Over 5.3 million people in the United States live with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), and 1.5 million people in the country suffer from TBIs each year. These injuries frequently lead to hospitalizations, fatalities, and permanent disability. A lawyer might be able to help you if you sustained a brain injury as a consequence of an automobile accident.

Discover when and why you should engage an accident attorney to look after your case.

The injuries are worse than you expected.

Even a “minor” traumatic brain injury can change a victim’s life. When determining the severity of an injury, clinicians consider factors including loss of consciousness, the capacity to respond to sounds, the ability to recall memories (both short- and long-term), the capacity to process new information, brain bleeding, and edema.

Your injury may make returning to your pre-injury state challenging even if you don’t have any life-threatening symptoms. The effects of microtrauma on your ability to function can last for a long time, even if they don’t always manifest in diagnostic testing.

Microtrauma may lead to:

• Changes in personality and mood
• Distorted vision
• Headaches
• Anxiety and depression
• Difficulties paying attention and remembering things
• Fatigue and issues sleeping
• Balance problems
• Sound and light sensitivity
• Loss of smell perception
• Unsteady speech
• Extreme tingling in the extremities
• Difficulty walking or moving around

While many of these symptoms may go away, they may linger for years or even longer in some TBI victims. Insurance companies may reject claims or undervalue the severity of your injuries because many of these symptoms don’t surface on the diagnostic exams used by doctors. A New Jersey traumatic brain injury lawyer can fight for you, establish the severity of the impairment, and demonstrate how it has affected your life.

It can be hard to prove liability.

Some common triggers for brain injuries include automobile accidents, slip-and-fall incidents (mainly involving the elderly), sports-related injuries, violence, explosives, and combat-related injuries. Proving liability in many of these situations can be challenging since several parties may be involved. You might require legal assistance to obtain some of the most pertinent information necessary to establish liability.

Damages are impossible to calculate.

Because many TBI-related impairments are intangible, they are challenging to quantify. How can you calculate compensation for sleep issues, memory or attention lapses, and balance and vision issues? An attorney can help with this.

Even if there isn’t an exact dollar amount for pain and suffering and lost companionship, your lawyer will know how to quantify the damages for your injuries. They’ll be able to determine damages using the following criteria:

• The potential need for past and future medical care
• Occupational treatment
• Services for rehabilitation
• Expenses incurred and potential earnings lost
• Punitive damages if the harm was caused by careless or deliberate behavior

The bottom line

If you have had brain damage, you may not be able to reason effectively or decide what’s best for you. A lawyer will protect you and ensure that you don’t consent to or accept a settlement that insufficiently makes up for the harm you have suffered.