1. Selecting A Brain Injury Lawyer.
We believe few personal injury lawyers in Southern Arizona are truly competent to appropriately handle a traumatic brain injury case. We believe the quality of the lawyer makes a tremendous difference in these cases because of the enormous effort every case requires. The typical costs required to properly present a traumatic brain injury case will exceed over $150,000. Your personal injury lawyer should be prepared to make such an investment in your case in addition to the time spent on the case. Your brain injury lawyer should have expertise in the field from familiarity with dozens of brain injury textbooks, and hundreds of medical research articles. A brain injury lawyer should have an understanding of the different demands of traumatic or acquired brain injury cases depending upon the nature of the injury: be it trauma, oxygen deprivation (hypoxia), or infection. Your attorney should know the difference between the evidence required to prove a pediatric, adolescent or adult brain injury case. Your attorney should be highly experienced with the variety of clinical experts necessary to properly present a brain injury case and to cross-examine the defense experts on these subjects.
Brain injury lawyers should have no difficulty answering the types of questions presented in the adjacent window of sample questions for your brain lawyer. Your attorney should be able to explain the different roles and the significance of testimony from each of the many experts necessary to prove a brain injury case. More than a half a dozen experts may typically be called in a given brain injury case. See the adjacent window with regards to Brain Injury Expert.
The law firm of McNamara Goldsmith, P.C., has the experience
to handle all types of complex acquired and traumatic brain injury cases. We would be pleased to explain to you how we put such a case together by:
- Evaluating the clinical evidence as to the initial acute injury assessments;
- Distilling and explaining the fundamentals of traumatic brain injury, including the critical importance of the mechanisms of injury;
- Retaining the experts from typically a dozen fields of medicine;
- Explaining the pediatric aspects of brain injury which is, in fact, a "developing disability" which presents special proof requirements;
- Identifying the necessary neuroimaging to prove a case, whether it was actually performed for clinical treatment purposes or not;
- Proving the fundamental functional disabilities presented by a brain injury, and, in particular, injury to the frontal cortex, including the frontal lobes, temporal lobes, corpus callosum, and amygdale;
- Explaining the benefits and limitations of the neuropsychological assessments;
- Explaining the benefits and limitations of the neurological assessments;
- Explaining the benefits and limitations of the psychiatric assessments;
- Assembling a team of experts who can predict the long-term prognosis for a patient, including the necessary presentation of the costs associated with future medical needs and economic losses;
- Proving the injury to other family members due to a loved one's brain injury, and the typical social ramifications of this loss; and
- Identifying the brain injury patient's options for potential recovery, as well as maintaining a safe and productive existence.
2. Some General Thoughts on TBI.
Acquired and traumatic brain injury (TBI) cases are the most complex of all personal injury claims due to the enormous complexity of the brain and the wide spectrum of injury that can occur. As the master organ, the brain controls virtually every function of the body, and the brain cells are unlike those of any other organ in the human body. The cells of every other organ are constantly dying and being replaced with new cells. However, by the time of a normal birth, a human being has all the brain cells the person will ever have for life. When a person suffers brain damage due to any mechanism, the resulting destruction of neuron cell bodies are, by definition, permanent in nature. They can never be replaced.
Understanding the medical aspects of brain injury requires more than the integration of a patient's clinical reports from numerous medical specialists. To truly understand the nature and severity of a brain injury requires an understanding of the research in numerous fields of medicine and advanced assessments of a patient which goes well beyond care typically provided by clinical medical providers.
Many experts believe that just as evolution was to the 19 th century, and genetic research was to the 20 st century, the biology of the mind will predominate medical advancements in the 21 st century. Only now are scientists truly beginning to understand the molecular biology of "cognition." What is a medical challenge to scientists is similarly a communication challenge for lawyers. The attorney representing a traumatically brain injured client must prove two realities to the jury. First, the degree of the organic damage must be proven to the jury. Secondly, the jury must be educated to the reality that the human brain contains the soul of humanity. It is the physical location of a person's personality; and it "contains" who we are as human beings. In particular, the frontal lobes constitute two-thirds of the human brain and are responsible for an endless multitude of cognitive processes frequently described as "executive function." These functions include memory, speech, language skills, mood and affect, personality and self awareness. They control the most important information processing: the ability to reason so as to conduct oneself appropriately in terms of socializing. The frontal lobes control all of the emotions, including fear and impulse. They control judgment, and, in particular, moral judgment. They make civilized behavior possible. Unfortunately, because the frontal lobes are a bottleneck, or a point of convergence, significant damage virtually anywhere else in the brain may damage the function of the frontal lobes, and vice versa. The literature describes this as the " noise summation" effect: the aggregation of faulty signals which take place in the pre-frontal cortex following diffuse brain injury.
In brain injury cases, there is a direct connection between "mental" disorders and the known "physical" disorder or organic damage. The mind and body are truly one in brain injury cases. In short, a challenge for the brain injury lawyer is to fully understand how to convey this fact to a jury through scientific evidence.
3. Severe Brain Injury.
The families of individuals suffering from severe traumatic brain injury are frequently told the best way to cope with what has happened to their families is to accept the loss almost like a death in the family. This is because the person who existed prior to the TBI is gone, and a new person, usually with significant problems, must be accepted as he or she is. Unfortunately, this kind of rationalizing is more difficult in pediatric and adolescent TBI cases, because the injury tends to reveal itself slowly over time. It is only as the child develops neurologically that the full extent of the damage can be observed.
4. Free Consultation.
The attorneys at McNamara Goldsmith, P.C., are available for free consultations to discuss our ability to handle these cases, and to explain what would be involved in pursuing a brain injury case. Contact us at (520) 624-0126.
