If you have suffered a traumatic brain injury, then you are dealing with a life-changing event. You may need around the clock care, or to appoint someone to assist you in making daily decisions. Absent an abnormal genetic condition, traumatic brain injuries are generally the result of some sort of event.
Many dangerous situations can result in brain damage, including commercial vehicle accidents, medical malpractice, birth injuries, and oilfield accidents.
If you are seeking information about hiring a brain damage lawyer, or about pursuing a lawsuit over brain injuries, we invite you to contact us for a free consultation.
Traumatic Brain Injuries in Oklahoma
A person’s life can change in one minute after suffering a traumatic brain injury. Some times a person can recover, partially or almost fully, from a brain injury. Other times, a person has a permanent disability.
It is one thing when a person takes risks and puts themselves in a position to suffer a brain injury. Such is the case with professional athletes and fighters. However, when a person suffers a brain injury as a result of another party’s negligence, it becomes a matter of liability, and accountability.
For example, a variety of medical malpractice situations can cause brain damage:
- Hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) from physician or hospital negligence
- Respiratory problems in a hospital
If your brain injury was caused by another party’s action, you may hire an attorney to investigate whether there is any liability, and whether a lawsuit can be maintained. If this is something you would like us to do, you may contact us online or call/text our office at 405-701-6016.
Hiring a Lawyer to Investigate your Brain Damage case in Oklahoma
We routinely review potential cases for individuals who contact us. As a trial lawyer in Oklahoma City, Travis Charles Smith has obtained seven-figure jury verdicts and settlements for many clients, involving different types of injuries. In every case, it all starts with properly reviewing the case, the facts, the evidence, free of charge, before the client ever hires us.
First, you should contact our office, by phone or email, whichever you prefer. We will then need to schedule a brief phone consultation. After the phone consultation, we will need to review the facts of your case.
Determining if there is liability for your brain damage
Your brain injury could be the result of a car accident, a medical malpractice incident at a hospital, or from an oil field injury or other event. No matter what the case, we will want to review all reports, medical records, and whatever documentation exists for the event.
We will then want to review all medical documentation of your brain injury. At this point, we will bringin retained medical experts to conduct what is essentially a peer-review of your medical documents and compare it to current medical literature on the subject. Our medical experts will help us determine if there is liability for your brain damage case.
While reviewing your case, we will be looking for 1) factual causation, and 2) Expert consensus on the injury and the causation.
Requirements for Filing a Lawsuit in Oklahoma for Brain Damage
We must have evidence that your brain injury was caused by the event that took place, and was not pre-existing or caused by another event. So whether you were involved in an automobile accident, or a medical malpractice situation, we will first need to tied the facts of the incident to the brain injury.
We will then need to have a medical expert — usually a board certified physician — review the specifics of your brain damage, and relate that back to the factual circumstances of what happened. This may be hard to do without the benefit of formal discovery, which is only available after a lawsuit has been filed. However, before taking your case, we do not need all of the evidence. We just need to have a reasonable amount of certainty that we will later be able to prove the causation of your brain injury.
Once we have determined with reasonable certainty that we can prove your brain damage was caused by the other party, we will file a lawsuit on your behalf.
The Process of Filing a Lawsuit in Oklahoma for Brain Damage
Filing a lawsuit involves the necessary preparation – reviewing the case, gathering the available factual evidence, and laying out the chronology of events. Then we file it. Then we serve it on the defendant(s).
After serving the defendants, they will have an opportunity to respond, including opportunity to get additional time before responding. After their official response, which will be a denial, the discovery process begins. And that is where much of the time in litigation is spent.
Discovery is where we are able to subpoena documents from third parties and take depositions. The discovery process can take a year or more of seeking documentation and testimony from other parties — sometimes against their will. If necessary, we will seek court intervention to force the other parties to turn over relevant information to us.
Obtaining a Settlement in a Brain Damage Lawsuit
During the discovery process, settlement talks can arise. But early settlement is usually not possible in complex cases. It is almost always in the client’s best interest to uncover all evidence first, and then to schedule the case for trial.
The reason that attempting settlement early is not advised is because it can be very difficult to persuade a corporate defendant to pay before all of the evidence is in the record. Sophisticated defendants typically will have no problem defending a case all the way up until trial. They will be able to stir the pot and cause confusion with all of the excessive documentation and causal theories they will produce during discovery. They are typically well prepared when deposing experts and controlling the narrative of their side of the story.
Which is why we always call their bluff and push forward. By demanding, and obtaining, a trial date from the judge, we book their calendars and prepare for battle.
We never cut corners on preparing a case for trial. We always hire competent and respected expert witnesses — which is not easy and is not cheap. Hiring respected witnesses is very difficult in medical cases and especially brain injury cases. To do so requires that the client’s lawyer have a good reputation and ethics. Bad lawyers with bad clients typically resort to hiring less expensive experts with questionable reputations. That is not a recipe for success. And those tactics never result in large settlements.
We obtain big settlements by hiring the best experts, properly preparing the case for trial, and pushing the case to trial as fast as possible while still completing our diligence in discovery.
How to Become our Client
You may send us an email, or call us at 405-701-6016. We will respond to you with the next step of what to do. We take every case seriously, and we always work to provide a clear understanding of the case from a legal perspective, even if it is unfavorable to our client.
First, we do not charge for consultations. We review your case, and then decide whether to keep pursuing further review. If we decide to continue reviewing the file, we typically do not charge the prospective client, even if it requires paying costs of physician or other expert retainer fees.
Next, we review the information we have obtained to make a decision whether to pursue a lawsuit. If we decide to pursue a lawsuit, we will call you to confirm and present to you our contingency agreement. As part of our practice, we do not charge clients up-front retainers in these types of cases. Instead, we take on the risk of the case in return for a percentage of whatever value we can deliver to the client. We also advance all of the litigation expenses and court costs.
Once you become our client, we will regularly communicate with you about the status of your case, and the timeline of events. We like to prepare a schedule for you, so you know what to expect and what is going on.
Our clients have the final say on settlement talks, and while we provide advice and counseling, you have the final say.
If you would like to work with us, please submit this form. If you would like more information about this process, please let us know and we will provide you with the information you are looking for.