What do car accidents, football games, and blunt-force slip and falls have in common? All of these circumstances can force you or someone you love to contend with a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Traumatic brain injuries can temporarily or permanently upend your ability to take care of yourself, much to your personal and financial detriment.
How, then, can you react to a traumatic brain injury accident? You can work with Lafayette traumatic brain injury attorneys to take legal action against the party responsible for your accident. Vaughan & Vaughan employs personal injury lawyers throughout Indiana who can represent your best interests in civil court.
Should You File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Filing a personal injury lawsuit after a traumatic brain injury accident can allow you to demand compensation for your recent losses. That compensation can subsequently help you pay off any bills related to your post-accident care.
While filing a personal injury claim does not allow you to hold a liable party criminally accountable for their misconduct, your traumatic brain injury claim does allow you to pursue justice for the negligence that the offending party allegedly committed.
If a court finds that negligence to be particularly egregious, said court may enact punitive damages against the offending party. Those damages, in turn, can further punish the offending party for the harm they did to you.
Do You Need to Work With a Lafayette Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer?
The state of Indiana does not require you to work with a personal injury attorney if you want to take legal action after a traumatic brain injury accident. However, working with an attorney can make it easier for you to submit your claim before your statute of limitations, outlined in Indiana Code section 34-11-2-4, expires.
Our attorneys know how to build and format your traumatic brain injury claim to meet the standards set by Indiana’s civil courts. We can also support you prior to and during a trial – or, in some cases, private negotiations. If you have an attorney on your side, it’s much harder for both the liable party and insurance providers to undervalue your losses.
That said, committing to working with a personal injury attorney can be challenging, especially if you have financial concerns. Vaughan & Vaughan takes a two-fold approach to those worries. First, we offer free traumatic brain injury consultations. These consultations don’t require you to commit to legal action.
Second, we work on contingency, meaning you won’t get billed for our services. We only get paid if we win your case, and even then, payment gets filtered through our pre-trial contingency fee agreements. You can learn more about these agreements as well as our experience in Indiana’s civil courts during one of the aforementioned free case consultations.
Who Can File a Traumatic Brain Injury Claim?
If you’re the victim of a traumatic brain injury, you have the right to file a personal injury claim in your own name. You can also request that Lafayette’s traumatic brain injury lawyers do so on your behalf.
If you know someone who’s a traumatic brain injury victim, you may have the right to bring a claim forward on their behalf. You may only do so, however, if you serve as that party’s personal executor. If you don’t fill that role, you cannot initiate legal action after any manner of accident the injured party was involved in.
What Evidence Establishes Your Right to Legal Action?
You have an obligation to prove your right to a personal injury claim to the judge you submit a claim to. This means that you need to bring forward evidence of another party’s traumatic brain injury-causing negligence if you want to hold that party responsible for your financial recovery. The evidence you can use to establish liability after a TBI can include the following:
- Statements from bystanders regarding your accident
- Social media posts describing your accident
- Input from medical professionals addressing the cause of your condition
- Speculation on liability from police officers and insurance claims adjusters
- Accident recreations
- Additional expert witness statements
- Physical debris from the accident scene
You can submit some combination of this evidence alongside a lawyer’s critical analysis to better convince a judge of your right to legal action. Remember, though, that your initial claim only wins you the right to pursue damages for your losses. The initial claim does not win you damages without a fight.
Fortunately, you can use the evidence you gather to either negotiate for TBI compensation or initiate a civil trial. Our attorneys can help you determine which course of action best suits your needs.
What Is the Average Traumatic Brain Injury Accident Settlement?
No one should offer you an “average” traumatic brain injury accident settlement. No two traumatic brain injuries have the same impact on victims’ lives. Similarly, the accidents that lead to these injuries are always different.
While you may be able to refer to case precedent when establishing the value of your case, your desired compensation should not be identical to someone else’s. Instead, you can work with an attorney to determine what unique losses you endured in your accident and how you can use state precedent to establish a value for those losses.
The expenses you may have the right to include in your request for compensation can include the following:
- Medical expenses
- Pain and suffering
- Physical therapy
- Lost wages or employment opportunities
- Mental anguish
- Property damage
- Stress
You can discuss your right to these forms of compensation with the traumatic brain injury attorneys in Lafayette, IN.
You Can Request Legal Representation Today
Whether you suffered a traumatic brain injury on Purdue’s sprawling campus or in residential Lafayette, the state of Indiana gives you the right to pursue legal action against the party liable for your accident. You can do so with legal guidance from Lafayette’s traumatic brain injury lawyers.
Vaughan & Vaughan’s team of experienced attorneys can look into your accident and help you establish liability for your TBI-related losses. Together we can format a civil claim and present your argument for financial support to Lafayette’s civil courts. So long as your case moves forward, you can count on our team to fight tooth and nail for the compensation you deserve.
Contact our office today if you’re ready to learn more about Vaughan & Vaughan’s legal services.
