Brain Injury Lawyers in Indiana

Frequently Asked Questions

Before you come to see your brain injury lawyer attorney at Stephenson Rife, you may have questions about your case. Some of the most common questions we see have to do with costs of starting and winning your case.

What does it cost to hire a brain injury lawyer?

It doesn’t cost anything to hire a brain injury lawyer from Stephenson Rife. We charge our clients on a contingency basis, meaning we get paid only when you win. Once your case has settled or received an award from a judge or jury, attorney fees and costs will be taken from your award.

What damages can I win in a brain injury case?

You can recover two basic types of damages in a brain injury case, economic and non-economic damages. A third type of damages, punitive damages, may be awarded by the jury after your trial.

Economic damages are those which have a direct monetary value, or which can be easily calculated. These include medical bills, lost wages and income, rehabilitation, future costs of care and treatment, and funeral costs in cases of wrongful death.

Non-economic damages are those that are less easy to calculate, but which impact your life and ability to engage in life activities. These may include pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment, loss of quality of life, inability to carry out activities of daily living, and loss of consortium.

Punitive damages are awarded in cases where the defendant’s behavior was malicious, extremely egregious, or displayed wanton disregard for human safety, but did not necessarily cross into criminal behavior. Punitive damages are capped at three times the total of economic and non-economic damages, or $50,000, whichever is greater.

Is there a time limit for filing a brain injury case?

Indiana has a two-year statute of limitations for all personal injury cases, no matter what type of injury you have suffered. The statute begins to run on the date you suffered the injury, not when you file your insurance claim. If you have suffered a brain injury, two years may go by before you realize it, so it is important to have an attorney who can keep your case on track and meet all the deadlines and time limits.

The full treatment timeline must also be considered. Ultimately, the timeline is determined by the treatment course of the client. Some brain injuries require weeks or months of treatment and therapy before it can be determined whether there is any permanency to the injury. Those claims tend to be resolved more quickly.

However, if it is a more serious brain injury claim it may take longer for treatment professionals to determine whether or not the client will return to their baseline in terms of brain functioning. In those cases, the timeline would be more protracted. It all depends on the severity of the injury and the treatment course.

Can I still file a case if I was partially responsible for my brain injury accident?

Indiana courts follow a modified comparative fault rule when granting awards in a personal injury case. That means you can still recover damages even if you are partially responsible for the accident. In Indiana, you must be less than 51% responsible for the accident. Then your recovery will be limited to the percentage of fault for the accident.

For instance, if you were 25% responsible for your accident, and the jury awarded $100,000 in damages, you could only recover $75,000 in damages. However, if you were found to be 55% responsible, you would recover nothing.

For this reason, it is essential you have a skilled brain injury attorney determining fault in your accident when your case comes to court.

How We Stand Out as Traumatic Head Injury Lawyers

At our brain injury law firm in Shelbyville, we have a network of subject matter experts who know how to diagnose and explain how a brain injury relates to an accident and how it will impact the client. We won’t simply accept a treating physician’s inability or unwillingness to recognize and treat a patient who has a concussion or brain injury.

We also are very careful at the beginning of a case to understand what symptoms the client and their loved ones are experiencing as a result of their injury. We make sure that they do not simply acquiesce or internalize very real symptoms they are suffering but rather report those symptoms to their treating medical professionals in order to get the treatment they need.

As a case in point, we had one client who was in a high-speed accident with a semi-truck. Her most obvious injury was her badly fractured femur. But she also had a scalp hematoma, or “goose egg,” on her forehead, and regularly complained of confusion, headaches, dizziness and eventually memory loss.

While focusing on her bad orthopedic fracture, her treating physicians ignored her brain injury symptoms which were significant and ongoing, telling her that they would get better over time.  We suggested that the client see a doctor who specializes in concussion symptoms, and he started her on occupational and speech therapy which helped reduce her brain injury symptoms. This resulted in a better outcome for the client medically and also maximized her recovery in the lawsuit. 

Determining if a Case Warrants a Brain Injury Lawsuit

Like any other case or injury claim, we evaluate whether the evidence supports that the client suffered a traumatic brain injury. We would only make a claim if it is well supported by the medical evidence. However, it has been our experience as Indiana traumatic brain injury attorneys that victims injured in motor vehicle accidents often have at least some symptoms impactful to the functioning of their brains that warrant consideration and inclusion in a lawsuit.

Another unique challenge of these cases is that not all brain injuries have an objective finding in CT scans that can be pointed to as the cause for brain injury symptoms. However, very real and compelling medical evidence exists that a brain injury can occur even without an objective finding on scans. Those cases are a little more challenging, but we have worked well with skilled medical professionals who can identify and explain how brain injury symptoms can be caused by an injury to the brain that is not easily identified on a brain scan.

Common Causes of Brain Injuries

Brain injuries can occur in the workplace, but they are also commonly sustained in many other types of situations, including the following.

Brain Injury Symptoms

Many brain injury symptoms occur quickly after injury, but sometimes it can take days or even weeks for the full extent of harm to make itself known. Remember that any head injury can be serious and deserves to be investigated.

Symptoms of a mild TBI – These include no loss or a short loss of consciousness, headache, nausea, vomiting, drowsiness or difficulty sleeping, and sensitivity to sound or light.

Symptoms of a moderate to severe TBI – These include a loss of consciousness that can last for hours, a worsening headache, nausea and vomiting that does not go away, seizures or convulsions, physical weakness or numbness, dilated eye pupil(s), severe confusion, slurred speech, difficulty waking someone up, and clear fluid trickling from the ears or nose.

The Glasgow Coma Scale and a TBI

The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is used to determine the level of consciousness following a TBI. The scale runs from 3 to 15. Generally, a score of 3 to 8 means the person is in a coma. The higher the number, the better the prognosis generally is.

GCS classifications are:

• Mild TBIs – These are characterized by a 13 to 15 on the GCS and usually have normal brain imaging results. (Note that “mild” does not necessarily mean that the brain injury is of no consequence. All brain injuries are significant.)

• Moderate TBIs – These are characterized by an 8 to 12 on the GCS. Cognitive impairment can last for weeks, and sometimes brain damage is permanent.

• Severe TBIs – These involve a GCS of lower than 8. Comas and various vegetative states are the norm for a severe TBI.

Vehicular Traumatic Brain Injuries

Traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, can have many causes: accidents, falls, sports, and violent assaults. A little more than 50,000 people die each year in the U.S. from all causes of TBI. It is the leading cause of death and disability of those under 45. Over 1.5 percent of all U.S. residents—5.3 million people—are living with disabilities that resulted from a TBI. That’s about one in every 66 people.

A large number of TBIs arise from motor vehicle accidents, the second or third most common cause of brain injury, depending on the source of the statistics. Among those aged 5 to 24 (the data is from years 2006-2010), TBIs from auto accidents were the leading cause of death. When it came to hospitalizations for the same time span, TBIs were the leading reason for admission for those aged 15 to 44.

Misconceptions About Brain Injuries

Often, a client will come to the conclusion on their own that their brain injury symptoms will either go away or are of the type that no treatment options are available, so they will just deal with them. Also, brain injury symptoms are often adjacent to other orthopedic injuries that are more easily identified and treated by medical professionals.

Clients are too quick to simply accept statements by well-meaning but ill-informed professionals that their brain injury symptoms are minimal, imagined, or will go away without any treatment. This is why they need to contact experienced head trauma attorneys following an accident.

Brain Injury Complications and Prognosis

The initial diagnosis of a mild, moderate, or severe injury to the brain does little to inform us about the residual, permanent outcome of the injury suffered. Some of the longer-term complications of TBIs our head trauma lawyers will investigate include:

• States of altered consciousness, meaning a coma or other vegetative state – sometimes a patient who initially seemed to have a mild TBI will slip into a coma.
• Blood vessel damage, resulting in bleeding inside the brain, blood clots, and even strokes
• Damage to the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste)
• Intellectual cognitive problems, meaning difficulties learning, remembering, reasoning, paying attention, or demonstrating good judgment
• Life-functioning problems, such as planning, organizing, problem solving, performing tasks, and decision making
• Communication problems like understanding speech or writing, difficulty speaking, and difficulty following conversations
• Emotional problems such as interacting socially with others, behaving appropriately, and maintaining a stable emotional state
• Degenerative brain diseases.

On this last point, any TBI, but especially the more serious ones, can trigger a number of diseases that develop years in the future. The same result can occur if a person experiences several TBIs, even if they are mild ones. One such disease is post-traumatic epilepsy. Other degenerative brain diseases include Alzheimer’s, dementia diseases such as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and Parkinson’s disease.

Because many of these problems and diseases cannot be predicted, it is imperative that you seek medical help after a head injury. If you believe negligence was involved in your TBI, we also recommend you pursue legal representation from a skilled brain injury law firm.