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Traumatic & Acquired Brain InjuryWelcome to the Rodgers Law Firm
When someone suffers a debilitating brain injury, the victim and every member of the victim’s family lead totally different lives. No amount of money can compensate for the victim’s personality changes and the limitations in daily activities imposed on every family member and family friend following such injury.
At times, family members’ emotions may alternate between feeling anger at the victim, because the head injury may change the victim’s behavior in ways that can be very irritating to those around the victim, and feeling guilty about the feeling of anger because every family member knows that the victim would not act that way had the injury not occurred.
The victim’s and the family’s suffering caused by the injury may be further burdened by intense feeling of anger, frustration, and resentment because the injury could have been easily avoided if the person at fault, the wrongdoer, had only been more careful.
We at the Rodgers Law Firm in Fort Worth, Texas understand the devastation and losses caused by brain injury.
That's why we are here – to do everything we can to help our clients get the answers, the assistance, and the compensation that they are entitled to under the law.
We handle brain injury cases all over the Metroplex and surrounding cities, including Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Denton, Burleson, Cleburne, Decatur, Weatherford, Haltom City, North Richland Hills, Richland Hills, Azle, Mineral Wells, Sherman, and Denison.
If you have a family member or friend that has suffered a brain injury in an accident – due to medical mistake, car wreck, large truck collision, defective consumer product, airplane crash, defective prescription drug, or any other type of brain-injury-causing accident - contact us for a free, no obligation consultation.
We will meet with you at our office or any location convenient to you.
In a free, no obligation consultation with us, you may evaluate first hand our capabilities to help you and other family members work through the legal, economic and emotional hurdles faced when a family member sustains such a devastating injury.
The following pages of detailed legal information will give you insights into the depth of our technical capabilities in handling traumatic brain injury cases.
Examples of Brain Injury Cases Handled By Our Law Firm
Construction Worker Hit by Falling Flashlight
Violation of OSHA Regulations
Traumatic Brain Injury
Midlothian, Texas
Our client, a 32 year-old high-rise iron worker and a member of a steelworkers union, was employed by a subcontractor on a power plant construction site. He was injured while working inside a tall concrete and steel smokestack tower. His job as a steel worker required good balance, climbing, squatting, lifting, and carrying abilities and the ability to work at heights.
He was wearing a hard hat but his job required that he frequently bend over at the waist and look down, a position that exposed the back of his head and neck to unprotected blows from above.
Unknown to him, an engineer employed by the general contractor was working 30 feet above him inspecting some completed work. The engineer was carrying a large flashlight that was not properly secured to his belt. The flashlight suddenly fell without warning and struck our client at the base of the skull. He was knocked unconscious for 10 minutes and transported by ambulance to the hospital.
The brain injury caused the following mental and physical conditions:
1. He began having post-trauma epileptic seizures – the seizures came on unexpectedly, were highly embarrassing, and precluded him from driving a car.
2. He became dizzy when he moved – movement during walking affected his gait and he had to concentrate on each step, he had to move slowly when getting into and out of chairs, he could not use ladders for such tasks as changing light bulbs and hanging tree lights, and using elevators and climbing stairs made him lightheaded.
3. He became very forgetful – he could not remember simple things such as where the car was parked, driving routes to familiar places, the day of the week, and family birthdays.
4. Complex information had to be given to him a little bit at a time.
5. He had a hard time concentrating, and he was unable to do more than one thing at a time.
6. His head shook due to the medication he had to take.
7. He had difficulty expressing ideas because he could not find the right words to say.
8. He had to depend on his wife to make all decisions requiring careful thought and choosing between alternatives.
9. He suffered from ongoing depression, anger, frustration, anxiety and irritability.
Expert engineering testimony stated that the force of the flashlight blow to his head depended on the weight of the flashlight and the speed it was falling when it hit him.
The flashlight weighed 36 ounces – heavier than a typical major league baseball bat that weighs 34 ounces.
The flashlight’s falling speed would depend on the length of time it took for the flashlight to fall, and could be calculated as follows:
Fall time Flashlight Speed on Impact
1.0 second 22 mph
1.5 seconds 33 mph
2.0 seconds 44 mph
3.0 seconds 66 mph
By comparison, Barry Bond’s bat has been calculated as traveling at 70 mph when he hits a home run.
Five years before the accident OSHA published a study that said a significant portion of all worker injuries involved workers being struck on the head by foreign objects, and noted that in one of the years studied there were 70,000 head and face injuries.
The case settled before trial. (LH1500)
Auto Mechanic Injured On-The-Job By Defective Car Lift
Subdural Hematoma & Traumatic Brain Injury & Hearing Loss
Fort Worth, Texas
Our client was working as a car mechanic in a garage that used hydraulic car lifts to raise the underside of a car being worked on by a mechanic above the mechanic’s head so that the mechanic could stand underneath the car when the lift was high enough. Because the garage owner did not properly inspect the lifts for safety, over time one of the lifts became unsafe.
One day while our client was standing underneath a car to inspect it for problems, the lift lost enough hydraulic pressure to allow the lift and car to drop several feet and strike our client on the head. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital and released after ER examination.
One weekend later while fishing off a bridge, he suddenly blacked out and fell off the bridge. He was hospitalized and testing revealed he had a subdural hematoma. A subdural hematoma is a form of traumatic brain injury in which blood collects in the brain. Subdural bleeding usually results from tears in veins that cross the subdural space. The subdural hemorrhage caused an increase in intracranial pressure (pressure within the skull), which can cause compression of and damage to delicate brain tissue. Acute subdural hematoma has a high mortality rate and is a severe medical emergency.
The client’s bleeding was so slow that it took a week for the intracranial pressure to build up in the brain to the point he lost consciousness. Emergency brain surgery was necessary to repair the subdural hematoma. His injuries also included traumatic brain injury and hearing loss.
The case was settled before trial. (RW40)
MVA Causes Traumatic Brain Injury
and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome
Our client, a physically active, tall, healthy owner of a construction company in business just a few months, was in a motor vehicle accident. Even though wearing a seat belt, his head hit the top of his pickup during the head-on collision because the collision buckled the floor of his pickup, pushing his head in an upward direction.
He directed traffic after the accident and declined medical care when offered it at the scene by emergency medical personnel. He assumed his injuries were minor “whiplash” injuries and would heal on their own.
Within a few days he began suffering short-term memory loss, anxiety attacks, severe depression, and recurring accident event flashbacks. He began to dread going to sleep and avoided it as long as possible each night.
His construction company failed financially because he could not remember job schedules and verbal commitments made to customers and suppliers, simple tasks that he had done successfully for years as the general manager of a large corporations’ remodeling division. This short-term memory loss caused job cost overruns, lost profits, and dissatisfied customers.
Expert neurological, psychiatric, and neuropsychological evaluations determined that he had sustained traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress syndrome requiring extensive psychiatric care and medication for more than two years. At one time he was reduced to painting houses by himself because his company no longer had any employees.
Defense lawyers were confident that a local jury would not award compensation in line with his losses because he was never admitted to a hospital and “there was never a band aid on him,” thus he could not have been seriously injured in the accident.
The trial judge refused to allow evidence of the financial losses he sustained while trying to keep his company going after the accident because, since the company was new and therefore without a history of profitability, it was “too speculative” to allow a jury to decide what his construction company would have earned had he not been in the accident. The Jury was only allowed to consider his medical bills and physical impairment.
After a seven day trial, the jury returned a verdict in our client’s favor in an amount that was more than eight times the best pre-trial settlement offer from the defendant.
The jury verdict was upheld by the appellate courts after the defendant appealed the results two times – once on the issue that the amount of the jury award for physical impairment was excessive and once on the issue that the prejudgment and postjudgment interest awarded by the trial judge was excessive. The two appeals were handled by an attorney with another law firm who was an appellate specialist. (JPR130)
Collision with Large Crane Truck on Icy Overpass
Traumatic Brain Injury & Herniated Discs in Neck
Bedford, Texas
Bedford was in the midst of a freezing rain early one winter morning. The rain was freezing as soon as it hit the roadway. Our client’s route to work included using a two-lane, one-way bridge overpass from Highway 183 to Highway 121 and then on to DFW Airport. The road traffic was sparse and she was driving carefully and very slowly. Anyone exiting 183 onto the overpass could see every vehicle on the overpass from beginning to end before changing lanes to go onto the overpass.
Halfway through the overpass it began to change from a straight path paralleling Highway 183 into a curved shape to cross over Highway 183. When our client’s car reached the curved portion, her tires lost traction and she began sliding toward the guardrail on the left side of the overpass.
During the slide her car did a 180 degree turn so that her headlights were facing toward oncoming traffic. Two other cars then stopped behind her on the right shoulder. All 3 cars had their lights on.
After a few minutes an 18-wheeler motorized crane truck then came onto the overpass, driving down the center line of the 2 lanes, apparently thinking he could drive around the stopped cars. He could not do so and despite the heavy weight of his truck his tires lost traction and he lost control of the crane.
The crane hit the 2 cars on right shoulder and then crushed our client’s car against the guardrail on the left shoulder. She was taken to a local hospital by ambulance. Her injuries included cervical disc herniations and traumatic brain injury.
Investigation revealed the truck driver’s license had been suspended in 2 other states prior to the accident for convictions for driving offenses.
At his deposition the driver testified that (1) he had driven at least 3 miles on the freeway in the icy conditions, (2) he knew the ice was on the roadway, (3) he knew that overpasses were subject to icing easier and faster than ground level roadway, and (4) he knew icy roads caused tired to loose traction.
He also reviewed the photos taken of the view any driver would have of the overpass and agreed he could have seen the 3 cars looking through his truck windshield before he got onto the overpass.
Our truck driving safety expert testified that the driver’s view of the overpass allowed him to see the red tail lights of the 2 other cars on the overpass and our client’s headlights pointing in his direction while he was still on Highway 183.
Because the lights were not moving he should have known the vehicles were stopped on the overpass. He clearly should have known there was trouble ahead and stopped his truck before entering the overpass. The case settled before trial. (MT37)
Overview of Brain Injury Cases
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is caused by an external force, usually in the form of a blow to the head. Car accidents, blows from objects falling from above such as store merchandise, and slip and fall accidents are some of the more common causes of TBI.
Acquired Brain Injury
Acquired brain injury is caused by a disruption in oxygen flow to the brain, not by a blow to the head. Medical malpractice, medical negligence, and birth trauma are sources of acquired brain injury caused by others.
Brain Injury Statistics and Problems in Accurate Diagnosis
Medical statistics say that every 15 seconds someone in the U.S. has a TBI. Of these, more than 50,000 will die and more than 70,000 will be permanently injured. Half of all TBI injuries are caused by motor vehicle accidents.
TBI is one of the most misunderstood and under-treated medical conditions. It is possible to have TBI even though all the usual medical tests, including neurological exam, EEG, CT scan, and MRI scan, are normal.
It is possible to have TBI even though the patient’s head did not hit something and no loss of consciousness occurred in the accident.
The Glascow Coma Scale, used by many emergency room doctors, rates TBI in 3 categories: severe, moderate, and mild. The diagnosis of “mild” TBI is misleading: mild is used in reference to the patient’s state of consciousness & likelihood of long-term survival right after the accident and is not intended to predict ultimate mental functioning recovery by the patient.
What doctors call “Mild” TBI can be highly disabling to normal life activities: symptoms include tiring easily, inability to perform routine job functions as quickly as before the accident, loss of ability to cope with normal life stress, irritability, memory loss, depression, lack of motivation, agitation, restlessness, lack of emotional control, and difficulty relating to others.
Special tests are often needed to examine the functioning of the brain in a TBI case. These include Positron Emission Tomography or PET scans, Single-Photon Emission Computed Tomography or SPECT scans, and functional MRI scans.
Special doctors are often needed to help the TBI victim. These include a neuro-opththalmologist for vision and balance problems, a neuro-otologist for balance, ringing in the ears, and hearing problems, a neuropsychologist to detect the exact weaknesses in brain functioning, and a physiatrist for special rehabilitation needs.
TBI can cause a variety of visual problems, including:
1. Photophobia: excessive sensitivity to, and intolerance of, bright light.
2. Floaters: bright, moving specks of light.
3. Reduced peripheral vision: reduced ability to see objects to the side while looking ahead.
4. Visual field defects: blank spots in vision, causing victims to tilt their head so they can look around the blank spot.
5. Focusing defects (blurred vision): a lessening of the brain's capacity to "fuse" the two separate images coming through the optic nerve from each eye into one picture.
6. Gaze stabilization defects (nystagmus): the automatic reset movement of the eyes as the head is turned are off-track, causing an unstable, blurry-looking world.
7. Gaze shifting defects: the eyes are poor at tracking a moving object or re-orienting to a new object without turning the head.
8. Visual neglect: the victim stops processing visual information in a particular area of vision. He has no awareness of the missing area or "hole" in his field of vision. The testing doctor can stand in the "hole," and make all kinds of motions that get no response from the victim, who has no awareness of anything going on in that space in front of him.
9. Cognitive defects: the victim's capacity to recognize when he is looking in the right place and when not and then to take appropriate action is harmed. An example of properly working cognition would be a sports spectator scanning the crowd to find the face of a friend who is holding a seat for him – he scans the crowd, rapidly switching his gaze from left to right, up and down, focusing on a group of people, studying them, then moving his gaze to another group, etc. until he finds his friend and the empty seat.
“Mild” TBI (minimal or no loss of consciousness) can injure the eye’s complex vision system in a way that results in vision problems yet there is no detectible mechanical damage to eye structures. The victim's eyes look fine. He can still read an eye chart. CT scans show no brain bleeding and MRI scans shown no swelling or compression. There are two types of known medical syndromes that show this effect.
This type of TBI victim frequently reports visual problems such as seeing objects appearing to move that are known to be stationary; seeing words and print run together; and experiencing intermittent blurring. Other symptoms are sometimes described as attempting to walk on a floor that appears tilted and having significant difficulties with balance and spatial orientation when in crowded, moving environments.
Victims reporting these symptoms to optometrists and ophthalmologists are often told that their problems are 'not in their eyes' and that their eyes appear to be healthy. In many instances they also experience anxiety with these symptoms and are referred to psychologists or psychiatrists to treat their anxiety.
The referral for psychological or psychiatric care is sometimes made based on a diagnosis of hysteria without recognizing that many of these individuals may be suffering from known syndromes affecting the visual process in the brain.
These syndromes are Post Trauma Vision Syndrome (PTVS) and Visual Midline Shift Syndrome (VMSS). Victims experiencing these visual syndromes often have healthy eyes and relatively normal visual acuity.
Symptoms of Post Trauma Vision Syndrome (PTVS):
Double vision
Headaches
Blurred vision
Dizziness or nausea
Light sensitivity
Attention or concentration difficulties
Staring behavior (low blink rate)
Spatial disorientation
Losing place when reading
Can’t find beginning of next line when reading
Comprehension problems when reading
Visual memory problems
Pulls away from objects when they are brought close to them
Eye turned outward or high tendency to turn out
Focusing insufficiency
Convergence insufficiency (inability to maintain proper binocular eye alignment on objects as they approach from distance to near)
Poor fixations (fixing vision on stationary object) and pursuits (following moving object)
Unstable peripheral vision
Associated neuromotor difficulties with balance, coordination and posture
Perceived movement of stationary objects
Symptoms of Visual Midline Shift Syndrome (MVSS):
Dizziness or nausea
Spatial disorientation
Consistently stays to one side of hallway or room
Bumps into objects when walking
Poor walking or posture: leans back on heels, forward, or to one side when walking, standing or seated in a chair
Perception of the floor being tilted
Associated neuromotor difficulties with balance, coordination and posture
The Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association, International (NORA) is the international association whose members are committed to treatments for PTVS and MVSS. The NORA website, http://www.nora.cc/index.html, lists members in Texas and other states.
Losing the Right to Make the Claim
You must file your Texas brain injury suit within a certain time period or else you will lose your right to pursue your claim. In most brain injury cases, the suit must be filed within two years from the date of the head injury.
Simply contacting the business whose employee caused the injury or contacting the businesses’ insurance company about the accident is not enough to stop the running of the two year period.
Medical and other healthcare malpractice cases are governed by a different limitations procedure that may be shorter than two years after the date the injury is discovered. Certain exceptions do exist in unique circumstances, but they require the analysis of a qualified attorney to determine if they are applicable.
Cases involving federal and state governmental entities as defendants are governed by a different limitations procedures and periods. Claims against federal government entities are controlled by the Federal Tort Claims Act, which provides:
“A tort claim against the United States shall be forever barred unless it is presented in writing to the appropriate Federal agency within two years after such claim accrues or unless action is begun six months after the date of mailing, by certified or registered mail, of notice of final denial of the claim by the agency to which it was presented.”
Texas governmental entities are controlled by the Texas Tort Claims Act. The claim procedures in this Act must be followed. It requires that written notice, often using mandatory forms supplied by the agency involved, be given to the agency against whom the claim is being made within time periods shorter than a year after the accident, often as short as six months. Certain exceptions do exist in unique circumstances, but they require the analysis of a qualified attorney to determine if they are applicable.
There are other reasons to act quickly. Key witnesses may disappear, witnesses’ memories may fade, and vital documents may be lost. Sometimes it takes months of investigation to determine who the true defendants are that are legally responsible for the accident. It is crucially important that you do not delay in consulting with an attorney.
Contact us for a free no-obligation consultation as soon as possible to ensure that you retain your right to pursue your claim.
Contact Us for a Second Opinion If Another Attorney Has Declined To Represent You in a Brain Injury Case
Attorneys regularly decide whether the case that they are reviewing does or does not meet all the requirements to be a viable, sound case. Making this determination is not an exact science. Based on different experiences and analytic abilities, one attorney may turn down the opportunity to represent a client and another attorney may shortly thereafter decide to take the case.
The second reviewing attorney saw something the first reviewing attorney may have overlooked. The first attorney may have decided that liability was not clear, that there was not available insurance coverage or other sources to pay the money damages, or that there were other problems in seeking a recovery.
We would welcome the opportunity to review your family’s brain injury claim even if another attorney has turned the case down. There is no charge or obligation for our review.
You may contact us at the following phone numbers at any time:
Office: toll free: 1-866-560-1075
local: 817-717-4080
Copyright 1994 - 2007 Clifford B. Rodgers.
Last Modified July 6, 2007.
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