Suing For A TBI? Know These Facts!

Transcript:

I wanted to do a video on filing a lawsuit or suing for a brain injury. This is something that is near and dear to my heart. Partially because I do it, I am the lawyer that sues for brain injuries. But the reason I wanted to do this video is, actually, when I’m asked, “What’s your biggest complaint or difficulty with other lawyers?”, is lawyers that do brain injuries poorly. Brain injuries will affect someone over their whole life sometimes and a lawyer who makes a fee off of it and thinks, “Hey, I can get some money fairly quickly,” rather than rolls up his sleeves and really litigates a case, can get some money quickly, but in the long run, the person who suffered the brain injury isn’t taken care of as well as they need to be, especially towards their end of life.

It’s a younger child or a younger adult that’s injured, when they turn 50 or 60 somebody with a brain injury doesn’t age as well as somebody without a brain injury. So they’re going to need some additional care later in age, either a caretaker that comes and helps them, or just somebody around the house sometimes can be enough. But they’re going to need that when they get older and a lot of lawyers don’t fight for that, and it really … it bothers me when there are some lawyers that don’t do that. So one of the things that I want to just get out there is insurance companies in California are who defend against a lawsuit that’s filed for a brain injury.

So, what is the biggest number one criteria of an insurance company in figuring out the value of a lawsuit of someone who sues for a brain injury after they’ve suffered some harm? It’s, who is the firm … what is the name of the firm filing the lawsuit? There’s firms that insurance companies are afraid of and there’s firms that insurance companies are not afraid of. The firms that they’re afraid of they will pay sometimes five or 10 times as much to those firms for the exact same case. Just to be clear, exact same set of facts, exact same case, they will pay firms sometimes five to 10 times more depending on the name and the reputation of that lawyer for going to trial and trying brain injury cases.

So, before you file a lawsuit, you need to say to the lawyer … A lot of lawyers will say they’re trial lawyers. Some lawyers will say that that aren’t trial lawyers. But most importantly, you need to ask around and say, “What’s the reputation of this firm?” And you need to ask some other lawyers in the community and say, “How good are these guys? Are these guys the best of the best?” Because if there’s any hesitation and the answer is not, “Yes, they are the best of the best,” you should think about getting a different lawyer. Because brain injury cases are expensive to litigate, they’re complicated, and insurance companies, they know if it’s a smaller firm that’s litigating them that doesn’t specialize in brain injury cases, they won’t pay as much. That means later in life, the person who suffered a brain injury isn’t going to have the financial resources to really do as well as they should be able to do. So that consideration absolutely needs to be made.

I don’t like talking about other lawyers, but it is something that really needs to be out there. You need to understand that the quality of the law firm in dealing with traumatic brain injuries is probably the number one issue. They look at the reputation of the firm, and if the reputation of the firm is they do a lot of cases and settle them quickly, you’re not doing yourself a service going with that firm.