Case Studies
AE v. Willie’s Painting, SCIF $8,900,000.
LOS ANGELES – January 25, 2012. Los Angeles-based attorney Christopher Asvar has just secured the highest known workers’ compensation insurance settlements in California history, totaling $8.9 million on behalf of his young client who suffered a work-place traumatic brain injury.
According to Steve Chapman, a well-known structured settlement specialist, “When you ask around the state, Chris’s settlement is the highest anyone is aware of.” Nearly three years ago, Mr. Asvar who specializes in brain injury litigation, substituted into a long-neglected claim of client AE, who five years before had sustained a twenty-foot fall from a scaffold while employed as a painter. At the time Mr. Asvar commenced his representation, AE was suffering from severe depression, cognitive deficits, anxiety, psychosis, self-mutilation and perhaps most interestingly, a multiple personality disorder. Despite the fact that there was no objective evidence of a traumatic brain injury (AE had negative MRI and CT scans) Mr. Asvar prevailed in his contention that his client’s symptoms related to what the medical experts in the case ultimately came to regard as a “mild” traumatic brain injury.
“In describing this class of traumatic brain injury”, says Asvar, “the term ‘mild’ is an absolute misnomer given the severity of possible complications and repercussions.” He adds, “Dismissing someone’s brain injury as ‘mild’ is akin to saying someone is ‘mildly’ paraplegic.”
Mr. Asvar attributes his victory in the suit to time he spent with AE and AE’s father who for years had worked 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week to support his injured son. “At the end of the day in a difficult case like this, you have to know and believe your client, because everyone will look at the negative radiographs and tell you he is faking. But if you know in your heart that he is telling the truth, that makes every bit of difference in getting you through a long day.”
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MN v. Walton Motors & Control, Inc., Employers Ins. Co., $2,200,000.
VAN NUYS, CA – January 25, 2012. Los Angeles-based Attorney Christopher Asvar concluded his second victory later in the same afternoon by concluding a $2.2Million settlement on a catastrophic injury claim resulting from a work place explosion on 04-07-2006.
Among other injuries, Client MN sustained severe burns to face and neck resulting in daily chronic pain and skin tightness; orthopedic and internal injuries, inhalation injuries resulting primarily in scarring of the lungs and secondarily in cognitive injuries due to hypoxia; and disturbances in mood and sleep.
Upon substituting into the case three years from the date of the injury, Mr. Asvar was struck by the discrepancy between what one treating physician was officially reporting in his reports to the insurance company (that MN was progressing toward minimal long-term disability) and what the physician was verbally telling MN and his family (that MN will suffer from life-long debilitating pulmonary concerns related to the inhalation of toxic fumes). The discrepancy was resolved once Mr. Asvar made a personal visit to the physician and warmly requested that whatever the doctor’s true medical finding were, be correctly reflected in his reports to the insurance company, regardless of who was paying the bills.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the litigation was proving the mechanism of injury that caused the sudden post-injury psychiatric and cognitive decline in this gentleman. There was no evidence of a forceful concussion of the like associated with traumatic brain injury. Again, with unshakable faith in his client and with reliance on the medical and circumstantial evidence, in late 2010 Mr. Asvar was able to trace back three separate mechanisms by which it was medically probable that the MS suffered from hypoxia (lack of oxygen) at various stages of his injury and later recovery back in 2006. With the weight of this evidence, the medical experts in the case found in favor of the injured worker.
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