The first call you should make after sustaining a major brain injury is to 911 for emergency medical help. The brain swells over time and you can easily develop an epidural hematoma, bleeding between the brain and the outer membrane that protects it.
After stabilizing your head trauma, seek legal advice from a reliable catastrophic injury attorney. If someone was negligent, reckless, or intentionally attacked you, our tenacious Cocoa Beach traumatic brain injury lawyers will focus our efforts on getting you the compensation or insurance settlement you deserve.
Traumatic brain injuries occur when the head or body sustains a blow and the brain is compromised, even though it is protected by a hard skull. It can also occur if something pierces the brain, like a sharp object. Some common causes of TBIs are:
A Cocoa Beach attorney is aware that injuries from some TBI accidents will heal and leave no residual problems, while others will cause complications for a lifetime. This is the critical difference when factoring in how much compensation you will need to request.
Moderate to severe TBIs may cause complications like seizures, blood clots, coma, stroke, nerve damage, and brain infections, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Although these effects usually lessen in time, some, like seizures, can last longer.
Longer-term effects on brain function may not arise until weeks or months after an accident. These, too, can be temporary, but could last throughout life. These include problems with memory, learning, are reasoning, double vision, loss of taste, trouble talking, reading, or writing, difficulty interacting with others, depression, and irritability.
Unfortunately, TBIs cause degeneration of brain cells, and is linked to contracting Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and enhanced traumatic encephalopathy, which has been highly publicized among professional athletes who repeatedly suffer head trauma.
Juries allocate blame between all parties. A clean claim is between one plaintiff and one defendant with the defendant wholly responsible for the plaintiff’s injuries. If there is more than one defendant, the jury will determine the percentage of blame between them. Sometimes, a plaintiff is also partly responsible for an accident.
When Florida conducted major tort reform, it adopted a modified comparative negligence rule, which means the plaintiff cannot be more than 50 percent responsible for an accident or they will not be awarded damages. This is a dramatic update from the pure comparative negligence rule in which a plaintiff could still collect damages if they caused 99 percent of the accident. In both cases, a damages award is reduced to the percentage of harm caused by defendants.
Florida’s tort reform also includes the length of time you have as a plaintiff to file a lawsuit for a personal injury, such as a TBI. The statute of limitations under Florida Statutes § 95.11 is now two years from the accident date, which is a decrease from four years prior to the reform. The Legislature believed lawsuits should not hang over people for too long and witnesses and evidence disappear if too much time elapses. To ensure your claim and subsequent filings are timely, contact a Cocoa Beach traumatic brain injury lawyer.
Very few injuries are as devastating to your physical, emotional, and financial health as a traumatic brain injury. Even when you recover, complications are known to occur months and years later. That is why you need an experienced personal injury attorney to fight for the compensation you will require to ensure your needs are met.
Compensation can include current and future medical care, rehabilitation, treatment for cognitive and emotional conditions caused by the TBI, including lost wages and your psychological suffering. For excellent results toward a secure future, call a Cocoa Beach traumatic brain injury lawyer now.
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