After suffering traumatic brain injury in a car accident in Arizona, you may have a lot of questions about your next steps, your rights, and how to handle a car accident claim. Traumatic brain injury can interfere with your life on many levels, making it difficult for you to take on tasks that were once normal and even simple. While a traumatic brain injury claim for an Arizona car accident may not restore your cognitive processes or former confidence, it can provide you with much-needed compensation for your injuries and losses.
How Can Hutzler Law Help After a Traumatic Brain Injury Caused by a Car Accident in Arizona?
At Hutzler Law, we understand the challenges that go along with a traumatic brain injury: not just the medical difficulties, but also the financial and emotional struggle. Our lawyers start with a free consultation to help us better understand your car accident, the losses you suffered, and any difficulties you may already have faced when dealing with the insurance company. When we accept a traumatic brain injury car accident claim, we:
- Thoroughly investigate all elements of the accident to collect evidence that will help establish liability
- Identify all parties that bear liability for your car accident, including cases in which more than one party may share liability
- Fight with the insurance company to help you recover fair compensation for the losses related to your accident.
If you suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident, do not try to handle your claim alone. Contact Hutzler Law at (602) 730-4530 to discuss your right to compensation.
Recovering Compensation After a Traumatic Brain Injury in a Car Accident: What You Need to Know
A traumatic brain injury can cause significant, long-term impact in many areas of your life. Even symptoms of a minor TBI can linger for more than a year after the initial accident. A severe traumatic brain injury, on the other hand, can have long-term consequences that interfere with cognitive functioning and normal interactions for the rest of your life. Traumatic brain injury can cause:
- Problems with short-term or long-term memory
- Difficulty with focus and concentration
- Personality changes
- Difficulty with emotional regulation
In addition, patients with traumatic brain injury can suffer a wide range of physical symptoms, including ringing in the ears, tunnel vision, or headaches. Some patients with traumatic brain injury may require full-time supervision due to impulsive behavior or poor decision-making due to their injuries. The CDC also notes that patients with TBI have a high risk of negative health outcomes in the years following the accident, including higher risk of death. Those challenges can create substantial complications in every area of a patient’s life. When someone else’s negligence causes those injuries, the injured party has the right to recover compensation through a car accident claim.
Compensation You Can Recover for Traumatic Brain Injury
After a traumatic brain injury, you may have the right to recover compensation for the damages you sustained in the accident. That may include:
Medical Costs
Traumatic brain injuries can mean extensive medical bills. After a severe traumatic brain injury, not only can you face emergency medical transport and a visit to the emergency room, you may end up having to stay in the hospital for a long time after the accident. You may also have long-term rehabilitation costs: for example, many TBI victims will work extensively with occupational therapists to learn how to cope with their new limitations. You may end up with immense medical bills related to the accident, which you can include as part of a comprehensive brain injury claim.
Wage Losses
A traumatic brain injury can make it very difficult for the victim to get back to work. You may need to remain out of work until you regain your normal capacity to function. Furthermore, even when you can return to work, you may have to limit the number of hours you can stay on the clock until further into the recovery process. That lost time at work can lead to severe income losses, which can cause financial devastation for many people.
Lost Earning Capacity
Patients with severe traumatic brain injury may permanently lose the ability to work in the industry they worked in before the accident. TBI can make it impossible for patients to focus well enough to take on normal job tasks, interfere with creative thinking, or prevent adequate processing, all of which can make it impossible for those patients to hold down the jobs they did before the accident. If your doctor indicates that your TBI will permanently impact your ability to earn income, you can claim those losses as part of your car accident claim.
Pain and Suffering
TBI can lead to immense suffering. Many victims grow extremely frustrated with the cognitive difficulties they face in the aftermath of the accident. Furthermore, they may have a hard time adjusting to the need for assistance or giving up hobbies and activities they enjoyed before the accident, but they can no longer engage in due to the deficits caused by brain injury. Patients with brain injuries may also have to face permanent changes in their relationships with friends and loved ones. While these losses do not have a direct financial component, you can still include them as part of a TBI claim.
The Statute of Limitations
In order to file a claim for a traumatic brain injury from a car accident, you must file that claim before the statute of limitations has passed. In Arizona, the statute of limitations allows for two years after a car accident for victims to file a claim.
After a traumatic brain injury, time can get away from you quickly. As you focus on your recovery, you may allow more time than expected to go by. While there are some exceptions to the statute of limitations—for example, if you were in a coma because of your head injury and could not begin your injury claim, or if you did not discover the traumatic brain injury until well after the accident—you should begin your injury claim as soon as possible to increase your odds of recovering fair compensation for your losses.
Why You Need a Lawyer for a Traumatic Brain Injury Claim
Navigating any type of injury claim can prove extremely complicated. Not only do you have to deal with your recovery and the challenges that go along with a brain injury, you may face opposition from the insurance company. Insurance companies exist as for-profit businesses, which means that they often seek to minimize the compensation they have to pay out after an accident as much as possible. Meanwhile, you want to maximize the compensation you can recover so that you can pay your medical bills and deal with your regular expenses as you recover from the accident.
A lawyer can provide valuable experience and support as you file a traumatic brain injury claim. A lawyer can:
Identify the Compensation You Deserve
Compensation in a traumatic brain injury case may grow more complex than anticipated. You may need to clearly display the losses you faced because of your TBI: not just the direct medical losses, but also your long-term wage losses because of the accident. A lawyer can make sure you have a clear idea of how much compensation you should expect from your claim so that you do not inadvertently accept an offer that includes only a fraction of the damages you should recover.
Connect You with Medical Experts
As part of a traumatic brain injury claim, you may need to work with medical experts to show the insurance company exactly what damages you have to deal with, including how TBI affects your everyday life. Many car accident lawyers have connections to a team of medical experts that can help more clearly define the damages you sustained because of the accident and help you fight for fair compensation.
Fight with the Insurance Company For You
Insurance companies can use a wide range of tactics to deny the compensation you deserve following a traumatic brain injury. They may try to minimize the extent of your injuries, argue the necessity of medical treatments you received to help you recover, or simply deny liability for the accident. When you have a personal injury lawyer on your side, you have someone to represent your interests, not the interests of the insurance company. A personal injury lawyer will aggressively defend your rights, navigating any challenges the insurance company may throw in your way.
Contact a Lawyer to Fight for Your Rights After an Arizona TBI
If you suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident in Arizona, do not try to handle your claim on your own. Instead, contact Hutzler Law at (602) 730-4530 as soon after your accident as possible. Our experienced team of personal injury attorneys will fight to protect your rights after a car accident that results in traumatic brain injury.
Jason Hutzler
Jason Hutzler is the founding partner of Phoenix personal injury law firm Hutzler Law, and represents individuals throughout Arizona. His practice is primarily dedicated to personal injury and car accident claims, leveraging his deep expertise as a former insurance adjustor to navigate the complexities of insurance negotiations.