both a sense of justice and the compensation you need.
The New Orleans injury lawyers at the Law Office of John W. Redmann, LLC are experienced at assisting clients in obtaining compensation for serious personal injuries.
Traumatic Brain Injury Resources:
What is traumatic brain injury?
Do you need a traumatic brain injury lawyer?
Can you recover from a brain injury?
What is the average TBI settlement?
What is the statute of limitations on TBI?
What Is Traumatic Brain Injury?
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) occurs when a bump, penetrating injury, jolt, or blow to the head causes trauma to the brain. The brain stops functioning normally, leading to minor symptoms to serious, deadly complications. Many actions can lead to traumatic brain injuries, including assault, car accidents, bullets, and falls from high places. Anyone is at risk for TBI, including children, adults, and the elderly.
Traumatic brain injuries can range from mild to extremely serious – however, you should seek medical attention whenever you suffer an injury to the head. TBIs can be either open head injuries or closed head injuries. Open head injuries involve penetration of the skull or a cracked head, while closed injuries occur inside the skull.
There are multiple types of traumatic brain injuries that you could suffer from.
- Concussions
- Hematoma, or blood clots
- Hemorrhage and excessive bleeding
- Skull fractures
- Coup-contrecoup injuries, or bruising of the brain tissue from the head propelling forward and backward quickly
- Hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen to the brain
- Hydrocephalus, or the build-up of fluid in the brain
- Second Impact Syndrome, which occurs when you sustain a second concussion before the first one heals
- Cerebral edema, or a build-up of pressure in the brain
Depending on how long it takes for you to receive medical attention, the type of injury you suffer from, and the accident that caused your injury, you could develop significant complications after a TBI. You can slip into a coma, a vegetative state, or develop permanent brain damage or brain death. You can develop seizures, infections, frequent headaches, and damage to your blood vessels. Other physical complications include paralysis, loss or partial loss of any of the senses, and dizziness.
The complications from traumatic brain injuries are not solely physical. You can develop issues with memory, reason, concentration, and judgement. You may experience issues with speaking, writing, talking, or engaging socially. Emotional issues are also common after a TBI, including aggravation, depression, mood swings, and reduced social skills.
Do You Need a New Orleans Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer?
If you are suffering from the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury, you can face significant challenges. You may need to pay for lifelong medical treatment, including physical and occupation therapy, surgeries, medications, and mobility equipment. You may have to lose out on weeks or months of work to recover, and may not be able to return to your former job at all. You could suffer from significant emotional damage, including a reduced quality of life and chronic pain.
If someone else’s negligence led to the accident that caused your traumatic brain injury, you can claim compensation through a traumatic brain injury lawsuit. To do so, you need a brain injury attorney to represent your case. A New Orleans traumatic brain injury lawyer can provide numerous benefits for your lawsuit.
- Proving a case of traumatic brain injury due to someone else’s negligence requires significant legal training and practice. Your brain injury attorney will have experience representing clients with these claims, and will have tools to help you build a strong, compelling case.
- Your attorney will have access to significant resources and expert witnesses to help you strengthen your claim. You may not have access to these resources on your own, and your attorney can use his or her network to your advantage.
- Your attorney will help you determine what damages you can collect in your traumatic brain injury lawsuit. He or she will have knowledge of the treatment costs you may need for your brain injury, and can help you calculate your lifelong damages. Your attorney will also know how to calculate emotional losses to claim in court, including chronic pain, PTSD and depression, and emotional distress.
How Do You Prove Negligence?
Establishing negligence in a traumatic brain injury lawsuit can be complicated depending on your specific case, but a brain injury attorney can help you build a strong case. To prove negligence in your claim, you and your attorney will need to satisfy four elements in court.
- First, you and your New Orleans traumatic brain injury attorney will need to prove that the person who was at-fault for your accident owed you a duty of care. Establishing this duty of care will depend on how you received your brain injury. If you got a TBI in a car accident, for example, you can establish that the other driver owed you a duty of care to drive safely.
- Next, you will need to prove that the at-fault person breached his or her duty of care to you in some way. Using the car accident example, you and your attorney can prove that the other driver breached his or her duty by failing to stop at a stop sign or by speeding.
- Next, you will have to establish that the at-fault person’s breach of care led to your traumatic brain injury. For example, if the other driver was speeding and ran a stop sign when you had the right-of-way, crashing into you, your medical records and the police report can show that the accident led to a TBI.
- Finally, you will need to establish that you suffered injuries and damages you can collect compensation for through your lawsuit. These damages can include past and future medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, property damage, and rehabilitation costs.
Can You Recover from a Brain Injury?
It can be difficult to determine how long it would take for you to recover from a brain injury. However, it is possible to do so. Your medical team will determine your chances of recover based on the following factors.
- Which part of your brain you suffered damage to
- The severity of your injury
- Whether you were in a coma and the depth and duration of the coma
- Your willingness to participate in a rehabilitation program
- The options for rehabilitation that are available for you
Your chances of recovery from a traumatic brain injury depends on who you are and the type of injury you suffered. The brain has a limited ability to heal itself, faster soon after the injury, and the healing slows as time moves forward. Many types of rehabilitation programs are available to help you recover, from medical treatment to physical therapy and more.
What Is the Average TBI Settlement?
You can collect multiple types of damages in your traumatic brain injury lawsuit. However, the amount of damages you could collect in your traumatic brain injury case will depend on your specific circumstances. Cases can range anywhere in the tens of thousands up to the tens of millions.
Since settlement amounts vary so widely, attorneys are unable to provide an exact estimate or range as to how much you could collect. To calculate how much you could potentially receive in your claim, meet with your attorney. Together, you can sum up your economic losses and your attorney can provide tools to help you calculate your potential emotional damages.
Certain factors can increase the amount of compensation you could receive. The more severe your injury, the higher your award amount will likely be. A more severe, permanent injury usually requires longer and more intensive medical treatment, which can increase your settlement.
In addition, you may need compensation to pay for therapies and mobility equipment and could collect more lost wages and disability benefits than someone with a minor injury. If the accident that caused your brain injury was especially reckless or negligent, you could collect punitive damages as well. The state of Louisiana awards punitive damages to victims of TBI to punish the at-fault party.
What Is the Statute of Limitations on TBI in Louisiana?
The statute of limitations refers to the timeframe in which you have to file your personal injury lawsuit. If you do not file your lawsuit within this time limit, the civil court will refuse to hear your claim. In the state of Louisiana, you only have one year from the date of your traumatic brain injury to file your lawsuit.
If you do not discover that you have a TBI until a few days, weeks, or even months after the accident, your deadline will shift. You will have one year from the date of discovery of your injury to file your lawsuit. Once you realize that you have a traumatic brain injury, contact Redmann Law as soon as possible to discuss your legal options.
Don’t Suffer in Silence — Get the Compensation You Need
Many times, TBIs cause more subtle impairments. For instance, the injured person may encounter difficulty completing routine tasks or may become frustrated easily. The person may become more confused or irritable than normal, have slurred speech, or act more impulsively or inappropriately than before the accident. They may even have problems at work or alienate friends. The injured person may say, “I just don’t feel like myself anymore.”
In these cases, a TBI may have been missed in the initial physician’s diagnosis, but that does not make the impairments it causes any less real. If you think that you or someone you love has suffered brain damage in an accident, see a doctor for a full medical examination. Then contact our law firm, so we can help you get the compensation you need to pay for your medical bills, ongoing therapy and rehabilitation, and other long-term care or nursing care that is required.
Our New Orleans traumatic brain injury lawyer has more than 20 years of experience representing injured clients in New Orleans and all of Louisiana. We understand the nuances of brain injuries and can guide our clients toward legal options for getting compensation. For more information, contact us online or call (504) 500-5000 today.
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