Brain Injury
An estimated 10 million Americans are affected by stroke and traumatic brain injury, making brain injury the second most prevalent injury and disability in the United States. According to the statistics from Brain Injury Association of America, one person suffers a brain injury every 23 seconds. But as high as these statistics may be, the inflicted fall to a silent epidemic that is often ignored and rarely understood by the general public.
If you are a person with a brain injury, you need to know that you are a member of a very special community with its own resources, advocates, honorable and competent medical providers, and attorneys who specialize in the field. Hundreds of people across the United States are fighting everyday to bring help, awareness, treatment, rehabilitation, justice, and above all – hope to the members of this community. Asvar Law is a premier brain injury litigation firm and a proud member of this great community.
So what do you need to know? First, you need to know that there are a variety of causes for brain injury (for example, auto accidents, assault, septic shock, poisoning, or gun shot) and that brain injury affects each person in that individual’s own unique way. There are a variety of factors that make each injury unique: be it age, genetics, attitude, health history, the mechanism of injury, the treatment received right after the injury, the longer-term rehabilitation if any, and role of family and loved ones in the person’s recuperation. As the saying goes, this is the ultimate “one-size never fits all” injury.
According to statistics, of the 1.4 million traumatic brain injuries that occur every year, 4% result in death, 17% result in hospitalization, and 79% result in an emergency room visit. Males are more likely to receive a brain injury than women. Alcohol is a significant factor, causing nearly half of the injuries in American. Each year, about 80,000 to 90,000 Americans begin to experience the onset of long-term disability following a traumatic brain injury. It is estimated that traumatic brain injuries cost the nation more than $60,000 billion dollars per year.
And here is the tragedy: According to Brain Injury Association of America, only 5% of individuals with severe brain injury have enough money for their long-term treatment.
Why? Because the epidemic is silent. Because, we as a society have yet to fully understand the severity of the situation and the care that the members of our community require in dealing with long-term disabilities arising from brain injury. Many attorneys will shun and avoid mild to moderate brain injury cases that show no obvious signs of physical injury to the client. This is in part because some cannot comprehend the subtle signs of mild to moderate brain injury, as debilitating as these conditions may be. Other attorneys stay away due to the difficulty of proving these cases to a jury, even if the lawyer himself fully understands the client’s condition. These cases require substantial investment of time and resources. Based on the extent of their abilities, each attorney has to carefully consider the return on investment of two to four years of serious intense litigation.
The problem becomes even worse as many medical “experts” in both the civil and workers’ compensation setting suffer from out-dated knowledge and false presumptions about this class of litigants. The use of qualified and knowledgeable experts is an art and requires the careful selection of individuals well-versed in a variety of fields pertaining to brain injury, including physiatry, neurology, psychology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, pain management, and vocational and cognitive rehabilitation experts. These cases require careful team coordination and are impossible to win alone. Hence, the individual litigants who are most likely to have difficulty overcoming the legal obstacles in their case are those:
● With cognitive impairment but without obvious physical disabilities;
● With problematic and unmanageable behaviors; and
● With no effective advocate or lawyer.
Asvar Law has had enormous and record-setting success in advocating for our clients because we truly appreciate the science of brain injury and incorporate it into our daily practice of law. The end goals of our litigation strategy embrace the Interdependence Model of returning the client to their community, ensuring sufficient financial resources for freedom and self-determination of the client, and nurturing a supportive network of family and friends to support and assist the client in day-to-day life.
Our team of litigators, dealmakers, and scientific experts routinely achieve extraordinary results by working creatively together to overcome daunting medical and evidentiary obstacles. We are able to provide an intensely personalized service and focus on each and every case far beyond our typical competitors, solely because of our intentionally limited and small case loads. The most important aspect of our success as evidenced by our record-setting settlements has been to show that our approach works.
Asvar Law. We are here.™