If you have suffered a brain injury, the first and most important thing for you to do is to get to a doctor who can treat your brain damage symptoms and help you get better.  It has been my experience in dealing with brain-injured clients that their relatives and loved ones are the first to recognize that they have suffered a brain injury.  I can’t tell you how many times a spouse has told me one of the following:

• Ever since his head injury, he’s not the same man I married;
• He has mood swings and gets angry at me and the children;
• He has frequent headaches and is sensitive to bright light and to loud noises;
• He forgets what I told him just minutes before;
• He gets lost driving in our own neighborhood; or,
• He has trouble with basic math like balancing the checkbook.

These are all classic signs of a brain injury.  What makes it difficult is that most people who have suffered a brain injury look perfectly healthy and normal.  That’s why it is so important to get to a doctor who specializes in diagnosing and treating brain damage.  I usually recommend that my clients go to a board-certified neurologist. However, even a trained neurologist sometimes has difficulty diagnosing a brain injury because they often do not show up on an X-ray, an MRI, or a CT-scan.  In fact, it is difficult to distinguish between the X-ray or the MRI of the brain of a live person and a recently deceased person. They look the same.  That’s why I often suggest that my brain-injured clients also go to a neuropsychologist for testing.  A neuropsychologist is a person who specializes in testing how a person’s brain is working and whether there are any “cognitive deficits” that indicate a brain injury. So again, the first thing I recommend you do is to get diagnosed and treated by a board-certified neurologist and then, if necessary, to get tested by a neuropsychologist.

If you or a loved one has had a brain injury, call our office today and I can look into what your options might be.  I can’t undo what has happened.  But you might be entitled to compensation for what you’ve been through.  Call me today and we can have a free and confidential discussion about your case.

 The second thing you should do for a successful brain injury lawsuit is to find a lawyer who has  experience in handling many brain injury lawsuits.  Because a person with a brain injury often looks perfectly healthy, it is difficult to prove the injury to a jury or a judge.  A brain injury lawyer who understands the symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the details of neuropsychological testing can make all the difference in convincing the jury or judge that you have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI).  For example, I have over 30 years of experience in representing clients who have suffered brain injuries in both Texas and Louisiana.  I have presented testimony from numerous neuropsychologists and neurologists in both Texas and Louisiana to prove that my clients suffered brain injuries even in cases where there were no physical signs of injury.

Third, if you have a serious injury, I recommend that you hire a serious lawyer who is a board-certified specialist in handling personal injury cases.  If you had a serious life-threatening illness, you would look for a doctor who is a specialist in treating that type of illness.  If you have a serious personal injury case that could forever change your life, why wouldn’t you want to hire a lawyer who is a specialist in handling personal injury cases? I am board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in both personal injury and civil trial law.  That’s a distinction achieved by less than 1/2 of 1% of Texas attorneys. You deserve to have a board-certified personal injury specialist on your side.   If you or a loved one has had a brain injury, call our office today and we can look into what your options might be.  We can’t undo what has happened.  But you might be entitled to compensation for what you’ve been through.  Call me today and we can have a free and confidential discussion about your case.

I offer free consultations.  If you have a question about your brain injury case, call me today for a free and confidential no-obligation consultation.  Call me today at my Houston number, (713) 993-0660 or my Florida number (239) 500-6040, or my toll free number  1 (866) 524-2733.  If you prefer, fill out the Contact Us Form at the top of this page and I will send you a quick answer to your question. 

 When you hire LaGarde Law Firm to represent you, we work on a contingency fee basis, which means that we are paid a percentage of the award or settlement that we win for you. We only get paid if you get paid.  We only collect a fee for your brain injury claim if and when we obtain compensation for you.  If we do not obtain a recovery for you, you do not owe us a fee and you do not need to reimburse us for court costs and expenses we have advanced on your behalf.  Most clients find that this is a beneficial fee structure for several reasons.

When someone has suffered an injury, he or she may have medical bills and lost time from work. This is not a good time to have to pay an additional fee to a lawyer.  The contingency fee system helps give you peace of mind that your attorneys are motivated to win your case and obtain the highest amount of compensation possible. Our attorneys spend time and money working on your case, and we are only compensated if we are successful. This means that if we agree to take your case, we intend to win.

As we do not charge a fee unless we obtain compensation for you, there is no reason not to call and consult with us about your rights. Consultations are free of charge, and there are no upfront costs or hourly fees.  Call us today.

For more details as to how a contingent fee agreement works, watch the video below.  After you have watched it, feel free to call me if you have questions about contingent fee agreements. 

After more than thirty years of representing head injured clients, I have noticed that a person’s spouse or friends are the first to notice a brain injury.  If you have experienced a blow to or a serious jolt of your head and you are experiencing one or more of the symptoms discussed below, you should ask your doctor if you have a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Mayo Clinic has published a comprehensive list of symptoms of mild and moderate brain injuries that you might find helpful.  View their list by clicking >here.<

Here are some additional signs and symptoms I have run across over the past 30 plus years of representing individuals with brain injuries:

• Since your head injury, do you forget names, numbers, or things you said you
  would do?
• Since your head injury, is it harder to follow a conversation among several people?
• Is it harder for you to follow the plot of a movie, or to remember what someone said?
• Since your head injury, do you find yourself often re-reading something you just read?
• Do you get lost even in your own neighborhood?
• Since your head injury, have people told you that you used a different word or phrase than you thought you had used?
• Do you have more difficulty remembering what it is you should be doing next?
• Do you have more difficulty in learning a new procedure or task?
• Do you sometimes forget to plan for something that is important to you?
• Since your head injury, do you find that you laugh or cry more often, or at inappropriate times?
• Do you get impatient or lose your temper more easily than before your head injury?
• Have you had problems at your job, or gotten into serious arguments with others?
• Do your spouse or your children seem afraid of you or lose patience with you?
• Are you more sad or depressed than you were before your accident?
• Do you get agitated or irritated more often than before?
• Do you have more trouble sleeping now than before?Do you find that noise bothers you more than it did before?
• Do you lose your balance more often than before?
• Do you have headaches more often?
• Have you experienced blurred or double vision?
• Do you find that you can’t smell or taste things as well as before?
• Do people have more difficulty understanding what you are trying to say?
• Have you had seizures since your head injury?

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are often called the “silent epidemic” because so many people have suffered a brain injury and because so many victims of brain injury look perfectly normal even though their injury has changed their lives forever.

• Someone in America suffers a brain injury every 15 seconds;
• Approximately 500,000  people are permanently disabled by a brain injury every year and an additional 100,000 people die from TBI;
• Approximately 2% of the U.S. population – (5.3 million Americans)– are living with a TBI-caused disability ; and,
• The United States spends approximately $30 billion each year to rehabilitate, treat, and care for the victims of TBI. 

 Each case is unique.  A case may be worth more or less depending on a number of factors, including the following:

• the severity of your brain injury;
• the facts surrounding your injury and the likelihood you can prove liability on the part of the defendant;
• whether you are partially at fault in causing your brain injury;
• whether your brain injury is permanent or temporary;
• whether your brain injury will prevent you from returning to work;
• whether your brain injury will result in a decrease in your future earning potential;
• the size of your past and future medical bills;
• the insurance company’s reputation for settling cases out-of-court;
• the reputation and experience of the insurance company’s defense attorney;
• the types of juries where your case is filed; and,
• the propensity of the particular judge in your case to permit certain evidence to be considered by the jury.

If a lawyer tells you up front that he can get you a certain amount of money for your case without first considering all of these factors, that lawyer is either inexperienced or dishonest.  If you want to have a free and confidential discussion about your case and some of these factors, give me a call. 

The overwhelming majority of cases are settled out-of-court before trial.  I believe in preparing a case as though it is going to be tried.  If a case is properly prepared for trial, it is more likely to settle out-of-court than a case that is not properly prepared  for trial. 

Our firm has represented clients who suffered head injuries in car wrecks, truck and 18-wheeler accidents, helicopter crashes, oil rig accidents, offshore accidents, falls, on-the-job accidents, and assaults.  Any head injury caused by the negligence of someone else, by a defective product, or by an intentional act can be the subject of a brain injury lawsuit.