If you have experienced some sort of personal injury where you have been subject to a traumatic brain injury, then it can end up impacting on your life forever. However, because of this fact, the payouts are usually rather large and so the insurance companies do everything that they can in order to avoid awarding you with any money that you deserve for the injuries that you have sustained.
However, this is not something that you have to do all on your own, there are a wide number of New York City Brain Injury Lawyer out there who can help you with your claim to ensure that you get the payout that you rightly deserve. You should reach out and use the services of a specialist brain injury lawyer when…
Your Brain Injury Impacts On Your Life
The categorization of injuries to the brain are based upon the impact that they have on the brain of the victim. However, when this is being done, many doctors often miss out on assessing how the injury affects certain functions that are used on a daily basis. This is because the immediate concern for most medical professionals is if you need surgery or not, and not if your ears are ringing, if you have a headache, or if there has been a change in your personality at all.
As a result of this, the scales used in order to diagnose and classify a brain injury centre around particular symptoms, such as responding to stimuli like sound and if there has been any loss of consciousness at all. Imaging of the brain is also usually conducted via CT and MRI scans for the purpose of grading the severity of a brain injury. However, these checks are only ever done in order to look out for clear signs of damage to the brain, such as serious bleeding.
Where the issue lies with this is that the vast majority of damage that is done to a brain actually happens on an almost microscopic degree and so these types of scans will not pick this up. Damage at this level is pretty much inevitable where a brain injury has happened and is referred to as microtrauma. Even though this happens on such a minute level, it can still cause serious symptoms nonetheless and these may not appear in any tests that are done on the brain. This often leads to confusion about the true extent of your injuries, with them not appearing as severe as they actually are.
Even the most minor of brain injuries can have a profound impact on your life, causing symptoms, such as increased sensitivity to sound and light, trouble balancing, sleeping a lot or feeling fatigued, tinnitus, struggling to concentrate or remember things, changes in personality, headaches, anxiety and depression, and issues with vision.
It is typically the case that any symptoms experienced from the result of a brain injury get less severe over time. But this is not true for everyone (around 15 to 20 percent), with some people experiencing some or all of these symptoms for many years after their injury first happened. However, insurance companies like to skim over this fact and focus on the fact that most people get over the symptoms.
Any experienced brain injury lawyer will be fully aware of these types of tactics and so will know exactly what to do to combat against them so that you get the level of compensation that you rightly deserve.
The Damages You Are Entitled To Are Hard To Determine
It can be very difficult to work out the monetary value of the injuries that you have incurred to your brain. For instance, how much should you get for the resulting break down of a relationship or for no longer being able to pay attention for a long period of time? This is where you need the expertise of an experienced brain injury lawyer who can use their skills and knowledge to translate such injuries into provable damages.
Working out what level of damages you are entitled to is based upon any suffering or pain that you have experienced, any earnings that you have or will miss out on, any loss of consortium or companionship, the cost of any rehabilitation or therapy that you have had to go through, and the cost of medical treatments.
With each and every claim involving brain injury being so complex and different, there is no simple or standard measure that can be used for the purpose of working out the value of your claim. An expert brain injury lawyer is able to review your personal circumstances and work out what level of damages you deserve and how this translates to a monetary figure.
A lot of the time, the process of establishing the value of a brain injury claim is subject to expert advice from a wide range of medical professionals, including occupational therapists, nurses, and doctors, along with various other medical specialists. It is the testimony of these experts that can show how you may require lifelong medical care and how this can impact on your enjoyment of life on the amount of money that you can earn via your job.
In Depth Medical Knowledge Is Required
The use of a proficient medical expert on your case is a great way of securing a positive outcome. Whilst insurance companies are happy to acknowledge physical injuries, they are less quick to do so for trauma that does not necessarily manifest itself with physical symptoms.
In order to prove these claims, it is beneficial to get testimony from a medical expert, such as a radiologist. Where this is done, the insurance companies are more likely to settle and payout the full amount of compensation that you deserve.
The Insurance Company Tries To Take Advantage Of You
If you do not have a highly qualified and experienced brain injury lawyer representing you, then it is highly unlikely that an insurance company will pay out any compensation to you – no matter how entitled to it that you are. It is the job of an insurance claims adjuster to protect the bottom line of the insurance company and so, as a result, they will do whatever they can to avoid paying out any money at all. They do this by scrutinizing your claim in order to find even the slightest reason not to settle.
By not hiring a good brain injury lawyer, you will never get the amount of compensation that you are rightly entitled to. The insurance company wants your claim to go away and so will likely at first offer you a small amount of compensation in the hope that you accept it and the matter is settled. Once you accept a settlement amount, you cannot go back on this even if new symptoms emerge further down the line.
This is why you should always get the advice of an expert brain injury lawyer before accepting a settle amount from an insurance company.
Questions To Ask
Now that you have determined that your brain injury is serious enough to warrant hiring a lawyer to handle your case, there are a number of questions that you need to ask any that you are thinking of using.
The vast majority of people when meeting a brain injury lawyer focus on questions pertaining to the value of their case and that sort of thing. However, there is much more that actually goes into filing a successful claim for a brain injury and it is these things that you should be directing any of your questions towards. Some examples of the types of questions that you should be asking include…
What Experience With Brain Injury Claims Do You Have?
With brain injuries being so diverse and ranging from just a mild concussion all the way through to highly catastrophic injuries, you want to hire a lawyer who not only knows about these types of injuries generally, but also possess a great deal of knowledge about the specific type of brain injury that you have.
Because there are so many different factors that can cause or impact upon the severity of a brain injury, any brain injury lawyer that you hire should have a good amount of experience in dealing with these types of cases. Some of the everyday things that can cause brain injury include car crashes, accidents at trampoline parks, defective products etc.
For these reasons, you need to ask a brain injury lawyer exactly what experience they have and where their knowledge lies. If it is the case that you have a brain injury that is extremely rare, then you want to look for a lawyer who has experience of dealing with that type of injury or has some sort of professional relationship with a neurologist who can advise on your injuries.
When Did You Last Go To Trial For A Brain Injury Claim?
Just because a lawyer has once handled a single brain injury case, it does not make them an expert in that field of law. What you need to find out is how often they deal with claims for brain injury and how many of these cases go to trial. Going to trial with this type of case requires a high level of knowledge and skill from a brain injury lawyer. During this process, they are required to lead the people on the jury through what is a highly complicated process, including explaining why you were not at fault for the brain injuries that you sustained. They also need to be able to outline exactly what all your damages are.
Rather than going to trial in front of a jury, you may prefer to simply settle your case instead. Even where this is true, you should still look out for a brain injury lawyer who can present highly technical and complex medical details in a simple manner that anyone can follow. By ensuring this, it means that if the insurance company is unreasonably unwilling to comply, you can always threaten them with taking the case to trial.
How Am I Expected To Prepare For My Case?
A lot of the time, a person who has experienced significant brain injury will likely need more guidance and assistance when it comes to preparing for something such as a trial, hearing, or deposition. An experienced brain injury lawyer will be fully aware of the unique and individualistic needs that a sufferer of brain injury will have and so will be able to formulate a comprehensive plan that works for both you and them. As part of this, you may be required to practice providing answers to particular questions or watching certain videos on how to act in court.
What Fees Do You Charge?
It is typically the case with most brain injury lawyers that they operate via a contingency fee structure. This sees them take a certain percent of the settlement amount that you are awarded with. Where you do not win and are not awarded any financial compensation, you are not required to pay anything to the brain injury lawyer. It is important that before you agree to sign any sort of agreement with a lawyer that you are fully aware of what fees they charge, so that you are fully aware of what to expert come the end of your case.
For this reason, you should ask the brain injury lawyer how exactly they handle the cost of a case. Doing the preparation that is required in order to take a brain injury case all the way to trial in front of a jury. In addition to this, there is also the cost of paying for expert medical witnesses and filing fees to take into account. What you want to look for is a brain injury lawyer who is willing to advance these fees so that you can pay for them once your case has been successful and have been awarded a compensation amount.
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