St. Louis Traumatic Brain Injury Attorneys

Advocating for Clients After a Life-Changing TBI

Anything from a car accident to an explosion can injure the brain. Any force that impacts your head can cause your brain to collide within your skull, and when the internal impact is hard enough, it can easily cause long-lasting brain damage.

Brain damage can require long-term treatment, extensive rehabilitation, and permanent adjustments to a person’s life. If you've suffered a traumatic brain injury as the result of another person's negligence, you may be entitled to monetary compensation from the parties responsible.

At Meyerkord & Kurth, our St. Louis traumatic brain injury lawyers have more than 100 years of collective experience representing clients in these injury cases, providing individuals affected by TBIs with award-winning, innovative legal counsel.

Call Meyerkord & Kurth at (800) 391-4318 or send us an online message to schedule a free consultation to discuss your legal options.

Filing a Claim After a Traumatic Brain Injury

If you have suffered a brain injury due to another party’s negligence or carelessness, we advise you to reach out to our firm to discuss your options for compensation. Although the legal process can seem daunting, we can take care of the legal side of things while you focus on healing.

There are a few questions to consider before filing a claim:

• Did another party’s actions lead to my TBI?
• Did this other party owe me a standard of care?
• Did I miss the deadline to file a claim?

It is important to consider all three of these questions. Even if you believe that another person’s actions led to your injury, it is necessary for that person to owe you a standard of care for you to have a case.

For instance, drivers on the road are legally obligated to drive safely to ensure that preventable accidents do not occur. When they drive recklessly, they are violating this obligation and are considered negligent. Thus, if you sustained your TBI in a car accident such as this, you likely have grounds for a case.

As for legal deadlines, each state has a statute of limitations that mandates how much time individuals have for filing different types of claims. For TBI claims in St. Louis, Missouri Code § 516.120 grants a person five years from the accident to pursue a claim. If filed after this date, the claim will be deemed ineligible.

Reach out to our St. Louis brain injury attorneys to learn if your case is eligible for compensation.

About Brain Trauma

About 1.5 million Americans survive a TBI each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Others, sadly, do not survive; even those who do may not ever find a cure. In fact, about one out of every 60 people in the United States live with a disability caused by a brain injury.

The effects that an injury to the brain can have are varied and may include short- or long-term memory loss, seizures, loss of motor or nerve function, loss of function in certain bodily systems, or coma. The circumstances in which these injuries can be sustained also vary and may involve sporting accidents, slip and falls, and construction or other workplace accidents.

Classifying TBIs by Severity

You may have heard that brain injuries can be mild, moderate, or severe. These diagnoses are based on the symptoms patients either do or do not exhibit directly after the traumatic impact occurs.

The different types of TBIs and their symptoms are as follows:

• Mild brain injuries, such as concussions, may not result in a loss of consciousness at all. Some patients only display confusion or disorientation. Whichever experience a person has, it lasts for less than 30 minutes.
• Moderate brain injuries cause a loss of consciousness of about 30 minutes or longer (but less than 24 hours) and typically result in noticeable impairment. Patients may be able to overcome the damage with rehabilitation, but some may only partially recover. The disabilities they sustain may impact the rest of their lives in a variety of ways.
• Severe brain injuries cause victims to succumb to a coma. While those with moderate brain injuries also lose consciousness, they still react to stimuli; coma patients are completely unresponsive. If they do regain consciousness, they are likely to suffer significant cognitive impairment and may need ongoing treatment or personal assistance.

Doctors use the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) to assess the severity of a patient’s TBI. Since it is impossible to diagnose the extent of the brain damage when a patient is unconscious, doctors test their eye, verbal, and motor responses to gauge their condition. The GCS score that they assign to a patient can help loved ones and caregivers know what they can expect by classifying the predicted amount of damage. The GCS runs from 3 (no response in any category) to 15 (best response in every category).

Can Traumatic Brain Injuries Be Treated?

Unfortunately, there is no way for the brain to regenerate dead brain cells. In milder injuries, brain cells may have their function interrupted by stretching and/or swelling; if not killed, a cell may return to its natural state and resume function. This can account for some of the recovery that brain injury victims experience. In other cases, they are able to re-train their brains to take over some of the functions that the dead cells used to control. However, this is not possible for everyone.

For most brain injury patients, the goal of treatment is to help them regain as much independence as possible. Treatment may include:

• Medication
• Physical therapy
• Occupational therapy
• Speech-language therapy
• Counseling/therapy
• Learning how to use assistive devices
• Joining social support groups

A TBI patient needs long-term support for the best outcome. However, they often think they do not have any way to pay for this care. This is exactly why personal injury law was created: to help victims of preventable accidents cover costs that have arisen out of someone else’s negligence.

Sadly, a TBI can change your whole life, from the job you can work to the way you get around and even how you access parts of your own house. The expenses associated with these things, and the emotional suffering TBI victims often endure, can be immense. A qualified St. Louis traumatic brain injury attorney with experience in technical cases can help you pursue a settlement that will meet your needs.

Acclaimed Attorneys Fighting for TBI Victims