Brain Injury Law Blog : Head Injury : Coma : Personal Injury : Las Vegas Nevada Lawyer & Attorney Tim Titolo

Las Vegas Brain Injury Blog -  Episode 4

THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW 

Once someone sustains a traumatic brain injury, life changes.  The job of the lawyer in proving the “unseen” injury of traumatic brain injury is to provide a believable before and after comparison of the injured person’s abilities. Those abilities become the planets in a once familiar galaxy which is now misaligned and, at times, on a collision course with other planets. Acceptance and Creativity are key. Once a person accepts they have new physical difficulties with emotion, cognition components, they can then begin by creatively overcoming them.

Impairments of Traumatic Brain Injury

The Following is a list; not an exhaustive list; but a potential list of abilities that a person may have had change as a result of brain injury.  These become manifest due to difficulties with concentration, attention, information processing, irritability and fatigue that is often associated with traumatic brain injury.

1. Job Skills
2. Job Socialization
3. Job Success or Promotion
4. Recreation
5. Social Skills
6. Partner Skills – Spouse/Significant Other
7. Initiation
8. Civic Responsibility
9. Spiritual Commitments
10. Sporting Activities
11. Sexual Intimacy

These are all potential skills that a person may have affected as a result of traumatic brain injury. It is important to note that a person need not suffer alteration in skills in all of these areas. That is something a person who would like to believe there is no injury will point out. People like insurance adjusters, defense attorneys and experts who get paid by the defense. In other words, they submit, if a person can still attend church and go to Sunday school, then the fact that they have been fired from their job due to insubordination, for instance, would make the person unaffected by any potential brain injury.

Impairment Of All Skills Not Necessary to Diagnose Traumatic Brain Injury

However any competent neuropsychologist will tell you that it is not necessary to flunk all tests in a battery to be diagnosed with brain injury. In fact, since all brains and injuries are unique to each person, it is not likely that all test results will be reveal impairment. This is to be expected.
My job is to relate all the data, use all professional and expert evaluations, and expose the misinformation insurance companies create with their manipulation of the data.
 

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Truck driving safety is provided in the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations published by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.  There are specific limitations on the number of hours a driver can be on duty.  Violation to these limits is unsafe and can create liability for a trucking company and its driver.  Fatigued drivers make highways and roads dangerous places for all of us.

A college student in Florida alleged that the tractor-trailer driver violated federal motor carrier safety rules by failing to take the required off-duty time after working a 24-hour shift as a county firefighter. Lymon v. Bohn No. 53-2007-CA-7728 (Fla., Polk Co. Cir. Mar. 20, 2009).

Kendra Lymon, 19, was driving through an intersection on a green light when Robert Bohn, driving a tractor-trailer truck, made a left turn into the intersection even though his view was obscured by another truck in the opposite turn lane. Bohn’s tractor-trailer T-boned Lymon’s car on the driver’s side, crushing the vehicle and sending it spinning off the highway.

Her injuries included brain damage that resulted in a motor speech disorder, difficulty swallowing, mild left hemiparesis, bowel and bladder incontinence, cognitive defects, and seizures. She also sustained a fractured left scapula.

Lymon’s mother, Vanessa, on her behalf, sued Bohn and his employer, Bynum Transport, Inc. Vanessa Lymon alleged that the trucking company had provided no ongoing safety training or defensive driver program for its drivers and that it failed to enforce federal motor carrier safety rules about driving hours and rest periods.

The plaintiff alleged that Bohn began his shift without taking the mandatory 10 hours of off-duty time after working a 24-hour shift as a battalion chief for the county fire services, a violation of federal rules. Furthermore, the plaintiff claimed, he violated basic traffic safety rules by turning without waiting for a clear view.

The jury awarded the plaintiff $65 million. The defendants have appealed.
 

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Traumatic Brain Injury many times produces feelings of fatigue.  The theory is that since the brain needs to work harder after trauma to compensate for interrupted neural pathways, a feeling of tiredness results.  To make matter worse, that tiredness is also accompanied, many times by insomnia.  TBI sufferers are usually tired due to the hyper activity required to maintain previous function in addition to insomnia.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine defines insomnia as unsatisfactory sleep that impacts daytime functioning. More than one third of adults report some degree of insomnia within any given year, and 2 to 6 percent use medications to aid sleep. Insomnia is associated with increased morbidity and mortality caused by cardiovascular disease and psychiatric disorders and has other major public health and social consequences, such as accidents and absenteeism.

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