Personal Injury Case Law

Explaining closed head injuries to a jury

Ken Shigley — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:51:00 +0000

Brain injury survivors can look great even when their mental functioning is scrambled. To make the reality graphically visible to jurors it is often necessary to use sophisticated medical illustrations and animations. Several samples of animations explaining brain injuries are available online, though of course for trial use we would have to pay them. For examples, see:

When you view these, you will see links to a number of individuals' brain injury rehabilitation. In litigated case we might use something similar, categorized as "day in the life" videos.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury (including brain and spinal cord injuries ) Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been chair of both the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck and bus accidents and defectively manufactured products. Click here for a free consultationn with no obligation.

“Minor” brain injuries often lead to social, academic & economic failure, homelessness, alcoholism & drug addiction

Ken Shigley — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:55:00 +0000

Brain injuries that are referred to as "mild" or "minor" are often actually the underlying cause of social, academic, economic and personal failures. An article by Thomas M. Burton in today's Wall Street Journal reports on current research on the role of such head traumas in causing a variety of ills ranging from learning disabilities to chronic homelessness and alcoholism. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 5.3 million Americans suffer from mental or physical disability that is due to brain injury. However, the CDC admits an undercount as its figures to not include include people who sought no treatment for a severe blow to the head or who were sent home from a doctor's office or emergency room with little treatment.

According to Wayne A. Gordon, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, "Unidentified traumatic brain injury is an unrecognized major source of social and vocational failure." Research by his team has consistently found high rates of "hidden" head trauma when screening various populations in New York schools, addiction programs and the general population.

The Wall Street Journal article tells the story of a college instructor who over the course of a year after a "minor" head injury lost her ability to read, keep her home orderly and maintain friendships. She tried to continue teaching but found bright lights and a hectic environment overwhelming, and soon lost her job. She fell behind on paying bills and housekeeping, went to work in a less demanding field, withdrew socially, and wanted to die. However, she never related the meltdown in her life to the blow on the head until contacted by a followup research project at Mount Sinai Hospital. Eight years after her injury she struggled to complete an n attention and memory rehabilitation program. Now she is training to become a counselor.

A study of homeless men in New York revealed that 82% had a history of head trauma, many of them involving parental abuse in childhood. The article does not break out the percentage that had traumatic brain injury in other types of accidents or in military service.

A study of people involved in alcohol and drug abuse found that 54% of them had a history of head trauma.

In my extended family and in my law practice, I have often seen the subtle and insidious effects of so-called "minor" brain injury in the lives of people who kept struggling through a morass of confusion for decades. In representing people with brain injuries, it is essential to understand these problems and know how to communicate them to judges and juries.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury (including spinal cord and brain injuries) in cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been chair of both the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck and bus accidents and defectively manufactured products. Click here for a free consultationn with no obligation.

20 Year Wati for Lead Poisoning Justice

Ben Glass — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:26:00 +0000

Congratulations to our friend and lead poisoning litigation expert, Richard Serpe.
On October 14th, 2007 Serpe a jury awarded one of his lead poisoning victims a $1,500,000 verdict.

Chauncey Freeman was poisoned as a two year old, but it was not until he was almost 20 years old that he sought out Serpe to pursue the idea of a claim. The case was filed just before Chauncey's 20th birthday, and the verdict came in almost exactly 20 years after he was poisoned.

This is only the second verdict in that State of Virginia for a lead poisoning victim, and a superb result. The first verdict was also one of Serpe's cases.

According to Serpe, the testing of the lead paint on the property found only two samples that were over the Building Code's definition of lead-based paint. There was only ONE blood test result for Chauncey, so there was no proof of chronic exposure to lead paint. Furthermore, although the health department did an inspection for lead in 1986, NO copy of the inspection report was provided to the landlords, who had no idea that there was lead paint, or a lead poisoned child, on the property.

The defendants in Richard's case were retired master chiefs in the Navy who owned the property for only about 10 months before deciding to get out of the landlord business. They did not know anything about the lead problem until they were served with the lawsuit almost 20 years after they had sold the property.
At trial the jury accepted that ADHD, IQ loss, learning disability and behavioral problems to childhood lead poisoning.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Head and Brain Injury.

$3.5 Million Malpractice Verdict Upheld

Ben Glass — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 00:27:00 +0000

Congratulations to Mic McConnell and Jason Konvicka of the Allen Law Firm in Virginia for their win in the Supreme Court of Virginia back in September. Their client suffered a brain injury during gastric bypass surgery. Even though Virginia's insurance company protecting "cap" on malpractice awards immediately knocked the verdict down to $1.65 million (for no reason other than the insurance industry spends big money in Virginia's General Assembly) the defendants elected to appeal the verdict.

About one year after the trial, Mic and Jason prevailed.

For more information on this subject, please refer to the section on Head and Brain Injury.

Stems cells in amniotic fluid may be option for brain and spinal cord treatments

Ken Shigley — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 23:35:00 +0000

A report this week raises the hopes of people searching for stem cell therapies for victims of brain injury, spinal cord injury and other ailments. Ethical concerns have curbed development of therapies using embryonic stem cells. However, according to the report published this week in Nature Bioitechnology, stem cells with therapeutic value can be harvested from amniotic fluid and placentas.

According to the report, the amniotic cells can mature into all of the major types of cells, dividing once every 36 hours yet never showing signs of aging and never becoming tumors -- even after living for more than two years in the lab. Researchers at Wake Forest and at Children's Hospital in Boston coaxed the cells to become brain cells and injected them into the skulls of mice with diseased brains, where new cells filled in diseased areas and appeared to make new connections with nearby healthy neurons. When coaxed to become bone cells and seeded onto a gelatin scaffold that was then implanted in a mouse, the cells calcified and turned into dense, healthy bone.

The study leader, Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, estimates that if 100,000 women donated their amniotic cells to a bank, that would provide enough cells of sufficient genetic diversity to provide immunologically compatible tissue for virtually the entire US popularion.

Meanwhile, pediatric surgeon Dario Fauza at Children's Hospital in Boston has been pursuing a parallel line of research, growing amniotic stem cells into cartilage and diaphragms to repair defects in newborn sheep. His goal, of course, is to be able to use amniotic stem cells to repair defects in newborn humans.

Whether any of this will become clinically available in time to help today's victims of brain and spinal cord injury, as well as other conditions, is an open question, but for those of us searching for hope for our loved ones, it is a matter of great interest.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks.

Atlanta study suggests female hormone may be effective treatment for traumatic brain injury

Ken Shigley — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:48:00 +0000

An Emory Medical School doctor working with victims of traumatic brain injury at Grady Hospital in Atlanta has published a study suggesting that the female hormone progesterone can be a safe, effective treatment for brain injury.

Animal studies have indicated that giving progesterone soon after injury reduces brain swelling, prevents nerve death and improves functional outcomes. Lead researcher Dr. David W. Wright and colleagues note that progesterone's advantages over other potential treatments include its ability to quickly enter the brain, history of safe use, ease of administration, and low cost.

Wright, from Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues included in their study 100 adults with brain injury who reached the emergency department within 11 hours of injury. Patients were randomly assigned to receive an intravenous dose of progesterone or inactive "placebo".

The death rate in the 30 days after injury was 13 percent in the progesterone group compared with 30 percent in the comparison group. This suggests that progesterone cut the risk of death by 57 percent.

Wright's team was able to contact 92 percent of patients who survived 30 days. There was evidence that progesterone improved the recovery of patients with moderate brain injury. Patients with severe injury seemed to glean no benefit from the hormone.

Dr. Wright says his results are preliminary and broader studies are needed.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks.

Functional MRI may show mental activity in unresponsive TBI victim

Ken Shigley — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:30:00 +0000

Science magazine recently published a report on a young woman devastated by a car crash in England. For five months after the accident, tests showed no signs of awareness. Doctors declared her vegetative. Then, scientists put her in a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) scanner, which tracks blood flow to different parts of the brain. They asked her to imagine playing tennis and walking through her home. The scan lit up with telltale patterns of language, movement, and navigation indistinguishable from the brains of healthy people. Something was awake inside that woman's skull. Without the scanner, no one but her would have known.

The analysis in Science concludes that she has a "rich mental life" but may not be "conscious." That does that mean? Is she awake inside her skull, though incapable of outward manifestation of awareness?

It is both interesting and horrifying to contemplate the potential ramificaitons of this in brain injury litigation. In the past doctors have been quite confident in reassuring us that patients in what appeared to be a chronic vegetative state had no awareness of their situation. Now, with an FMRI test, we may be able to show what appears to be conscious mental activity in the victim of a relatively recent traumatic brain injury. I'd hate to be on the defense side of a case when that video is played for a jury.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks.

Driver rehabilitation can restore independence after injury or illness

Ken Shigley — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 01:14:00 +0000

The current issue of Forbes carries an interesting article on driver rehabilitation after a serious injury or illness. Many people with newfound disabilities, including neurological conditions, heart disease and stroke, are overcoming great obstacles to find ways to get back to driving on the highway. For the impaired person, the ability to drive symbolizes independence and freedom. I saw that in my daughter after she lost her hearing due to an illness. The weeks between discharge from the hospital and clearance to drive again were absolutely maddening for her, and for everyone around her.

Here in the Atlanta area, DeKalb Medical Center Rehabilitation Services has a Driving Solutions Program which provides driver assessment, training and adaptive equipment recommendations for vehicle operation. The assessment process includes tests of vision, visual perception and reaction time, as well as assessment of cognitive and physician functioning. Driver training is available to new and experienced drivers to promote safety and competency behind the wheel. Training in the use of adaptive equipment is available. I took my daughter over there for an assessment that cleared her to drive again, restoring freedom and a modicum of normalcy after a traumatic, life changing loss.

The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks.