When you sue someone for a brain injury, Texas law requires you to prove that the person or company’s negligent actions—or inaction—caused your injuries. This can be challenging, especially if you have suffered a concussion. This type of brain injury can cause headaches, cognitive issues, and personality changes but leaves little if any physical evidence.
Though concussions are sometimes called mild traumatic brain injuries, or mTBIs, there’s nothing “mild” about them or the effects they can have on your life and those around you.
Here’s what you should know about these insidious, invisible injuries and how The Bonneau Firm uses expert opinions and information from your loved ones to help build a winning case.
Common Concussion Symptoms Can Make Proving Causation Challenging
As if proving the existence of an invisible injury isn’t difficult enough, the symptoms themselves can sometimes complicate matters in concussion and brain injury cases. For example, headaches are one of the most common concussion symptoms. Unfortunately, the headaches associated with concussions often feel like regular tension headaches—which can make connecting them to the other party’s actions (or inaction) challenging.
Everyone has had a headache at some point. Even if the frequency and severity have gotten a lot worse since your injury, the insurance company might still try to deny your claim and say your headaches are the same ones you’ve always had.
Other common concussive symptoms include:
- Nausea or vomiting
- Blurry vision
- Double vision
- Dizziness or balance problems
- Concentration and memory issues
- Noise or light sensitivity
- Feeling hazy, sluggish, groggy, or “off”
- Trouble sleeping or sleeping too much
- Irritability or anxiety
- Inability to remember events immediately before or after the head injury
Meanwhile, people around you may notice that you:
- Appear dazed or stunned
- Forget instructions more easily
- Seem confused by familiar routines, assignments, or games
- Display mood, behavior, or personality changes
Establishing causation in concussion cases isn’t easy. Fortunately, Dallas attorney Hunt Bonneau’s community approach to case building and personal experience recovering from concussions during his college years gives clients valuable insight into these complex cases.
Our Dallas-Fort Worth Brain Injury Lawyer Uses Evidence From Personal and Professional Sources to Build Winning Cases
Proving that the other party caused your mTBI requires evidence from wide-ranging individuals, including medical specialists and other experts. However, before we consult professionals who are experts on concussions, we talk to people who are experts on you—like your family, friends, coworkers, pastors, and others—to find out what you were like before the injury and what, if anything, they’ve noticed since.
After interviewing your family doctor, we send you to a specialist for a much more thorough assessment than what you get at the emergency room or during a regular checkup. These experts have devoted their lives to studying brain injuries. They know the right tests to run to identify concussions and determine which parts of your brain are affected.
Finally, we ask the brain injury specialist to compare the clinical data from your assessment to the stories your loved ones told us about the changes they’ve seen in you since your injury. Personal stories and scientific data that are consistent can help us establish causation and show how the concussion has affected your independence or changed you into a seemingly different person.
Establishing causation in a Texas brain injury civil case takes time, money, expertise, and a dogged determination to find the truth. Fortunately, you’ve come to the right place for help. The Bonneau Firm has the experience, resources, and tenacity to secure the compensation necessary to get the treatment and care you need to navigate concussion-related challenges successfully.