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Personal Injury Attorney Las Vegas
Head Injuries Caused by Automobile Accidents
Head injuries are very common following automobile accidents. In many instances, it may not be easy to diagnose a head injury immediately following a car accident. If you have suffered a head injury as the result of another driver’s negligence, it is important that your accident attorney be familiar with these types of injuries.
Classification of Head Injuries
Doctors classify head injuries as mild, moderate, or severe. Mild head injuries are the most common following an automobile accident. Symptoms of a mild head injury include dizziness, headache, and possible cognitive deficit. Moderate or severe head injuries, which are less common following car accidents, involve significant neurological deficit.
To diagnose the extent of the head injury, the auto accident victim’s doctor will routinely use CAT scans or MRIs. These neurological tests can be used to detect moderate or severe head injury. However, these tests may not be able to detect a mild head injury. Thus, your auto accident lawyer must seek other ways of proving a mild head injury.
Types of Brain Injuries
In addition to the classification of head injuries based on severity discussed above, head injuries are also classified based on the type of damage caused to the brain.
A “concussion” is a type of brain injury where the brain is shaken up. Concussions are very common in automobile accidents involving head injury.
Other, more severe types of brain damage include “lacerations” and “contusions.” Lacerations, or a tearing of brain tissue, are the most severe. A brain contusion is a bruising of the brain tissue.
Another type of serious brain injury is an “intracranial hemorrhage,” which is bleeding within the brain. This occurs when a blood vessel ruptures or leaks.
Diagnosing and Treating Head Injuries
In order to protect their health and potential case, accident victims should follow the advice of their doctors and undergo some form of CT scanning, if recommended. A CT scan (or CAT scan) is an imaging technique that creates three-dimensional images of human anatomy. Accordingly, these machines can be used by doctors to detect structural changes in the brain following head injury. The MRI, which stands for magnetic resonance imaging, may also be used. When an accident victim suffers severe injury, the aid of a neurosurgeon may be necessary.
Proving Head Injuries
As the plaintiff in a personal injury lawsuit, it is the burden of your auto accident attorney to prove your injuries. Hard evidence of a brain injury, such as a CAT scans or MRIs indicating brain trauma, is called “objective evidence,” meaning that this evidence proves the brain injury beyond the accident victim’s own subjective reporting of symptoms. When there is objective evidence of a brain injury, it is very difficult for the insurance company’s defense attorneys to argue that the accident victim is faking or exaggerating his or her injury.
Unfortunately, many brain injuries—including even some severe brain injuries—are not accompanied by any outward signs of damage to the skull. Moreover, even some moderate brain injuries do not show up on diagnostic tests such as MRIs or CAT scans. Furthermore, in the majority of mild head injury cases, objective evidence will be lacking.
Accordingly, if objective evidence is lacking, your attorney must work harder to prove the accident victim’s head injuries and achieve just compensation for his client. Specifically, where there is a lack of objective evidence, the skilled personal injury attorney must focus on the victim’s symptoms, i.e., the extent of any cognitive deficit, and so on. Medical experts may then be able to testify, to a reasonable degree of medical probability, that the accident injury caused the aforementioned deficits. Additionally, if the case goes to trial, the accident victim’s family and friends may need to testify regarding the plaintiff’s symptoms.
Battling Insurance Company Defense Strategies
As stated above, it is not always possible, in every head injury case, to obtain “objective” evidence of injury. Insurance company defense lawyers will likely attempt to argue that because objective evidence is lacking, the plaintiff is exaggerating or faking the injury.
Additionally, the defense may claim that no brain injury could have occurred if the accident victim did not lose consciousness. An experienced accident attorney knows that this is false. The fact is, not every brain injury victim loses consciousness. In fact, even some severe brain injuries do not result in a loss of consciousness.
Even when the accident victim does lose consciousness, the insurance company’s defense attorneys may argue that a short period of unconsciousness indicates little or no brain injury. This is another common defense argument that the experienced personal injury attorney knows is false. Indeed, many serious symptoms of head injury can manifest when the accident victim was rendered unconscious for only a brief period of time.
When the accident victim does not report symptoms of head injury immediately, the defense attorneys will likely argue that those symptoms are exaggerated or feigned. However, an experienced accident attorney knows that many symptoms of head injury are not immediately apparent following an accident. Some symptoms, such as a decreased ability to complete tasks or concentrate at work, may not appear for several weeks. Similarly, chronic headache may manifest several days to weeks after the injury, as brain fluid buildup subsides, creating pressure within the brain tissues. These are just a few examples of delayed symptom onset, with which an experienced accident attorney is well acquainted.
Insurance company defense attorneys may also attempt to argue that long term injuries cannot result from a mild head injury or a simple concussion. An experienced accident attorney knows that this is false. Dealing with the long term effects of a “simple” concussion may be anything but simple. Victims of such an injury may experience problems in memory, concentration, or irritability, as well as headache and dizziness, long after the accident occurs.
Recovering from a brain injury is difficult enough on its own. The added difficulties of battling the insurance companies and their defense teams is not something you should do alone. Oronoz Injury Law can help.