Closed Head Injuries and Brain Damage

Any trial lawyer who has ever handled a closed head injury case knows that brain damage can occur even if there is no direct blow to the head. Quite literally, the brain is like a bowl of Jell-O. If the head is shaken, the brain moves within the skull and due to acceleration and rotational forces, not necessarily direct blows, the brain can be damaged. Nor does an injury have to be severe to cause lasting brain injury. In short, a closed head injury without any skull fracture can result in more serious injuries than can an injury where a skull fracture has occurred.
Almost 20 years ago at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, a study of 424 people who had been hospitalized for 2 days or less revealed that after discharge, 79% complained of headaches, 59% of memory problems and 34% had not yet returned to their jobs 3 months later. Seventy-seven head injury patients who had been hospitalized for less than 24 hours and discharged with “normal” findings showed that a third later had difficulties with memory, attention span and concentration. In short, the data has been publicly available for years demonstrating that a closed head injury can cause serious long term complications for those unfortunate enough to have such an injury. Indeed, recovery from a brain injury, however minor it may seem, can last for years earmarked by periodic improvements over time.
In our practice, we have seen numerous symptoms of subtle brain damage. These often include a person who loses interest in their family or hobbies, people that have short attention spans or are unable to do their job, difficulty with relationships, trouble learning new things, sexual problems, etc. Many times, there is a lack of self-confidence and a lack of drive. In short, the brain is a very complicated organ, of course, and while the medical profession is still dealing with its attempts to understand closed head injuries, the fact remains that people who experience head injuries often times are not properly diagnosed initially and many times suffer from the side effects of such injuries for years.
Closed head injuries have been described in the past as a “silent epidemic.” As one expert has previously stated: “Someone in an accident is not necessarily fine just because they didn’t hit the windshield with their head.” Like any other medical problem, once a closed head injury is diagnosed, its causes and consequences can be better understood. And of course, a problem must be identified before rehabilitation techniques can be applied that may ease or correct the difficulty. While head injuries can oftentimes be fatal causing approximately 100,000 deaths a year in this country, about 7 times that number of individuals suffer non-fatal head injuries severe enough to require hospitalization. Some languish in comas, as has received much attention in recent years, but most suffer silently from the long term consequences of having their brain injured by trauma, sometimes only minor trauma.
While our lawyers know that these are tough cases, nonetheless, individuals who have sustained such serious injuries deserve not only good medical care but good legal representation.