Traumatic Brain Injury Case Value

Answer:

At Morgenstern & Herd, we handle traumatic brain injury cases. We’re often asked by our clients: How do we know if these offers that are coming through from the at-fault insurance company are in the range where they should be? There are several elements that go into evaluating your traumatic injury claim. First, we look at the value of the past medical expenses, if your health insurance has paid for those past medical expenses. When we say past, we mean past: before the time of settlement. We have to pay those health insurance bills back. You can’t settle any case without paying back the insurance company who pays your bills, especially in a traumatic brain injury case. Then we consider the bills – your future medical expenses. Those are not at a health insurance rate. Those expenses will be testified to by your traumatic brain injury victims treating physicians, so neurologists, neuropsychologists. Those are called the economics: the past bills, the future bills, and if you were in your earnings years, what are your earnings losses? An economist looks at those things for us because it is not only your past earnings but the value of the benefits. If you lose a job and you lose your health insurance, those are benefits. Did you lose a pension? We look at those things and we evaluate those. Those are all economic damages. Then there’s the non-economic damages to consider: pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, etc. That all has a non-economic value. When we ask a jury to evaluate non-economic damages, they often look to the economic damages. The economics, the out-of-pocket expenses, the past, the future, the earnings losses, they drive the non-economic damages as well. If a patient is lying in a bed and has no quality of life whatsoever but is on a ventilator and not conscious, that is an easier thing to evaluate than the subtle losses that a mild traumatic brain injury may cause. All of those factors, we have jury verdict reporters where we know what juries have done. We have trial experiences to rely upon. We give you advice about the evaluation of all of those elements, but all of them go into determining what the damages are in a traumatic brain injury case.