Causes and Effects of Brain Injuries in New York

Accidents and injuries are tragically commonplace, and people get hurt every day. While many are lucky enough to make full recoveries, people with brain injuries are often not so lucky.

Accidents are a significant source of brain injuries and leave many people with debilitating conditions. Many other brain injuries are related to medical negligence, such as medical malpractice or birth injuries. Some people eventually recover, while others must learn to live with their injuries for the rest of their lives. Losing bodily functioning is a serious concern for people with brain injuries. The loss might be slight or great, but all losses deserve compensation. You can file a lawsuit after a brain injury, but your lawsuit will depend on how the injury happened. Personal injury, medical malpractice, and even intentional tort lawsuits are possibilities. The evidence you need for your case will also vary based on your unique circumstances.

If you or someone you loved experienced a brain injury, our New York personal injury lawyers can help you get justice and fair compensation. For a free assessment of your case, call The Carrion Law Firm at (718) 841-0083.

Causes of Brain Injuries in New York

How your brain injury happened will determine what kind of lawsuit our Queens personal injury attorneys can file for you. Although many brain injuries come from accidents, no two accidents are alike. Depending on how your injury happened, the person liable for your brain injury may have owed you a unique duty of care.

Car Accidents

Car Accidents and other accidents on the road or highway may lead to catastrophic brain injuries. Cars are extremely heavy and fast vehicles. If you were hit by a speeding car or were behind the wheel of a speeding car when someone else hit you, serious brain injuries are possible. Finding evidence of the accident is important as many injured victims do not recall the details of the crash.

A driver’s head might be whipped violently against the steering wheel during a crash. In other cases, drivers or passengers are thrown from their vehicles where they hit their heads on the road. This severe head trauma can leave injured victims with serious brain injuries.

Assaults

Assaults are also possible sources of brain injuries. An assault is unique from other kinds of cases because it involves the intentional actions of another person and is not considered an accident. As such, proving an assault requires a different approach. Also, the defendant risks criminal prosecution for the assault in addition to civil action.

If an attacker strikes someone in the head, they risk causing the victim brain damage. Even if the victim is not hit in the head, they might be pushed to the ground where they strike their head against something hard. Still, in other cases, gunshots to the head may leave victims with debilitating brain injuries.

Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice involves negligence from doctors tasked with taking care of patients. Medical malpractice is not intentional but stems from medical treatment that falls below standards of care. Medical malpractice might involve surgeries gone wrong, misdiagnoses, inappropriate medication prescriptions, birth injuries, and more.

One example of a brain injury caused by malpractice is a birth injury. When babies are born, there may be complications that lead to a lack of oxygen in the birth canal. This lack of oxygen can cause life-long brain injuries if it is not corrected quickly. Doctors who fall below the standards of medical care might not catch this mistake, and the infant will suffer for it.

In other cases, infection from surgery might make its way into a patient’s brain, where it causes serious damage. Another example is poorly prescribed medications. The wrong combination or dosage of medicine might cause side effects in the brain.

Slip and Falls

Although people tend to overlook how serious they can be, slip and falls may lead to debilitating brain injuries. A slip and fall can be more than simply slipping on a wet surface or losing your footing. People sometimes fall from great heights or land directly on their heads, causing brain injuries that never fully recover. A wet or icy sidewalk, uneven stairs, or rickety floorboards can cause someone to fall and hit their head hard enough to cause a brain injury.

Drownings

Drowning can cause brain injuries from a lack of oxygen for too long. Drownings often happen when people go to the beach or hang out by the pool. However, accidental near-drownings can also happen in bathtubs, hot tubs, ponds, lakes, or anywhere else there is water. For example, a person swimming at the beach might be pulled out to sea by strong rip currents and be pulled underwater for too long. The lack of oxygen during this time might leave them with severe brain injuries, and negligent lifeguards or the owners of a private beach may be liable by a Long Island Drowning accident lawyer.

How a Brain Injury Might Affect Your Life in New York

Brain injuries can have significant impacts on your daily life. The severity of brain injuries may range from somewhat mild to catastrophic, but any injury deserves justice and compensation. Our Bronx personal injury attorneys can help you hold the defendant in your case liable you’re your damages.

Disabilities are common in brain injury cases. Brain injury victims often lose certain bodily functions that make it harder to perform ordinary daily tasks. Walking, talking, moving limbs, and motor skills may be limited or completely lost. People with brain injuries sometimes need wheelchairs to get around, and leaving their own homes may be difficult.

After a brain injury, injured victims might require long-term care. This might come in the form of private nurses in the home or having to live at a long-term care facility. In either case, the case of long-term care may be incredibly expensive, and a person’s living conditions are forever altered.

After a brain injury, you might be unable to return to work in a full-time capacity or at all. The loss of a job means that you no longer have an income to support yourself and pay for important medical care. You can claim any lost income and lost future income as part of your damages in a lawsuit.

Brain injuries are not only physically debilitating, but they are mentally and emotionally traumatic. It sometimes takes injured victims years to come to terms with how their lives have changed after a brain injury. You might lose unique job and schooling opportunities you otherwise could have had, and the emotional fallout may be devastating. Your pain and suffering, mental and physical, deserve compensation.

Legal Options After a Brain Injury in New York

Our Brooklyn personal injury lawyers can help you file a lawsuit against the person or people responsible for your accident. We must go over the details of how your accident happened so we can file the right kind of lawsuit.

To recover compensation for your brain injury, we must prove that the defendant acted negligently. Negligence involves four crucial legal elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. The defendant must have owed you some duty of care or legal obligation. Second, the defendant must have done something to breach that duty. The breach must be the direct cause of your injury, and your damages related to the accident must be fully realized and not just possibilities.

Proving an assault case is different as it requires showing the defendant intended to cause you harm. Essentially, we must not only show that the defendant’s actions led to your brain injury but that the defendant intended their actions to cause you harm.

Different cases may require different kinds of evidence. Your medical records will be of the utmost importance as they establish the existence of your brain injury and shed light on how severe your case is. In a medical malpractice case, we will rely heavily on medical experts who can explain how your doctor failed to meet standards of care. Other cases may require witness testimony, physical evidence from the accident, or documentation of how your life has changed.

Contact Our New York Brain Injury Attorneys for Help

If you or someone you love experienced a brain injury, the person or people responsible should be brought to justice and made to pay for your damages. For a free case evaluation, call the Flushing personal injury lawyers at The Carrion Law Firm at (718) 841-0083.