Traumatic Brain Injuries

A traumatic brain injury can have devastating and permanent consequences on your life and your abilities, personally and financially, due to the extensive medical care and physical complications. Brain injuries also have a profound effect on entire families, not just the injured. The medical costs alone can bankrupt a family in a matter of weeks, which is why you need skilled brain injury attorneys to help you recover the compensation you and your family deserve.

What is a Traumatic Brain Injury?

Traumatic brain injuries occur when the head sustains a violent blow, causing swelling, bleeding, bruising, or tearing of the brain tissue. The brain controls all the body’s functions and injuries, great or small, have the capacity to alter the brain’s ability to control these functions, depending on the extent of damage. Brain injuries can range from a mild concussion to death, and are classified by levels of severity, such as:

• Mild: Blows to the head with less force are considered mild brain injuries, which may or may not be accompanied by loss of consciousness, confusion, and disorientation.
• Moderate: A moderate brain injury includes extended loss of consciousness and confusion that may last several weeks. Moderate brain injuries present physical, cognitive, or behavioral complications that can range from temporary to permanent and require specified treatment programs.
• Severe: Excessively forceful or crushing blows, or penetration to the skull and brain result in severe life-threatening injury. Those receiving severe injuries typically suffer from major limitations, permanent disabilities, coma, or death.

Given the level of severity, brain injuries have a wide range of symptoms, such as seizures, confusion, memory loss, nausea and vomiting, imbalance, incoordination, mood changes, dizziness, lightheadedness, headaches, vision changes, ringing in the ears, and clear liquid draining from the nose or ears, among others.

In addition, traumatic brain injuries are often accompanied by dangerous secondary injuries, such as brain swelling, epilepsy, brain infection, hypoxia, high or low blood pressure, and significant changes in the potassium and sodium in the brain’s neurotransmitters.

Regardless of the severity, a medical professional should evaluate any head trauma to determine whether brain injury exists and to what extent. Symptoms of traumatic brain injury may not present for hours or days, many of which can be life-threatening if left untreated. As damaged brain tissue cannot be reversed, traumatic brain injuries can result in severe and lifelong challenges, such as:

• Coma or permanent vegetative state
• Personality changes, increased aggression, lack of impulse control, depression, anxiety, inappropriate actions, and loss of social skills
• Changes in, or lack of, empathy, understanding or expressing feelings and emotion
• Amnesia, impaired memory and reasoning, and short-term memory loss
• Sensory loss of hearing, vision, touch, taste, and smell
• Imbalance and vertigo
• Difficulty communicating, speaking, forming sentences, word recognition, remembering words, forming sounds, or forming and expressing ideas

What Are Common Causes of Brain Injury?

Traumatic brain injuries can occur from any trauma to the head, including vehicle and motorcycle accidents, falls, being struck by a heavy or falling object, sports-related, acts of violence, explosions, military bombs, and more. More than half of all brain injuries are due to vehicle accidents, roughly 300,000 are sports-related, and falls, which are the leading cause of brain injury in those over the age of 65.

During a car accident, the occupants are traveling at the same speed as the vehicle. At impact, the vehicle and the body abruptly stop. The brain, suspended in protective fluid, continues to move, forced against the one side of the skull and back into another with excessive force. The devastating blow injures the brain’s neurons and dendrites, affecting mobility, bodily function, and the senses, depending on the location and severity of the injury.

The brain injury lawyers at the Law Offices of Harold J. Gerr have thorough medical and legal knowledge and experience recovering financial damages for clients suffering traumatic brain injury complications.

What Compensation Can I Receive for My Brain Injury?

Traumatic brain injuries have a tremendous impact on not only the injured, but the entire family. The costs associated with brain injuries are exorbitant, plunging many families into massive debt and facing foreclosure or bankruptcy. The most serious cases require lifelong medical and personal care, devastating most families financially. If you have suffered a brain injury at work, in a car accident, or at another’s negligence, you may be entitled to compensation for the following:

• Medical expenses: The costs of medical treatment associated with a brain injury add up dramatically, including emergency care, hospitalization, diagnostic testing, medication, potential at-home care and assistance, and follow-up visits, any of which may be lifelong.
• Rehabilitation: A brain injury causes permanent brain damage, ranging from mild to severe or debilitating, and cause loss of motor function and difficulty with simple tasks. Those with brain injuries often require extensive rehabilitative care, such as occupational, physical, speech, and behavioral therapy.
• Long-term care: Severe brain injuries can leave patients in a coma or permanent vegetative state for weeks, months, or permanently, requiring nursing home placement and care. Even less severe brain injuries can require lifelong medical care and personal assistance requiring daily in-home care.
• Home modification: Brain injuries are frequently life-altering, even if full recovery is expected. Once the medical emergency has passed and patients are permitted to go home, new challenges arise, such as climbing stairs, cooking, and self-hygiene, that may require home modifications such as wheelchair ramps, railings, lower cabinets, or constructing a bathroom on the main floor.
• Hired services: Managing day-to-day tasks, such as cooking, laundry, driving, childcare, and banking can be difficult for those with brain injuries and may requiring hiring personal assistance.
• Income loss: Quite often the brain damage caused by the injury is significant enough to interfere the ability to work in the same, or any, capacity, reducing or eliminating a source of income.

Each of these expenses alone are significant. For patients requiring multiple services, or all of them, the combination of costs is catastrophic and largely the basis for filing a claim for compensation.

In New Jersey, you can file a lawsuit for a brain injury for up to two years following the date of the accident. The claim will be denied if you file once the two-year point has passed. Ideally, you should consult a personal injury attorney regarding a lawsuit for damages as soon after your accident as possible to receive compensation earlier.

Individuals with brain injuries who hire attorneys recover more compensation than those who do not retain their services. The head injury lawyers at the Law Offices of Harold J. Gerr have a proven track record of receiving compensation for clients totaling more than $1 million.

New Jersey Head Injury Lawyers at the Law Offices of Harold J. Gerr Represent Clients Suffering Accident-Related Traumatic Brain Injuries

Traumatic brain injuries are life-altering not only for the injured, but also for their families and loved ones. Post-accident medical care necessary for brain injuries is extensive and costly, which can be emotionally and financially devastating for the entire family. Our experienced and sympathetic New Jersey head injury lawyers are the Law Offices of Harold J. Gerr understand the hardship brain injury sufferers experience and we are dedicated to recovering the best compensation for our clients to provide for their lifetime of care. Call us at 877-249-4600 or contact us online for a free consultation. Located in Highland Park, New Jersey, we serve clients in New Brunswick, Somerset, Piscataway, Edison, South River, Sayreville, Metuchen, East Brunswick, South Plainfield, Fords, Middlesex, Old Bridge, Iselin, Bound Brook, Perth Amboy, and Colonia.