How Much Compensation Do You Get for Brain Injury?

Each brain injury case is very different. It’s hard to assign a financial value to any brain injury claim before examining the accident and injury in detail. However, the severity of the injury and length of recovery will play a major role in determining settlement amounts.

The overall effect of a brain injury on your normal life is often used as a guideline to determine how large a settlement check should be. When an individual’s negligence or the negligence of a business is responsible for your brain injury, that support should come from the at-fault party’s insurance provider.

How Much Compensation Do You Get for Brain Injury?

Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) usually occur in accidents that inflict a blow to the head or cause a violent shaking of the neck and head. These traumatic events cause the brain to collide with the interior of the skull to result in damage to brain tissue. This damage then affects brain function.

A concussion is considered a mild TBI because most victims recover from the symptoms eventually. The worst cases of TBI can affect the control patients have over their bodies. A TBI suffered in an accident could also leave victims in a coma and threaten their lives.

When someone’s negligence or carelessness causes a brain injury, it’s critical that victims immediately begin seeking financial support for their recovery. The insurance company representing an at-fault party must be held accountable for every cost of recovery victims endure. Brain injury treatment might result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical care over months, years, or a lifetime.

The Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyers at the Law Offices of Steers & Associates offer a free case consultation. This allows victims and their families a chance to learn about the benefits available to them.

Traumatic Brain Injury Dangers in Los Angeles

Traumatic Brain Injuries are generally caused by violent impacts. Victims often receive their brain injuries in personal injury incidents where someone’s carelessness or recklessness causes an accident.

In these cases, brain injury patients must focus on healing while also making sure they aren’t financially harmed as well.

Accidents that cause TBI happens nearly every day across Los Angeles. They occur in homes, on the road, at work, at the park, and at stores and restaurants.

These are just a few of the common ways personal injury victims suffer brain injuries:

• Traffic accidents – A head-on collision on a Los Angeles freeway or boulevard provides plenty of blunt force to cause a damaging jolt to the head. Concussions and other brain injuries are even possible when airbags deploy to protect victims. Pedestrians and people on bikes are especially vulnerable when careless drivers strike them.
• Falls – Victims can suffer traumatic injuries in any fall. This includes a slip-and-fall or trip-and-fall at a grocery store or any public place. Victims often hit their heads on a shelf, on the floor, or on the pavement after slipping on a puddle or tripping on a pothole. Objects falling from above are another cause of brain injuries.
• Sports and Recreation – Physical sports like football or basketball create collisions strong enough to cause brain trauma. In some cases, organizers and property owners should be held accountable. Theme park rides create plenty of violent motions that could hurt someone. Victims who sign waiver forms may still have the means to ask an owner or operator for injury support. A collision while boating on a local lake could cause a severe concussion.

People in physical jobs like construction and farm work often receive Traumatic Brain Injuries while working around heavy machinery. They can also fall while working on a ledge or at a height. Anyone in any office could slip on a shiny floor or reach for an unstable handrail and fall down a flight of stairs.

A tool or appliance you bring into your home could explode or create an impact on your head to inflict a brain injury. Retailers and manufacturers could be held accountable for allowing a defective product on the market.

Symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injuries

Traumatic Brain Injuries can be relatively mild, and some victims don’t even realize they have a mild brain injury. A slight concussion might produce some light-headedness and a ringing in the ears, but victims might dismiss this as just the effects of taking a hit.

Victims might also suffer devastating consequences of a brain impact that are harder to ignore. These are just a few of the symptoms that victims might experience after an accident.

• Headaches
• Blackouts
• Numbness in limbs or a loss of control over body parts
• Seizures
• Memory loss
• Nausea
• Mood swings
• Light and sound sensitivity

Medical experts say that any head injury causing a loss of consciousness, seizures, amnesia, vomiting, or weakness in muscles is a sign the patient should go to the emergency room.

The CDC found that around 176 Americans died from TBI injuries every day in 2020. In 2019, there were a reported 223,000 Traumatic Brain Injury hospitalizations across the U.S.

The Cost of Traumatic Brain Injury Care in Los Angeles

Traumatic Brain Injuries can have long-lasting effects on victims’ physical and emotional wellbeing. Unfortunately, the financial damage a debilitating injury can have must also be considered.

A single surgery for a brain injury patient without insurance usually costs anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000. Brain surgery often requires a craniotomy to open up the skull for access to the brain. An MRI scan might cost thousands of dollars.

The cost for care for even a moderate brain injury often proves extremely expensive. According to Northwestern University, the lifetime costs of a patient’s treatment for a traumatic brain injury are estimated to run from $85,000 to $3 million.

It’s one factor that a skilled Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer will always consider. Not just the costs of the treatment a patient has received to date, but the treatment and surgeries that could be necessary once a settlement has been signed. Victims won’t be able to return to an insurance company to ask for more brain injury compensation when they have complications years down the road.

What Determines How Much Compensation I’ll Receive in a Brain Injury Settlement?

Brain injury compensation varies widely from case to case. Settlements for a serious injury can reach into the millions of dollars while a less-serious case might only earn money to pay for an emergency room visit and to cover a few days of lost wages at work.

An experienced Los Angeles brain injury lawyer will have the best idea of what other injury cases like yours have earned. A lawyer will also determine what you’ll be needing in the years to come as far as follow-up treatment and compensation for lost wages. Your likely settlement isn’t governed by a set amount. It’s determined by how much you ask for and the proof you can provide of your hardships lost wages and suffering.

These are just a few of the factors that will greatly determine the amount you’ll see on an insurance settlement check.

The severity of the injury and the length of recovery. The totals on all medical invoices and estimates on the care required in the future. The estimates on medical treatment in the years to come escalate quickly when you’ve been diagnosed with a permanent physical disability.

The amount of pain and mental suffering you’ve endured. This can include anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms you experience after an accident. Your loss of enjoyment of life. Your loss of consortium. This includes intimacy with a spouse.

Your earning capacity may be affected in the future and an insurance company would have to provide living expenses over a lifetime. Travel costs for making medical appointments and medical expenses. This becomes more expensive when brain injury victims are told they should no longer get behind the wheel.

Wrongful death benefits. If a traumatic brain injury leads to someone’s death, the victim’s family is encouraged to file a wrongful death claim. This claim demands help with burial costs and any remaining hospital bills and medical expenses. It also seeks help for the family in the future when they’ll have to cope without the monthly income the deceased can no longer supply.

The skill of your Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer. Insurance companies will trim down your brain injury compensation after an accident as far as they are allowed. An experienced lawyer represents a powerful safeguard for your traumatic brain injury case. They reject lowball offers for you and demand fair compensation for what you and your family have been through. They also represent a threat to insurance adjusters. They know that if they don’t provide adequate support, your personal injury lawyer could file a lawsuit and take them to court.

Insurance companies hate the embarrassment and costs of having to appear before a judge and jury. It’s why insurance representatives will boost their brain injury settlement offer to you if they know your personal injury lawyer has evidence prepared to go to trial.

For a look at some of the other factors that will affect your brain injury settlement, you can review our informational page on Traumatic Brain Injury claims.

Contact a Los Angeles Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) can require months of medical treatment and surgeries and you could still be unable to return to your former life. Insurance companies for those to blame for your mild traumatic brain injury may claim your recovery is complete, when in fact it’s just beginning.

When you feel the severity of your brain injury is being downplayed by an unhelpful insurance adjuster, please contact a Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney. Because what if you were interviewed when you weren’t processing your thoughts well, and told the insurance adjusters that you were fine after the wreck? You can reach out to the attorneys with the Law Offices of Steers and Associates before you speak with any insurance representative.

We offer a free, no-obligation consultation to any victim injured in Southern California. By speaking with our legal team, you can learn more about your rights as a victim of a mild traumatic brain injury. Contact the Law Offices of Steers & Associates to find out how we can help you earn what’s fair.

Allen Vaysberg

Allen Vaysberg practices personal injury law and works tirelessly to defeat the tactics of insurance companies and large corporations who try to deny justice and fair compensation to injured people.