Catastrophic Injury and Brain Injury Lawyers
A catastrophic case is an economics case. Spinal cord injury, amputation, severe burns and traumatic brain injury all produce a lifetime of cost that no one can estimate from a stack of bills, and the defense will spend real money arguing that the future is cheaper than you say. These files need life care planners, vocational economists and neuropsychological testing, and they need them early. A mild traumatic brain injury in particular can be entirely invisible on imaging and entirely obvious to the people who live with the person.
What we do on these cases
- We bring in a life care planner while treatment is still active rather than when a mediation date is set, so the plan is built from the treating physicians' own recommendations instead of reconstructed afterwards from a closed chart.
- We get neuropsychological testing done properly on any suspected brain injury, because a normal CT and a normal MRI are entirely consistent with a real and permanent deficit, and "the scans were clean" is the defense theme in every one of these cases.
- We document the person as they were. School records, work reviews, and the accounts of colleagues and family are what make an invisible injury visible, and they are much easier to gather in the first year than in the third.
- We map every layer of available coverage early, because catastrophic damages routinely exceed the primary policy and the difference between a real recovery and a nominal one is usually an excess or umbrella layer nobody looked for.
What the insurer is doing while you wait
In a catastrophic case the defense is not usually arguing that nothing happened. It is arguing about the future — that the care plan is padded, that the person will return to some work, that the life expectancy assumption is generous, that the surgery projected for year twelve will not be needed. Each of those is a discount applied to a number that has to last decades, and collectively they are worth more to a carrier than the liability fight.
The other move is surveillance and social media. A person photographed on a good afternoon becomes the exhibit, and a brain injury is uniquely vulnerable to it, because the deficits are in attention, initiation, temper and fatigue rather than in anything a camera records. We tell clients about this in the first meeting, not after it happens.
What it costs
There is no fee to talk to us and no fee unless we win. Catastrophic files carry the highest case expenses we handle, and we discuss those with you specifically before they are incurred.
“No fee unless we win” refers only to the attorney's fee — court costs and other expenses of legal action usually must be paid by the client, and contingent fees are not permitted in all types of cases.
Results in this area
- $4.75MTraumatic brain injury, rear-end collisionVerdict · 2023
- $2.2MSpinal cord injury, multi-vehicle collisionSettlement · 2025
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Every case is different, and the value of any case depends on facts that are specific to it.
Questions we get about these cases
My scans came back normal but I am not the same. Is there still a case?
Frequently, yes. A mild traumatic brain injury is a functional diagnosis, not a radiological one — the standard imaging done in an emergency department is looking for bleeding and fracture, and it is expected to be normal in exactly the cases we are describing. The evidence that carries a claim like this is neuropsychological testing, treating-physician records, and the accounts of people who knew the person before. All three take time to assemble and none of them appears on a scan.
What is a life care plan?
A costed projection, built by a qualified planner from the treating physicians' recommendations, of the medical care, equipment, therapy, medication, home modification and attendant care a person is expected to need for the rest of their life. It is the backbone of the future-damages case, and its credibility depends almost entirely on whether it was built from the actual treating record or assembled late from assumptions.
Who pays for medical care while the case is pending?
Usually some combination of health insurance, medical payments coverage on an auto policy, and providers willing to treat on a lien against the eventual recovery. Each route has consequences for what the case is worth net of repayment obligations, and the choices made in the first months determine how much of a settlement actually reaches the client. We would rather have that conversation at the start than explain it at the end.
How long do these cases take?
Longer than people want, and for a reason worth understanding: a case cannot be valued properly until the medical picture has stabilized enough to project forward. Settling before then means guessing at the largest component of the claim. We would rather tell you honestly that a case needs another year than hand you a number that turns out to be short by a decade of care.
Tell us what happened.
Three steps, about two minutes. A lawyer reads every one of these.