Attorney Steven Gursten was tapped to be Chair-elect of the American Association for Justice Traumatic Brain Injury Group, a national group of TBI lawyers and legal experts
Of all the personal injuries one can suffer from a serious car crash, the most difficult for auto accident attorneys to prove is the mild to moderate traumatic brain injury.
These injuries can be devastating, but are often completely missed in the emergency room. For days, weeks, and even months after the wreck, doctors may fail to note and document the injury. The auto accident victim herself may not be aware of the deficits and impairments while she is recovering from more obvious physical injuries. Even the medicine is counter-intuitive. You don’t need a loss of consciousness to suffer a serious traumatic brain injury, and MRI or CT scans of the brain are almost always normal, even with a very obvious permanent brain injury.
Even when a qualified doctor diagnoses TBI, defense attorney tactics make proving and recovering compensation for this injury very difficult.
Fortunately, I’ve been through all the wars. Over the past 23 years I’ve helped recover for my own clients several of the top-reported jury verdicts and settlements in Michigan for auto accident cases, most of which also involve brain injury. And I’ve been helping other attorneys learn more about TBI at dozens of legal seminars so they can better represent their own injured clients.
One of the best as well as the largest platforms that I can share my knowledge and experience in TBI is the American Association for Justice Traumatic Brain Injury Group. At the AAJ’s recent convention in Boston, I was voted Chair-elect of the TBI group. The group has some of the very best TBI lawyers in the world, and it’s an honor for me to lead it.
I’ve given dozens of legal presentations and seminars over the years for various state trial lawyer associations, national webinars, and for the AAJ TBI group. I enjoy teaching injury lawyers and helping prepare traumatic brain injury lawyers to better meet their clients’ needs.
The AAJ is the nation’s largest association of advocates serving the needs of personal injury victims, with more than 50,000 lawyer members. The Traumatic Brain Injury Group is an elite group of attorneys throughout the U.S. with expertise in helping people injured with TBI get financial and medical recovery.
Hidden costs of traumatic brain injury gaining more exposure
Instances of TBI are far more common than you might think. The National Institutes of Health estimates that each year, between 70,000 and 90,000 people suffer TBI, resulting in long-term, substantial loss of functioning. Hospitals admit approximately 300,000 people with traumatic brain injury annually. And it’s estimated that tens of thousands of people sustain brain injuries that are not diagnosed, but may result in long-term disability.
Over the past few years, brain injuries have been getting national exposure, by way of veterans who have returned home from duty overseas, as well as former football players whose concussion injuries have continued to make the headlines.
All this helps put traumatic brain injury more in the national awareness. But as mentioned before, TBI cases aren’t exactly easy for injury lawyers to prove in court.
TBI is an injury that requires attorneys to do a lot of medical research about the underlying medicine and science. Medical experts and vocational rehabilitation specialists often must be retained to explain the true nature of the injury and why it matters to a TBI accident victim. Case expenses often run high. So do “no causes” returned by skeptical juries. Insurance companies like to play hardball with TBI cases.
I look forward to serving in my leadership position for the AAJ TBI group.
