What Is the Average Settlement for a Brain Injury Lawsuit?
Did you know that traumatic brain injuries cost the United States over $60 billion yearly in direct medical costs?
This is why it is essential to have a brain injury attorney to fight for your rights to ensure that you get the proper compensation.
A traumatic brain injury is one of the most devastating injuries to struggle with. This is because an injury of this severity can cause loss of function and permanent disability.
People often report personality changes and other effects jeopardizing their professional and personal lives.
You can get compensation if you have sustained a traumatic brain injury during an accident because you face an uncertain financial future.
Here is everything you need to know about the average settlement for brain injury cases and why it is worth contacting the best brain injury lawyer in Houston.
Average Settlement
You can recover compensation for a traumatic brain injury in two ways. These options are either a verdict or a settlement. If you are involved in a personal injury case, a settlement will occur when both sides agree.
This helps resolve the issue outside the court to avoid many hefty costs. If you cannot settle with the other party, you may have the case proceed to court.
This is when a jury will decide how much to award the affected party. If the jury sides with the plaintiff, they can issue a verdict ordering the defendant to pay.
Although jury verdicts can be public records, most injury settlements made out of court are private. Therefore, it becomes challenging to determine the settlement amount for an average, severe, or mild traumatic brain injury.
Estimates
A sudden jolt or blow to the head is responsible for causing a traumatic brain injury. This can affect anyone because you never know when you may get such an injury, and it can happen anywhere at any time.
There are many possible causes of such an injury. For instance, you may get injured due to violence, a fall, a car accident, a work-related injury, or a sports injury. If you experience a brain injury, it will disrupt your brain’s normal functions.
Depending on how severe a person’s injuries are, the effects of a brain injury can last weeks.
The injury can also cause death or complete debilitation. Therefore, it is worth noting that the median damage award is usually around $110,000 to over $10 million.
The huge difference is due to high-value verdicts that typically skew the average settlement amount. Jury verdicts often result in higher settlement amounts, which is always unpredictable.
There is no way of guaranteeing which way the jury will side. During settlement negotiations during a brain injury lawsuit, your lawyer must consider the chances that a jury will give you a higher amount.
This is because a jury verdict can take longer to receive compensation. There may also be more expenses during the trial.
How to Determine Value?
The settlement value depends on the severity of your traumatic brain injury. This is because the value must consider the long-term and current medical costs due to disability, pain, and other suffering that significantly impacts your life.
Head injuries like concussions can also get you a hefty compensation. However, it is vital to prove that you have medical treatment needs and require extensive life care due to circumstances.
Remember that each case is fact specific. A case’s outcome depends on different factors, such as the type of brain injury sustained. Your symptoms of a traumatic brain injury may also not appear right away, and they can take several days or more to appear.
Financial Consequences
A traumatic injury will always cause significant financial consequences, and this is because the cost of medical care alone is so high. The more severe your damage is, the higher your medical expenses will get over a long time.
There is no guarantee that a person will recover fully, and they may need medical care for the rest of their lives, which is why medical care is part of the financial losses that the case will determine.
Other inclusions under financial losses are lost earning capacity and any loss of wages. There are also non-economic factors to include, even though it is challenging to determine these losses due to the injury.
However, most people’s losses go beyond money, such as loss of self-confidence, damaged relationships, emotional distress, pain, and suffering. Therefore, it is up to the court to decide how much you should get paid out as compensation.
All these factors need to be considered relating to your case. Since everybody’s case is different, the compensation you receive will be challenging to determine at the start.
Traumatic Brain Injury
The law takes traumatic brain injury seriously because your brain is central to everything you do. If you suffer from a severe injury, you may never be able to work again. You may also struggle to relate to people, remember things, or communicate.
There can also be times when you may have to relearn things you used to do, like dressing yourself, walking, and bathing. Even a minor injury can have a significant impact on your life.
For instance, a hit on the head can cause complications like the inability to control your emotions or seizures that did not exist before your accident. Although doctors are helpful, they may minimize your symptoms or indicate that they are unrelated to your accident.
This is because many doctors overlook signs of brain injury, like loss of coordination or emotional outbursts. They may not think that slow brain function is that serious.
Therefore, being persistent in finding a doctor who listens to you is also essential. They must thoroughly evaluate your brain function, especially if you have symptoms that were not present before the accident.
Some mild to moderate traumatic brain injury symptoms include loss of consciousness, headache, nausea, confusion, dizziness, memory issues, and mood swings.
The most severe brain injury symptoms are difficulty waking up, seizures, loss of consciousness, loss of muscle control, disorientation, and numbness. Remember not to ignore any signs, especially if they last more than a few weeks or months.
Mild Injuries
Even if your brain injury is mild, you should never rush to accept an insurance company’s first settlement offer. This is because an insurance company’s representative’s job is to settle for the smallest settlement amount they can get away with.
They may significantly try to downplay your injuries if your symptoms have subsided. However, it is always possible that you may experience long-term effects that can cost a lot of money.
If you believe you have a mild brain injury and want to get the correct amount you are owed, it is always a good idea to speak to a brain injury lawyer.
Professional legal experts can help you determine whether an insurance company offers a fair settlement to compensate for what you are going through.
Severe Injuries
A brain injury will result in high medical costs. You could be out of pocket for the rest of your life because the lifetime cost of a mild injury is under $100,000.
Imagine how much more money you would need for medical expenses if your injury were severe. Medical care accounts for a significant portion of the average settlement regarding traumatic brain injuries.
This cost depends on the severity of the injury. Patients can be entitled to damages for their future and current expenses, such as hospitalization, surgery, hospital-based rehab, outpatient therapy, counseling, and skilled nursing care.
The Brain Injury Association of America states that inpatient rehab therapy alone can cost upwards of $45,000 for a traumatic injury.
Loss of Earnings
Traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of disability in the US. According to the CDC, around 2% of the entire population are living with a disability caused by brain injury.
If you sustain a traumatic brain injury because of someone else’s mistake, you are entitled to recover compensation for future lost earnings.
This will determine a large share of value in your case, especially if you have to take a lot of time off work or cannot return to your job due to the injury.
The value for your lost wages will also include your life expectancy, occupation, professional skills, and post-injury earning capacity.
Non-Economic Losses
Settlement for your injury will also include non-economic losses, such as mental anguish, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment, and suffering. Your lawyer will help you quantify and document these losses.
This way, you can successfully paint a complete picture of how this injury has affected your life. These damages are difficult to calculate because the amount varies significantly from one person to another.
Generally, your economic losses will be multiplied by a factor up to 5, depending on how severe your injury is and how much you have lost.
Hire a Brain Injury Attorney
Now that you know the average settlement for a traumatic brain injury lawsuit and how this is calculated, it is time to find the best brain injury attorney to help you win the proper compensation.
This way, you can seek medical care for the pain you have suffered as soon as possible. Contact us today for a free consultation. We can discuss your case to determine how much your injury claim might be worth.