Traumatic Brain Injury

The experience of Casey Gerry's San Diego traumatic brain injury lawyers and types of TBI cases

Throughout San Diego County and Southern California, Casey Gerry’s traumatic brain injury lawyers have had extensive experience representing people who have suffered all degrees of TBI. Our attorneys work with neurosurgeons, neurologists and neuropsychologists to assure that their clients are properly evaluated, and the nature and extent of their deficits are determined.

A traumatic brain injury will be rated as severe, moderate or mild. People who have severe head injuries may become so incapacitated that they don’t know that they have suffered a head injury, and have no recall of their former identity. They may require extensive re-education, and will live with sharply limited functioning. Casey Gerry's San Diego traumatic brain injury lawyers have achieved settlements for individuals, enabling persons with severe TBI to have the care they need.

The individual with a moderate brain injury may experience greater distress than one with a severe injury, because the individual understands that s/he is different since the injury, and has significant limitations in their functioning. A traumatic brain injury lawyer understands that an injured person must not only cope with the problems from their injury, but must also come to terms with the knowledge that they can never recover the life they had before the accident.

Even when the brain injury is mild, persistent deficits can interfere with a person’s ability to retain information or to retrieve information and process it. These limitations can be debilitating in certain circumstances, particularly for the person in a profession or activity that places significant demands on them. A traumatic brain injury lawyer will advise that all head injuries, severe, moderate, or mild should be taken very seriously, and evaluated aggressively and thoroughly.

Casey Gerry attorneys David Casey and Wendy Behan represented a young man who suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was thrown from the bed of pickup truck. He and several friends had spent the evening socializing and drinking at the home of one of their parents. When the parents called to say they were returning early, the group gathered their empties into a plastic bag, with a plan to drive the bag down the street to a neighbor’s trash container and quickly return home. Our client and another young man sat in the bed of his friend’s pickup with the trash bag as the friend drove.

Instead of simply driving to the trash container, the driver, who was intoxicated, impulsively accelerated out of the residential neighborhood and into a commercial area. A witness who saw the truck described it as speeding, weaving, and failing to stop at stop signs. The driver took a corner at excessive speed, and the force of the turn threw our client from the truck bed. He landed on his head on the pavement with blood pouring from his ears and then losing consciousness. The driver slowed down to let the other passenger out and then fled from the scene himself in the truck, abandoning his friend.

Our client spent twelve days in Intensive Care, where he was treated for multiple injuries, including a concussion with loss of consciousness, a skull fracture, an intracranial bleed, a subarachnoid hemorrhage and severe damage to one eye. Two surgeries were performed, one to treat the brain bleed and another on the injured eye. Despite the surgery and a subsequent corneal transplant, he completely lost the sight in that eye. He continued to suffer with headaches, total blindness in one eye and decreased hearing. His speech was slurred and his balance impaired.

Neuropsychological testing confirmed that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury “TBI.” His ability to concentrate and his cognitive flexibility has been diminished, making studying and learning much harder. As a college student, this was especially difficult and made learning much more difficult. He also experienced word finding difficulties, decreased capacity for verbal problem solving, and decreased physical dexterity, balance and strength. This young man, formerly a skillful and confident athlete, could no longer ski, skydive, or engage in any contact sport. His loss of vision has made him self-conscious and he has experienced significant depression about the losses he has suffered.

Casey Gerry’s attorneys, David S. Casey, Jr. and Wendy M. Behan, filed a claim against the former friend who had caused his injuries and abandoned him laying in a pool of blood in the street. In mediation, they secured a substantial settlement for our client’s extensive medical expenses, both past and anticipated, and for the loss of physical and intellectual capacities.

After a fire truck ran a red light and struck a young woman, Monica G. Casey Gerry's San Diego brain injury lawyers obtained a record settlement for her. Her case was one of the first to establish the need for fire departments to use opticom devices to ensure that they could change traffic lights as they proceeded through intersections, reducing risk to other drivers and passengers.

Another client, Ted W, was a high school wrestler who suffered a “head squeezing” injury from an opponent in a match that caused a subdural bleed. His case, which went to trial, dealt with a neurodeficit that compromised this young man’s ability to think mathematically, a subject in which he had previously been extremely proficient. The San Diego Tribune reported the story as “an El Cajon case about a dream lost.” and the jury awarded him $621,000.

Casey Gerry's San Diego traumatic brain injury lawyers have taught seminars and written papers that are widely used by other lawyers about the preparation of cases for individuals with traumatic brain injuries. Over the last 60 years we have learned the importance of fully understanding a person’s pre-morbid functioning, their level of functioning before the accident. We often obtain school records going back to grade school so that we can evaluate a person’s cognitive abilities prior to the incident.