Understanding How a Car Collision May Result in a Traumatic Brain Injury

When your head is violently shaken or makes contact with a hard surface (e.g., dashboard), you may develop a brain injury. Such injuries occur even when you have airbags. This injury occurs because your soft brain tissue has moved around and crashed against your skull. Doing so can result in tissue damage, bruising, and bleeding. These will then affect how your brain functions and possibly even cause your brain to swell, putting your life at risk.

Symptoms of a Traumatic Brain Injury

While some symptoms may last months, others can be permanent or debilitating. What’s most frightening is that sometimes there aren’t even any symptoms. So, you may feel fine only to develop life-threatening symptoms in hours. This risk is why it’s so important to seek help when you’re in a car collision, especially if your head was thrown around or you may have hit against some, even an airbag.

Some of the symptoms you need to be especially concerned about include:

• Sleep disturbances
• Fatigue
• Loss of consciousness
• Speech difficulties (e.g., slurred speech)
• Cognitive challenges
• Memory loss
• Changes in personality
• Depression, irritability, and anxiety
• Nausea and vomiting
• Seizures and convulsions
• Loss of sensory perception
• Balance problems
• Headaches
• Sensitivity to light and noise
• Weakness or numbness in parts of the body
• Confusion and agitation

Healing From a Car Collision

Once you’ve been diagnosed with a brain injury, there will be various treatment options available depending upon the specifics of your injury. Typically, you’ll need to remain in the hospital for a while so that they can monitor and treat you. Sometimes patients have swelling and will need surgery to relieve pressure on their brain. However, if you only have a mild injury, you’ll typically only need pain medication, continued monitoring, and rest.

Long-term recovery from a brain injury can be grueling. You may need to undergo physical and occupational therapy to recover your motor and cognitive function so that you can live safely on your own. Sometimes other professionals are also necessary (e.g., psychiatrists) to deal with the many significant life changes that may occur because of the injury you received in the accident.

As you can imagine, the cost of this injury can be high. This cost will go even higher if you develop any complications (e.g., blood clots) along the way. Unfortunately, car insurance only considers your immediate needs. Unfortunately, your income may be affected for the rest of your life. When this happens, you’ll need a lifetime of significant medical treatment.

Recuperating Financially From Your Car Collision

Unfortunately, you never know when a car collision will occur. There’s no way to plan for its life-altering results. However, if your car accident results in a brain injury Blenner Law Group in Palm Harbor, St Petersburg, FL, is here for you.

As a resident in this area, Attorney Walt Blenner understands how carelessly some people drive. Attorney Blenner also understands the intricacies of the law and how to get his clients the results they deserve. The next time you’re in an accident, reach out and employ his help on your behalf.

Picture Credit: iStock

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Here’s a real life example of what a smaller firm can do for injured folks from my own practice. This happened just earlier this summer but some facts have been slightly changed to disguise identities: A woman was in a really horrific crash as a passenger when the driver lost control of the car and slammed it into a concrete pole at a high rate of speed. It was a single car collision. The driver may have had a medical event, like a seizure or was perhaps overmedicated.

The car engine was pushed back so far that the dashboard was in their laps. A photo of the front of the car looked like the pole ended up where the windshield used to be. They each had to be cut out of the car.

My client was in the critical care unit of a local hospital for 4 days with massive, but survivable injuries. She was released from care after almost 7 days in the hospital to go home and was in severe discomfort with fractured ribs and a broken collar bone.

A friend recommended a billboard law firm be called which immediately sent out an “investigator” to her home to just “talk to her”. Alone, in pain, on medication and feeling like she was being marketed by a used car salesman, she did sign up with this firm. She immediately regretted it.

This woman started calling around day 2 or 3 to inquire the status of her claim. Who would pay her bills? Should she give the doctors her Medicare information or her car insurance information? What doctors should she see? Can she get some medical care at home? This senior citizen was told that her case hadn’t been assigned to anyone yet and that someone would get back to her.

Days later, frustrated after having heard nothing, another friend advised her to fire this firm and to come and see me. So, she did fire them and she did come and see me.

As is customary, I wrote Big Firm and reminded them that their representation had been terminated and I requested a copy of their file so that I didn’t have to duplicated efforts in writing to insurance companies and in getting the police accident report, etc. However, having been down this road before, I knew I wouldn’t receive anything from Big Firm because……they hadn’t done anything yet.

Within two days, my paralegal and I obtained the police accident report, I had all the insurance information, I notified the insurance companies of my representation, I wrote for all medical bills and reports. I also introduced myself to the insurance company adjusters as the attorney on the case and I spoke with them of the severity of this incident, the hospital stay and the huge hospital bill that would be coming. I cooperated with the adjusters and built credibility on the claim.

Probably by the time Big Firm knew and processed that they had been fired, I settled the case for the insurance limits of liability with both insurance companies. It was a bit rare that the case settled so quickly, but considering the modest limits of a little more than $100,000 and the client’s obvious injuries, the insurance companies knew that the value of the claim exceeded their insurance limits, so they paid.

And, since we settled the claim before Medicare had paid out any benefits to the doctors or hospitals, we didn’t have to wait for or negotiate a lien. My client’s settlement was very satisfactory to her and she was, in a word, thrilled.

I have to wonder if Big Firm would be this far by even now, late summer.

Before hiring a big billboard firm, I have few questions consumer should ask them: Who is my initial contact? Is it a lawyer? Will I be assigned to one lawyer that I can talk to? Will I ever talk to a lawyer? If not, will I have one dedicated paralegal or case manager assigned to my case, or will I be forever in the shuffle of various paralegals assigned to hundreds of cases at any given time? How many cases does this lawyer/paralegal handle at one time? Is it dozens or hundreds? If I don’t have one of those multi-million dollar cases they boast about on TV, but one with more modest value, will my case be given equal treatment as those big cases?

I don’t have billboards; I don’t want billboards. I also don’t want hundreds of cases. Those of us with smaller firms are proud to represent our clients on a much more personal, one-on-one basis. Those of us like to get to know our clients, their families, their medical conditions and build a case upward to reach maximum settlement potential. A client should be more than a claim number to an insurance adjuster and more than a score-card to the Big Firm. “We’ve represented over 1 million clients…” That’s great, but what can they do for you?

Image credit: kadmy / 123RF Stock Photo

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