Your brain controls everything from movement and memory to your thoughts, emotions, and essential functions like breathing and heartbeat. When a serious accident causes a head injury or brain damage, the effects can change your life. Even a mild traumatic brain injury can affect concentration, memory, and everyday activities, making once-routine tasks difficult to manage.
Attorney April H. Collins and the team at Collins Law, LLC, provide dedicated legal representation to accident victims whose lives have been affected by someone else’s negligence. We offer honest legal guidance and compassionate support to people recovering from traumatic brain injuries. Our team works to pursue fair compensation for your injuries and financial losses. Collins Law also works to reduce clients’ medical bills when their cases resolve, helping them retain more of their recovery.
You don’t have to navigate the legal process alone. Contact Collins Law today to schedule a free, no-obligation case evaluation with an experienced personal injury attorney in Birmingham.
What Are the Benefits of Hiring a Birmingham Brain Injury Attorney?
After a brain injury, medical bills, lost income, and the challenges of recovery can make it difficult to know where to turn. You may worry that hiring an attorney will add to your financial burden. At Collins Law, we work to make legal representation accessible. You pay nothing upfront to get started, and you owe no attorney’s fees unless we recover compensation for you. Our firm also works to reduce medical bills when cases resolve and ensures that it never takes home more money than the clients it represents.
Hiring a traumatic brain injury attorney means having an advocate who can pursue compensation while helping you manage the financial challenges that follow an accident. Your attorney can work to document your injuries, assess your losses, communicate with insurance companies, and negotiate for a fair settlement. This support can help you focus on your health and recovery rather than handling every legal detail yourself.
An experienced Birmingham brain injury lawyer can also help protect your legal rights when insurers or other parties question your injuries or attempt to minimize your claim. Attorney Collins and her team work to hold negligent parties accountable and pursue compensation for medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, and other applicable damages.
Navigating a legal claim can be challenging under any circumstances. When you’re also coping with a traumatic brain injury, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, and other symptoms may make the process even more demanding. Working with a Birmingham brain injury attorney allows you to have someone manage the legal work, advocate for your interests, and help you pursue the resources you need to move forward.
What Compensation Can You Pursue for a Traumatic Brain Injury?
Calculating brain injury compensation is tricky. Numerous factors can impact the value of a brain injury case, including the cause of the accident, the severity of the injury, and the long-term complications associated with the head trauma.
Another benefit to working with a skilled lawyer like Attorney Collins is having someone with the knowledge and experience to accurately calculate your case’s overall value. Insurers want you to settle quickly and for less money than what you deserve. It helps them keep more money in their pockets.
At Collins Law, we strive to put more money into your pocket, so we’ll review the specifics of your unique case before assessing the value of your brain injury claim. Although each case is different, in general, people can seek compensation for:
- Medical bills
- Future healthcare costs and rehabilitation
- Lost wages
- Loss of earning capacity
- Property damage
- Diminished quality of life
- Loss of consortium
- Emotional distress
- Pain and suffering
A Birmingham brain injury lawyer can give you a complete picture of the value of your case and your legal options for pursuing maximum compensation.
How Long Do You Have to File a Traumatic Brain Injury Lawsuit in Alabama?
Traumatic brain injuries caused by the careless actions of another lead to personal injury cases. Alabama law gives people two years from the date of the accident to file a personal injury lawsuit seeking compensation for medical expenses and other losses.
Discussing your situation with a traumatic brain injury attorney as soon as possible is always the best course of action to protect your rights and ability to file a lawsuit for compensation. Filing a brain injury lawsuit after the two-year deadline can result in the court dismissing your case without a hearing. If that happens, you lose your best leverage against the opposing party to negotiate for maximum compensation.
What Are the Types of Traumatic Brain Injuries?
A traumatic brain injury is a significant medical condition that changes or impairs the way the brain functions. There are two distinct types of brain injuries:
- Closed Brain Injury – Closed brain injuries occur when a sudden or violent blow or collision forces the head to accelerate forward and backward. This movement causes the brain to strike the inside of the skull. These injuries can lead to bleeding, swelling, and chemical changes in the brain.
- Penetrating Brain Injury – Penetrating brain injuries happen when a foreign object penetrates the skull and enters the brain.
Brain injuries that fall into either of the two categories include:
- Concussion
- Coup-Contrecoup Brain Injury
- Diffuse Axonal Injury
- Intracranial Hematomas
- Hypoxic Brain Injury
- Hemorrhage
Brain injuries can cause long-term and life-altering medical complications. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show brain injuries are one of the most common causes of death and disability in the United States.
What Are Common Causes of Brain Injuries?
Additional information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that falls and motor vehicle crashes are two of the leading causes of brain injuries in the U.S. today. Other common causes include:
- Workplace accidents
- Assault or violence
Attorney Collins has the knowledge and resources to help you recover compensation for your injury-related losses when a careless party is to blame for causing an accident.
What Are Symptoms of a Traumatic Brain Injury?
The symptoms of a traumatic brain injury vary depending on the severity of the injury. After an accident, always seek medical attention. Sometimes, the signs of a head injury do not manifest for several hours due to the adrenaline in your system following a frightening event like an accident. You should watch for symptoms such as:
- Headache
- Pain
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Loss of consciousness
- Seizure
- Fatigue
- Dizziness
- Confusion
- Slurred speech
- Memory problems
- Sensitivity to light or sound
- Changes in a person’s hearing or vision
- Changes in sleeping or eating behaviors
- Changes in mood or thinking
- Loss of bladder or bowel control
Talk to your doctor as soon as you notice signs that may indicate you have a brain injury. Brain injuries can be life-threatening and require immediate evaluation and treatment to improve a person’s prognosis.
What Are the Long-Term Impacts of a Brain Injury?
The long-term complications of a traumatic brain injury vary depending on the type and severity of the brain injury. Some people with mild traumatic brain injuries, like a concussion, make a full recovery and suffer little to no long-term complications. Individuals diagnosed with more significant brain trauma can experience long-term consequences ranging from physical disability, cognitive issues, and even changes to their personality and behavior.
Some of the potential long-term impacts of a traumatic brain injury can include:
- Paralysis
- Muscle weakness
- Seizures
- Loss of hearing
- Loss of vision
- Loss of coordination or balance
- Chronic pain
- Learning difficulties
- Memory loss or amnesia
- Problems with reasoning or judgment
- Problems concentrating
- Difficulties with problem-solving, multitasking, or staying organized
- Difficulty understanding spoken words
- Difficulty understanding written words
- Unable to organize thoughts or ideas
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Irritability
- Anger
- Mood swings
- Insomnia
- Obsessive habits or behaviors
- Child-like behavior
- Difficulty with self-control
- Engaging in risky behaviors
- Lack of self-awareness
Another potential side effect of traumatic brain injury is the potential increased risk of developing cognitive diseases later in life, such as dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease. Studies and research suggest those who suffer traumatic brain injuries may be more likely to develop these devastating cognitive conditions and may also be more than 28 times more likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or other mental health illnesses.
What Treatment Is There for a Traumatic Brain Injury?
Your medical team can evaluate the best treatment options for your unique injury and situation. Mild brain injuries may only require rest and over-the-counter medication to alleviate pain and discomfort. Significant brain injuries may require more intense medical intervention, such as brain surgery, to control bleeding or reduce swelling.
Brain injury treatment may also involve cognitive therapy, physical therapy, and rehabilitation to help an individual regain functions that they may have lost due to the injury.
Contact a Birmingham Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer Today
A brain injury can leave you feeling vulnerable. To pursue the money you deserve and start rebuilding your life, turn to an attorney with integrity who can empower you to fight for what you deserve. At Collins Law, we want to be the team to help you manage your brain injury claim.
Contact our Birmingham, Alabama office today and discuss your situation with Attorney Collins, a thoughtful and compassionate traumatic brain injury lawyer.