A traumatic brain injury (TBI) can vary in severity, with the worst ones causing long-term disabilities and even moderate brain injuries often resulting in cognitive impairment and at least some required healing period. This results in varied damages, which can range widely from case to case. Even so, we can give you some factors to look at to determine what is fair for a TBI settlement in your case.
Calculating damages for any injury case requires gathering together all of the economic damages – medical bills, lost earnings, and other miscellaneous expenses – and calculating non-economic damages – damages that pay for pain and suffering, lost opportunities, and more. Many of these economic damages are straightforward, with some projections needed for future damages. There are common calculation methods used for non-economic damages as well.
For help with your potential injury case, call the Dallas brain injury attorneys at The Queenan Law Firm at (817) 476-1797.
What Damages Are Available in Brain Injury Cases in Texas?
Since our Texas brain injury lawyers cannot calculate the specific damages for your specific TBI case without examining your facts, evidence, and financial records, let’s look instead at what damages can be claimed, generally, for a traumatic brain injury case in Texas:
Emergency Medical Care Costs
If you hit your head, you need to go to the hospital. There, they can assess the full extent of your injury and treat any swelling or brain bleeds that could put your life in danger. From there, once you are stable, you may be released to your home or to a care facility, depending on the severity of your injury and its impact on your motor function and overall ability to care for yourself.
Long-Term Care Facilities
If you do need to go to a nursing home or other long-term care or rehabilitation facility, that will be quite expensive. These costs may be covered by your insurance to some degree, but the out-of-pocket expenses are often so high that many cannot afford them without getting them paid through a settlement.
Home Care
If you need additional nursing care back at your house, you will face expenses like the cost of a nurse, emergency call-bell services, and the potential cost of installing a hospital-style bed in your house. You may also need other adaptive changes to your home, such as putting in handrails or handicap-accessible doors, stairs, toilets, and appliances.
Rehabilitation, Physical Therapy, and Occupational Therapy
These three services are often grouped together, with rehab and physical therapy focused on getting your body moving and functioning again after a serious injury and occupational therapy focused on recovering the ability to do tasks the injury might make harder. If you face difficulty walking, physical therapy will help with that; if you need help re-learning how to feed yourself or type, occupational therapy will help with that. These costs, like the others, are often expensive – but they may not be necessary in all TBI cases, especially if your injury was more moderate.
Lost Earnings
If you miss any time at work, that results in damages you need paid at the full value of lost wages. If your time away from work is extended or you are forced to stop working because of the disabilities your brain injury caused you, then the damages are higher. Damages can also be paid as a difference between your old and new wages if the injury allows you to do some things but limits your wages compared to what your pre-injury abilities allowed.
Pain and Suffering
As mentioned, you can claim damages based on the emotional distress the injury caused you, the physical pain, the discomfort, the hopelessness, the mental anguish at your loss, and more. These damages also account for the lost ability, such as no longer being able to enjoy certain activities that might exacerbate your risk of further injury or activities that might no longer be possible if you are now disabled.
Other Expenses
Any other expenses or bills you faced because of the injury can also be claimed. This can include the cost of childcare or help with chores around the house that your injury prohibits you from doing (temporarily or permanently).
Calculating Damages for a Traumatic Brain Injury in Texas
Once you have all of these damages listed, it is time to calculate the values for your case. When you go to calculate many of these damages, the only thing you need to do is collect the bills and total them up. However, if you face any ongoing expenses or damages, they are harder to calculate, as are pain and suffering damages.
Ongoing Damages
Additional medical care and lost wages you will face going forward will need to be valued and included in any settlement. It may be hard to know what your needs will be 5 years or 10 years out from your initial TBI, and it may be hard to predict how well your recovery will have gone by that point. Even so, our lawyers can work with medical experts and financial experts to help come up with reasonable estimates and proof to back up these estimates in court.
The same is true for lost wages, which will be based on what you lost now and will lose up until your pre-injury estimated retirement age.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering, and frankly all “non-economic damages,” are often calculated together as one sum. We start with an estimate of how severe your injury is, with TBIs generally being rather severe, even in their most mild form. From there, we either choose a per-day value for your pain and suffering or choose one multiplier that we apply to the rest of your damages.
Using a per-day or “per diem” value is often simplest in a case where your injury is healed and your recovery is essentially complete, given that your pain and suffering are finished. In cases with ongoing pain and suffering and huge effects on your life, the multiplier method is simpler.
Call Our Texas Brain Injury Attorneys Today
For help determining how much your brain injury case is worth, call our Fort Worth brain injury lawyers at The Queenan Law Firm at (817) 476-1797.