West Palm Beach Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyers
Fighting for Brain Injury Victims
Brain injuries can affect memory, cognition, personality, and the ability to work. Since the full extent of brain injuries aren’t always immediately apparent after the accident, the full impact on a person’s life and livelihood can take weeks or months to become clear. A strong case requires the right evidence gathered as soon as possible, and an attorney with experience and expertise in how brain injury cases are won.
Lesser, Landy, Smith & Siegel, PLLC has represented seriously injured people across West Palm Beach since 1927. As a third-generation Florida personal injury law firm with more than 300 years of combined attorney experience, we know what it takes to build a brain injury case that recovers maximum compensation for our clients.
Types of Brain Injuries
Brain injuries are categorized by how they happen and what part of the brain they affect. The category determines the medical treatment required, the experts needed at trial, and the kinds of damages that can be proven.
Closed Head Injuries
A closed head injury happens when the brain hits the inside of the skull during sudden head motion, without any object penetrating the skull from outside. Closed head injuries are the most common type seen in car accidents and slip-and-fall cases, and the damage can range from a mild concussion to bleeding on the brain that requires emergency surgery.
Penetrating or Open Head Injuries
A penetrating brain injury occurs when an object breaks through the skull and damages brain tissue directly. Gunshot wounds, sharp objects, and severe blunt force trauma can produce this category of injury, which carries a high risk of permanent disability or death.
Diffuse Axonal Injury
Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) results from rapid rotation of the brain inside the skull, which tears the nerve fibers that connect different brain regions. DAI is one of the more devastating brain injury types, and high-speed car and motorcycle accidents are a leading cause.
Concussions and Mild TBIs
A concussion is technically classified as a mild TBI, but the word “mild” can be misleading. A single concussion can cause weeks or months of cognitive symptoms, and repeated concussions, particularly when one happens before another has healed, can lead to lasting cognitive impairment.
Anoxic and Hypoxic Brain Injuries
Anoxic and hypoxic brain injuries occur when the brain is deprived of oxygen, either entirely or partially. Causes can include surgical errors, anesthesia complications, near-drowning, and cardiac events that go unaddressed in a hospital setting. Cells in the brain start to die within minutes of oxygen loss, and the damage can be permanent.
Our brain injury attorneys have fought for clients in each category and know the medical and legal distinctions each injury type requires.
Causes of Brain Injuries in West Palm Beach Cases
Our attorneys regularly handle cases caused by:
- Car, truck, and motorcycle accidents
- Slip and fall accidents on dangerous property
- Construction site accidents and falls from heights
- Medical malpractice, including surgical errors, delayed diagnosis of stroke, and anesthesia complications
- Nursing home abuse and neglect, particularly unattended falls
- Defective products, including helmets, child car seats, and industrial equipment
- Assaults and acts of violence on negligently secured property
Cause of injury determines what evidence needs to be preserved, which experts are required, and who may share liability. If your brain injury resulted from any of the above situations and another party’s negligence was a factor, you may have grounds for a personal injury case in Florida.
Causes of Brain Injuries in West Palm Beach Cases
Our attorneys regularly handle cases caused by:
- Car, truck, and motorcycle accidents
- Slip and fall accidents on dangerous property
- Construction site accidents and falls from heights
- Medical malpractice, including surgical errors, delayed diagnosis of stroke, and anesthesia complications
- Nursing home abuse and neglect, particularly unattended falls
- Defective products, including helmets, child car seats, and industrial equipment
- Assaults and acts of violence on negligently secured property
Cause of injury determines what evidence needs to be preserved, which experts are required, and who may share liability. If your brain injury resulted from any of the above situations and another party’s negligence was a factor, you may have grounds for a personal injury case in Florida.
Proving Negligence in a Brain Injury Case
A brain injury alone does not create a personal injury case in Florida. To recover compensation, you need to prove that another party caused the injury through negligence. The four required elements are:
- The other party owed you a duty of care
- The other party breached that duty
- The breach caused your brain injury
- You suffered damages as a result
The first two elements are usually straightforward. For example, a driver who ran a red light owed every other driver on the road a duty to obey traffic signals. The hospital that left a patient unmonitored owed that patient adequate care. Breach of duty is usually documented in a police report, witness statements, or treatment records.
The defense may try to argue the brain injury existed before the accident, that it healed on its own, or that the symptoms have a psychological rather than physical origin. To defeat those arguments, it requires medical records, imaging, and expert testimony, assembled from the start of the case.
Insurance Company Tactics in Brain Injury Cases
Brain injury symptoms can take days or weeks to develop. People walk away from car crashes and falls feeling shaken but otherwise fine, only to develop headaches, memory problems, mood changes, and cognitive difficulties later. Insurance carriers use that delay to argue the symptoms came from somewhere else.
Beyond the timing argument, our attorneys see the same defenses raised case after case:
- Pointing to gaps in medical treatment as evidence the injury healed or was never serious
- Disputing imaging results, particularly when standard CT scans read as normal
- Hiring their own medical experts to contradict the treating physicians
- Conducting surveillance to capture footage that contradicts the reported limitations
Pressuring victims to accept low settlement offers in the weeks after the accident, before the long-term damage has been documented
Building a Compelling Brain Injury Case
A brain injury case rests on a body of evidence connecting the accident to the injury and proving the full extent of the damage.
Medical Records
Every gap, every missed appointment, every visit where symptoms went unreported can become a point of attack at deposition or trial. Our attorneys work with clients to keep treatment plans consistent and confirm the right specialists are providing care.
Imaging and Neurological Testing
Standard CT scans are useful for finding bleeding and skull fractures, but they can miss the kind of microscopic damage that causes long-term cognitive symptoms. Advanced imaging gives a brain injury case the objective evidence it needs:
- MRI scans, which detect subtle abnormalities that CT scans don’t pick up
- Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which measures damage to the deeper nerve fiber connections between brain regions
- Functional MRI, which tracks how different brain regions activate during cognitive tasks
Beyond imaging, neurological and neuropsychological evaluations measure the cognitive deficits a victim is living with, including memory, attention, executive function, processing speed, and mood.
Expert Testimony
Brain injury cases nearly always require expert witnesses, including:
- Treating physicians who can testify to the diagnosis and prognosis
- Neurologists and neuropsychologists who can speak to the type and extent of the brain injury
- Life care planners who can project the cost of long-term medical treatment
- Vocational rehabilitation experts who can quantify the lost earning capacity
- Forensic economists who can calculate the present value of those future losses
Our firm has spent decades working with the specialists who can effectively testify in brain injury cases.
Compensation in a Florida Brain Injury Case
A brain injury victim in Florida may recover compensation across several categories of damages. The amount depends on the severity of the injury, its impact on the victim’s life and earning capacity, and the strength of the evidence at trial.
Economic Damages
Economic damages cover documentable financial losses, including:
- Past and future medical care, including surgeries, hospitalization, rehabilitation, in-home care, prescription medications, and assistive equipment
- Past and future lost income, including diminished earning capacity if the brain injury keeps you from returning to your former line of work
- Out-of-pocket costs, including transportation to medical appointments and modifications to your home
Severe brain injuries can lead to in-hospital costs reaching $400,000, and lifetime care costs for a brain injury survivor can range from $600,000 in milder cases to several million dollars when the injury is catastrophic.
Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages compensate for losses that don’t have a clear dollar figure attached, including:
- Pain and suffering
- Emotional distress, including the depression and anxiety that frequently follow a brain injury
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Loss of consortium, available to the spouse of the injured person
- Permanent disability or disfigurement
Punitive Damages
Where a defendant’s conduct went beyond ordinary negligence, like drunk driving that caused a serious crash or gross misconduct in a medical setting, punitive damages may be awarded on top of compensatory damages. Punitive damages are intended to punish the wrongdoer and deter similar conduct.
Florida PIP and Insurance Limits
Florida is a no-fault state. After a car accident, the first source of compensation is your own personal injury protection (PIP) coverage, with a $10,000 minimum required by law. PIP comes nowhere close to covering the medical costs of a serious brain injury, so additional compensation usually requires pursuing the at-fault driver’s bodily injury coverage, any available umbrella policies, or third-party defendants who may share liability.
Steps to Take After a Brain Injury
A few practical steps can make a substantial difference in the strength of a brain injury case:
- Get medical attention immediately, even if you feel fine. Brain injury symptoms can take days to develop, and a documented baseline at the emergency room helps connect the accident to the symptoms that follow.
- Keep every appointment. Gaps in treatment are one of the most damaging things to a brain injury case.
- Track symptoms in writing. Keep a journal of headaches, memory lapses, mood changes, and any task you used to do without difficulty that you now struggle with.
- Don’t give recorded statements to the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier. Anything you say can be taken out of context.
- Don’t rush into a settlement. Brain injuries take weeks or months to fully reveal themselves, and settling before the long-term damage is documented usually leaves substantial compensation unrecovered.
Talk to a brain injury attorney before talking to anyone else about the case.
Let Our West Palm Beach Brain Injury Attorneys Fight for You
Our injury attorneys answer questions directly, know the status of every case, and handle the relationship with every brain injury client personally. Every personal injury case our firm handles is on a contingency fee basis. We advance the costs of building the case, and you pay nothing out of pocket. If there is no recovery, there is no fee. Call (561) 655-2028 to set up a free case review.
