Your brain is one of the most complex organs in your body. It controls your thoughts, motor skills, breathing, emotions, and much more. Any accident that results in trauma to the head can disrupt all of these bodily functions, changing your entire way of life. After suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI), you will likely need substantial medical treatment. If your condition is permanent, you may require long-term rehabilitative therapy and at-home care.
When you know someone else caused your accident, it will be brutal to deal with all the financial consequences of your TBI. Your brain injury itself makes this more challenging. In these situations, you have the right to file a lawsuit against the person responsible for your injuries. However, these types of cases can be challenging. Even if you seek medical attention immediately after the accident, your X-rays, MRI scans, or CT scans may seem normal. Most brain injuries are not detected by these tests!
Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers has been helping accident victims obtain compensation for over 30 years. Led by Founding Partner Jon Ostroff and Managing Partner Rich Godshall, our skilled catastrophic injury team has won many multi-million dollar verdicts and settlements for our brain-injured clients across PA.
Our Victories in Brain Injury Cases
- We obtained a $10 million award for a client who sustained a permanent brain injury in a Washington County crash on I-79.
- We obtained a $5.7 million award for a client suffering a mild brain injury in a Tioga County crash on Route 6.
- We obtained $5 million for a client who sustained a brain injury that led to her death in a crash that occurred on I-80 in Union County, PA.
- We obtained $3.5 million for a young girl that sustained a mild brain injury in a Harrisburg, Dauphin County crash.
- We obtained a 1.35 million verdict for a client that sustained a mild brain injury in a case we handled in Phila County.
Our Pennsylvania traumatic brain injury lawyers can improve your chances of obtaining appropriate compensation, even if your imaging scans at the ER did not show your TBI.
What is a Traumatic Brain Injury?
There are two main types of traumatic brain injuries (referred to as a “TBI”): closed-head and open-head injuries. A closed-head injury involves an impact outside of the skull that causes damage to your brain. An open-head injury occurs when an object pierces the skull and directly damages your brain tissue. A TBI can be categorized as mild, moderate, or severe, based on how substantial the damage to your brain is and what kinds of symptoms you have.
Mild TBIs do not involve any structural damage to the brain but may still cause severe brain impairments and cognitive deficits, including memory loss, confusion, and emotional instability. Repeated concussions and mild TBIs, which are common among athletes and physical laborers, can cause increasingly more severe harm with each new injury. A mild TBI can lead to an immediate period of unconsciousness of up to 30 minutes.
A moderate TBI can leave you unconscious for up to 24 hours and cause much longer periods of amnesia and/or loss of cognitive function. Any traumatic brain injury that causes more than seven days of short-term memory loss and/or more than 24 hours of unconsciousness is a severe TBI.
Our Pennsylvania attorneys at Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers can go into more detail about how the type of traumatic brain injury you are suffering from can impact your case and financial compensation.
Common Signs of a TBI
Often, your family doctor or neurologist will take steps to determine whether you have sustained a traumatic brain injury. If the tests come back negative, your doctors will often conclude that your brain is fine. But the problem is, you don’t feel fine!
Jon Ostroff has learned to ignore these negative tests from physicians and to listen to you. There are other signs of serious brain damage, and they start with the things you feel. Here are common signs of a traumatic brain injury:
- Confusion
- Memory Loss
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Mood changes
- Loss of temper
- Loss of balance
- Slurred speech
- Sleep difficulty
- Personality changes
- Problems saying or finding the right words
- Difficulty staying focused
- Difficulty with coordination
- Visual problems
- Reading or writing problems
- Slurred speech
- Vertigo
If you were in an accident and you have any of the above symptoms, call our firm. Attorney Jon Ostroff understands the challenges and frustrations of living with a traumatic brain injury. He understands what he needs to do to prove that your injury exists and to get you the money that you are due! Jon works with an amazing network of physicians and medical experts who will use cutting-edge technology and testing to diagnose and treat your brain injury.
Proving the Existence of a Brain Injury After an Accident
You know something is not quite right. Those who worry about you know something is wrong. They seem to see your traumatic brain injury even clearer than you do.
Your kids notice that you are easily upset, frustrated, and forgetful. They don’t understand. Your boss is treating you as if you are fine and just making excuses. Perhaps people at work don’t believe that you are injured.
Just because the X-ray, MRI, or CT scan of your brain did not show an injury, this doesn’t mean that a traumatic brain injury doesn’t exist. These tests are mostly used to determine whether the structure or appearance of your brain has changed. Even with serious brain injuries, the brain often looks fine in tests. But the way your brain looks doesn’t have anything to do with the way your brain works!
Working with Medical Professionals in a Head Trauma Case
Jon has access to the big-city medical doctors in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, along with many PA towns in between, that will help Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers prove the seriousness of your traumatic brain injury. If necessary, Jon will arrange for you to see one of these specialists if you can’t get the medical help you require locally.
Small-town lawyers may stick with their friends who are small-town doctors, rather than work with the top specialists in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, or towns in between. The two big cities in PA offer two of the top medical communities in the country. If you require big city doctors, Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers will help arrange for this care and if necessary, transport you there for your appointments. Our lawyers are familiar with TBI cases and have the resources to prove you suffered a brain injury that is interfering with your life and job.
Recoverable Damages Through a Successful Claim in Pennsylvania
Like other types of catastrophic injuries, the amount of money that you could recover through a lawsuit or settlement depends on how much the injury affects your daily life. If you suffered a mild TBI, you likely required significant medical attention and may have even missed time from work. Despite the term “mild,” a “mild TBI” can change your life, causing your brain to perform far worse than it did before your accident. Clients with a “mild TBI” frequently lose jobs and suffer intense frustration at the new limitations they have.
On the other hand, moderate and severe TBIs may have permanent effects that limit your ability to work for a living, participate in hobbies, and possibly even take care of yourself on a daily basis. These substantial long-term losses must be properly documented, using top experts, in order to be properly proven and compensated for. The common forms of compensation you can receive in a brain injury case include:
- Pain and suffering
- Lost income
- Medical expenses
- Property damage
- Loss of business and financial opportunities
- Emotional trauma
- Loss of life’s pleasures
Our seasoned lawyers in the area can explain what you can recover based on the circumstances of your brain injury.
One Example of Jon’s Work with a TBI Victim
In one case, Jon Ostroff organized a team consisting of a neurologist, a neurosurgeon, and an oral and maxillofacial surgeon to treat his client and support his client’s traumatic brain injury claim. Jon also arranged to use very modern medical technology to obtain a 3-D model of his client’s skull. With his medical team and this brain model, Jon was able to successfully persuade the judge that his client had a serious traumatic brain injury. The use of this type of 3-D model was something that few, if any, lawyers had ever used. The doctors in this case relied on this model frequently while they testified, using it to demonstrate the areas of trauma to his client’s brain.
Jon had to arrange to have his client travel several hours from the small upstate Pennsylvania town where she lived in Tioga County, in order to have her treated by a team of world-renowned physicians. Not only did they help treat her condition, but they testified very effectively in her case.
The insurance company fought hard to prove there was no brain injury. They relied on the negative brain MRI and x-rays on Jon’s client, as well as their own brain experts, to support their position that there was no traumatic brain injury.
Jon’s creative approach combining top surgeons and experts along with cutting-edge medical and legal technology paid off. This combination allowed Attorney Jon Ostroff to successfully prove that his client’s traumatic brain injury existed and was serious. As a result, a $5.7 million damage award for this client.
Seek Help from a Pennsylvania Traumatic Brain Injury Attorney
TBIs are uniquely serious injuries and always require professional medical attention. TBIs may lead to permanent and debilitating consequences for the people who suffer from them. TBIs are not nearly as visible to others as injuries requiring surgeries or that cause scarring or other types of disfigurement. Unfortunately, these injuries are also hard to prove. Jon Ostroff and the lawyers at Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers know how to prove that a serious brain injury exists. They have been doing this successfully for many years.
You can trust our Pennsylvania traumatic brain injury lawyers to recover the right amount of money for you by using their experience, big-city medical connections, and extensive knowledge of brain injuries. Contact Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers today to schedule a free case review.