Indiana Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyers

• A traumatic brain injury (TBI), such as a concussion, contusion, penetration, or diffuse axonal injury, can have a huge impact on our life, impairing you mentally and physically while putting a serious strain on your finances.
• Although you may have grounds for a personal injury case when others are at fault for your TBI, a favorable outcome isn’t guaranteed because of the stiff resistance you could face from the defendants’ insurance companies.
• Fortunately, you may be able to get the compensation you deserve with help from Hensley Legal Group, PC, which has had proven success with major injury cases, like a $25 million jury verdict* for a collision with an ambulance.

*SPECIFIC CASE RESULTS. NO TWO CASES ARE EXACTLY ALIKE.

A traumatic brain injury (TBI) can completely disrupt the course of your life, impairing your mind and body and robbing you of the ability to care for yourself and your family, who might have to care for you instead, securing your finances and ensuring that you receive proper treatment.

Yet as devastating as a TBI can be, outside assistance may be available when someone else is at fault for your traumatic brain injury, and  you can increase the amount you obtain by teaming up with the traumatic brain injury lawyers at Hensley Legal Group, PC,  a dedicated Indiana personal injury law firm whose experienced attorneys have been fighting on behalf of the wrongfully injured since 1998 and who have a history of success with major injury cases, including:

• A $25 million jury verdict for a collision with an ambulance.
• An $8.0 million settlement for a delivery truck crash.
• A $4.25 million claim resolution for a pedestrian accident.

In recognition of notable outcomes like these, Hensley been named one of the Best Law Firms in the United States by Best Lawyers®, while its attorneys have been honored with inclusion in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, Super Lawyers, America’s Top 100 Attorneys, and the National Trial Lawyers’ lists of the Top 100 Trial Lawyers and the Top 40 Under 40.

As proud as we are of these accolades, we’d be equally proud to have the opportunity to represent you, so schedule a free consultation with a skilled Indiana traumatic brain injury attorney by calling us at (317) 472-3333, chatting with us online, or filling out our contact form today.

Common Traumatic Brain Injuries in Indiana

A traumatic brain injury is usually sustained when the brain is damaged by a sudden blow to the head. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 200,000 Americans are hospitalized and over 61,000 of them die each year because of traumatic brain injuries, and many more are saddled with a host of negative aftereffects, like disabilities and memory loss.

Traumatic brain injuries can take a wide variety of forms that exist on a spectrum of intensity from mild to moderate to severe, lasting temporarily in some instances but a lifetime in others. Some of the most common traumatic brain injuries in Indiana include:

Concussions

The most common traumatic brain injuries by a huge margin are concussions. A concussion may arise when a forceful cranial impact moves the head rapidly back and forth during an accident. This abrupt motion can jostle the brain against the walls of the skull and produce a number of symptoms in the hours, days, or weeks following the accident, such as:

• Loss of consciousness
• Persistent headaches
• Dizziness
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Blurred or double vision
• Sensitivity to light and/or noise
• Tinnitus (“ringing” in the ears)
• Clumsiness
• Imbalance
• Confused or muddled thinking
• Diminished concentration or memory
• Delayed responses
• Changes in mood, behavior, or personality

Because concussions are rarely deadly, they tend to be classified as “mild” traumatic brain injuries, though that word can be misleading, since the physical and financial consequences of a concussion might be anything but “mild,” especially when a concussion lingers.

Although an estimated 80 percent of concussions go away by themselves within a couple of weeks (about 10 days on average), patients who develop post-concussion syndrome may have to endure symptoms for weeks, months, or years – or permanently. Moreover, one study has suggested that a severe concussion could double to quadruple the odds of being diagnosed later on with dementia, a profoundly debilitating condition for which there is currently no cure.

Contusions

Further along the TBI intensity spectrum is the contusion, something that might sound mild but definitely isn’t. Unlike the bruising of the skin with which it shares its name, a contusion in this context is a term for bleeding on the brain.

Frequently though not automatically coinciding with concussions, brain or cerebral contusions can cause significant damage depending upon the size, duration, and location of the bleed, and surgery may be necessary if bleeding does not stop on its own.

While around 60 percent of “moderate” head injuries involving contusions can be resolved positively, the recovery rate drops down to 25 to 33 percent for more severe contusion-involved head injuries, and about a quarter of these cases result in long-term disability.

Penetrations

Among the most severe TBIs is the penetration injury, in which the skull and/or the brain get punctured by a sharp object, such as a bullet, knife, or tool.

Penetrating head injuries are much more extreme than closed head injuries, and they can be fatal if they aren’t promptly addressed. In fact, about 70 to 90 percent of cerebral penetration patients die before they can get to a hospital, and around half of them die after they arrive.

If they do survive, the patients may have to deal with such genuinely grievous health problems as:

• Neurological and cognitive deficits
• Seizures
• Modifications in personality
• Partial or total paralysis

Coping with these and other problems can demand prolonged rehabilitative therapy and other medical interventions that many Indiana families could have trouble affording.

Diffuse Axonal Injuries

Another type of moderate-to-severe TBI is the diffuse axonal injury, where agitation or rotation of the head tears connections in the brain. Diffuse axonal injuries can induce comas and potentially subject different parts of the brain to damage, the extent of which may be a function of the position and length of the tearing.

To make the situation worse, the repercussions of a diffuse axonal injury can be felt well after the date of the instigating accident, with recent research indicating a “longitudinal change in abnormality associated with change in functional outcome status and post-concussive symptoms.”

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Infants are incredibly vulnerable to brain damage during shaking, most often when they are the tragic victims of child abuse.

These sorts of traumatic brain injuries are charactered by the CDC as abusive head trauma, and “shaken baby syndrome” is the most common of them. Similar to a diffuse axonal injury, and similarly harmful, shaken baby syndrome accounts for about a third of child maltreatment deaths nationwide.

Leading Causes of Traumatic Brain Injuries

Just like a traumatic brain injury can take a wide variety of forms, it can have a wide variety of causes too. Though practically any head trauma can bring about at least a mild TBI, the leading causes of moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injuries are:

• Falls, which the CDC describes as “one of the leading causes of TBI-related hospitalizations among Americans.” Falling disproportionately affects seniors in Indiana, who constitute 71.8 percent of fall-related hospitalizations and 82.1 percent of fall-related deaths in the state.
• Car, truck, motorcycle, and other motor vehicle accidents, which send over 218,000 Americans per year to emergency rooms for TBI treatment.
• Sports, which are at the heart of 207,000 annual domestic emergency room visits, including seven out of ten ER visits for those ages 17 and under.
• Suicides by firearm, which claim more than 27,000 lives across the country each year, with approximately three-quarters of these incidents involving trauma to the head.
• Assaults, which inflict almost 170,000 TBIs yearly, about ten percent of the nation’s TBIs overall.
• Accidents in the construction industry, which has more lethal and nonlethal traumatic brain injuries than any other U.S. employment sector, with construction TBIs making up about a quarter of construction fatalities and a quarter of the total TBI fatalities for any profession.

Regardless of the underlying cause of your TBI, Hensley’s seasoned Indiana traumatic brain injury lawyers will be ready to delve into the accident that hurt you and discuss the steps you should take if you are contemplating a personal injury case.

How Are TBIs Treated?

It should be noted that you might not have any personal injury case whatsoever if you don’t get treatment for your injuries, but exactly how are TBIs treated?

The treatment plan for a TBI will be contingent upon where the injury lies on the spectrum. For example, a concussion or another relatively mild TBI might merit going to a local clinic or an emergency room for observation, neurological examination, and diagnostic imaging to rule out a brain contusion or something more life-threatening.

If nothing like that is detected, you’ll be released to go home, where treatment may consist of physical and mental rest for around 24 to 48 hours. At that point, you should be able to return to work or school, though more strenuous activities might have to be put off for another week or so.

In contrast, medical treatment for moderate-to-severe TBIs, like brain contusions, cerebral penetrations, or diffuse axonal injuries, might be more elaborate and may include:

• Advanced diagnostic imaging (e.g. CT scans and MRIs)
• Intracranial pressure monitoring in an ICU
• Oral and intravenous diuretics
• Anti-seizure drugs
• Surgical interventions (like hematoma evacuations or craniotomies)
• Ventilation and airway support

Additionally, a range of therapy regimens are likely to be recommended, including:

• Neurorehabilitation therapy
• Physical therapy
• Occupational therapy
• Speech therapy
• Psychological therapy
• Cognitive behavioral therapy

And the harsher a traumatic brain injury is, the greater the medical treatment prescribed for it – and the greater the drain on your bank account because of it – may be.

The Immense Treatment Costs of Traumatic Brain Injuries

Indeed, while we have more treatment options for TBIs than ever before, transforming injuries that were once instant death sentences into manageable chronic ailments, the price tags have certainly kept pace with them, maybe much more than our capacity to cover them has.

As you can imagine, bigger traumatic injuries have bigger treatment costs. Whereas a concussion that is treated in an emergency room alone might generate a bill that’s as low as $800.10, inpatient TBI rehabilitation could run as much as $46,000.00 per stay, and the costs of a traumatic brain injury aren’t restricted to direct medical bills either.

The fiscal toll of a TBI could go through the roof when a family’s main breadwinner has to take off work or quit altogether, whether to care for his or her own injury or for someone else’s TBI, and pressing concerns like these have grown into a societal epidemic over time. According to the CDC, the lifetime economic cost of TBI for the United States as a whole has been calculated to be about $76.5 billion per year.

It goes without saying that that’s an immense sum of money, but a TBI doesn’t have to bankrupt you or the ones you love if you partner with knowledgeable Indiana traumatic brain injury attorneys who know how to build a rock-solid case against everyone who may be liable for it.

Determining Liability in Indiana Traumatic Brain Injury Cases

Who can be considered liable for a traumatic brain injury? The answer may not be obvious and could largely be determined by the kind of accident in which the brain gets injured.

For example, the responsible parties for a brain injury incurred in a motor vehicle accident might include the:

• Driver who hit you
• Owner of his or her vehicle (if separate from the driver)
• Business deploying the vehicle (if separate from the owner)
• Mechanic or cargo loader
• Vehicle or auto part manufacturer
• Government agency in charge of a roadway in disrepair

If your brain is injured when you slip or trip and fall on somebody else’s property, you may have grounds for a premises liability claim, the defendants for which might be the:

• Owner of the home, enterprise, or plot of land in question
• City or town where the fall took place

When a construction accident is the proximate cause of your TBI, you might be able to initiate a case against the:

• Property owner
• Project developer
• General contractor, contractors, or subcontractors
• Producer, distributor, or retailer of defective materials and equipment
• Government department with authority over a public space under construction

Other individuals and entities might be culpable for other kinds of accidents, sometimes more than one of them simultaneously, and all of them have to be pursued within the time allotted by law, referred to as the Statute of Limitations. The Statute is two years for most personal injury claims in Indiana, but the timeline could be shorter in cases against the government because of further stipulations that may have to be satisfied under the state’s Tort Claims Act.

Failing to file suit or otherwise conclude your claim before the Statute expires could forever bar you from being fairly reimbursed for your TBI, a senseless error that you can avoid if you put our meticulous Indiana traumatic brain injury lawyers on the case.

The Role Played by Insurance Companies in TBI Claims

No matter which defendants you ultimately pursue, their insurance companies will probably be the primary sources of compensation for your TBI claim. Fortunately, the pockets of these companies can be quite deep, and they can be deeper still when a TBI accident is commercial in nature, like a truck or construction accident.

Thanks to the substantial insurance policies that “for-hire property carriers” must carry under federal law, a truck or semi-trailer could have upwards of $1 million (or more) in insurance coverage based upon what’s being hauled. A comparable policy might apply to a TBI accident at an Indiana construction site, particularly if it’s a public works project, since Sec. 5-16-13-10 of the Indiana Code requires contractors to maintain general liability insurance limits of at least $1 million per occurrence and $2 million in aggregate.

But policies this hefty might be a double-edged sword because they can create a stronger incentive to minimize the value of your construction or truck accident TBI claim, motivating an insurance carrier to look for any justification to make a lowball offer or merely deny the claim outright.

One of the chief tactics for achieving this goal is casting doubt on the traumatic brain injury itself. If you aren’t careful, a veteran insurance adjuster might take advantage of any gaps in treatment to argue that your TBI isn’t related to the accident or that it’s not as bad as you’ve alleged.

The other core tactic that the adjuster may deploy is shifting the blame for the accident elsewhere, possibly even in your direction, and whatever blame that could be assigned to you could be detrimental to your claim because of the state’s “modified comparative fault” system.

As IC Sec. 34-51-2-5 explains, “any contributory fault chargeable to the claimant diminishes proportionately the amount awarded as compensatory damages for an injury attributable to the claimant’s contributory fault.” However, recovery shouldn’t be barred unless “the claimant’s contributory fault is greater than the fault of all persons whose fault proximately contributed to the claimant’s damages” (IC Sec. 34-51-2-6).

In plain English, although you might be able to recover something if you’re 50 percent or less at fault, albeit with your recovery decreased in keeping with your percentage of fault, you might not recover anything if you’re over 50 percent at fault, and the insurer will be eager to prove it.

Clearly, the path ahead of you can be difficult if you attempt to get justice for a traumatic brain injury, with many obstacles standing between you and the finish line. Nevertheless, no obstacle is insurmountable when you have Hensley Legal Group, PC in your corner.

How Our Indiana Traumatic Brain Injury Attorneys Can Help

A traumatic brain injury can change both your immediate circumstances and your perception of reality in a flash. Before you know it, you could be buried beneath a mountain of escalating expenses and unable to comprehend what’s happening to you, much less earn the funds to dig yourself out, but our Indiana traumatic brain injury attorneys can help.

If you join the ranks of the thousands of Hoosiers each and every year who choose to hire Hensley, we will begin by launching a thorough investigation to identify the root causes of your traumatic brain injury and the defendants who may have contributed to it. We will then establish valid claims against them within the time permitted by law, and a lawsuit may be filed as well in a court with the power to issue a binding judgment.

Next, we will move swiftly to amass the evidence to support any allegations that you make, coordinating our efforts with experts in their fields when warranted. If proof of wrongdoing by the defendants exists, our tenacious Indiana traumatic brain injury lawyers vow to move heaven and earth to find it.

Get Fully Compensated for Your Traumatic Brain Injury

After assembling an airtight case against each of the defendants, we will exhaustively negotiate with their insurance carriers for a settlement that reflects the entirety of your losses, including your:

• Medical bills
• Lost income
• Pain and suffering
• Mental and emotional anguish
• Mobility restrictions
• Diminished quality of living
• Loss of consortium

If an offer is not proposed that is worthy of your claim, we are more than willing to go to trial for a verdict that is, unlike far too many of our competitors, who seldom venture into a courtroom.

Every traumatic brain injury is unique, but our firm will always strive to get you fully compensated for yours.

You Won’t Owe Us Anything Unless We Win

You might be reluctant to commit to more expenditures when you may have spent so much already, but you should be aware that our firm operates on a contingency basis. This means that you won’t owe us anything unless our Indiana traumatic brain injury attorneys win your case.

You have enough to worry about at the moment simply trying to recover from your TBI. Let Hensley worry about recovering the resources you need to do it.

Reach Out to Our Indiana Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyers

Hensley Legal Group has been fiercely advocating for the seriously injured for more than a quarter century. If you are struggling to bounce back from a catastrophic injury to your brain, reach out to our Indiana traumatic brain injury lawyers to learn what they can do for you.

You can call us at (317) 472-3333, chat with us online, or fill out our contact form for a complimentary case review with an accomplished Indiana traumatic brain injury attorney at our firm.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a traumatic brain injury?

A traumatic brain injury or TBI is an injury in which the brain is damaged by sudden trauma to the head.

TBIs can take a wide variety of forms that exist on a spectrum of intensity from mild to moderate to severe, with some of them lasting temporarily and others far longer.

Are there different types of TBIs?

The most common TBIs are concussions, which are on the mild end of the spectrum and usually arise when a forceful cranial impact moves the head rapidly back and forth during an accident.

More moderate-to-severe TBIs include contusions and penetrations of the brain, diffuse axonal injuries, and shaken baby syndrome, which tend to have more extreme symptoms and can be fatal in some instances.

What are the leading causes of traumatic brain injuries?

Traumatic brain injuries can have a wide variety of causes, and practically any incident that inflicts head trauma can bring about at least a mild TBI.

However, some of the leading causes of traumatic brain injuries include falls, auto and construction accidents, sports, suicides by firearm, and assaults.

How much does a traumatic brain injury cost?

The financial consequences of a traumatic brain injury generally depend upon how serious it is, and assessing it involves looking at direct costs like medical bills and indirect costs like lost wages and productivity.

Whereas a concussion treated in an ER might cost as little as $800.10, inpatient TBI rehabilitation could cost as much as $46,000.00 per stay, while the CDC estimates the lifetime economic cost of TBI for the United States as a whole to be about $76.5 billion per year.

Is compensation available for a TBI?

As with any other injury, compensation may be available when someone else is at fault for a TBI, and it will primarily come from insurance companies with applicable coverage.

Nevertheless, a favorable outcome isn’t guaranteed thanks to the stiff resistance you could face from the insurers, but you can improve your chances of success by partnering with Hensley’s experienced Indiana traumatic brain injury lawyers.