Long Island Brain Damage Lawyer

Brain damage can leave you and your loved ones in a complicated financial position. Fortunately, there are legal avenues available to parties who’ve suffered brain injuries in recent accidents. Long Island brain damage lawyers can help you file a claim for damages if negligence or recklessness led to your accident.

Morelli Law Firm has over 40 years of experience helping brain injury victims overcome their losses in civil court. We can work directly with you or a personal representative. Either way, our Long Island personal injury lawyers can spearhead your fight for fair compensation.

Defining Your Brain Damage

There’s no such thing as insignificant brain damage. Even mild concussions can make your life more difficult for weeks. With that in mind, your injury doesn’t have to be classified as a “traumatic brain injury” if you want to take a liable party to civil court. Rather, you have to understand the extent to which a brain injury has impacted your day-to-day life.

Minor Brain Injury

Mild brain damage tends to resolve itself after a short period of time. The conditions may see you suffer from temporary weakness, dizziness, and insomnia. However, a mild brain injury still requires medical care. You should work with emergency responders as well as your general practitioner to get ahead of any conditions that might worsen over time.

Severe Brain Injury

Unfortunately, a prolonged loss of consciousness, lack of oxygen, or open head injury can result in severe brain injuries. The consequences of these conditions can see you suffer temporary or permanent disability, paralysis, physical impairment, and memory loss.

Many parties suffering from a severe head injury may find themselves unable to return to work or otherwise take care of themselves. It’s in these circumstances that a personal injury attorney can advocate for your right to sweeping financial support – enough to help both you and your family get back on your feet.

When to File a Brain Damage Claim in New York

The severity of your brain damage doesn’t impact your right to bring a personal injury claim forward. Instead, the severity of your case may increase your medical expenses and non-economic damages. This means you may stand to earn more support if you take a severe brain damage case to civil court.

If you want to demand fair compensation from a responsible party, you need to bring a brain injury claim forward before your statute of limitations expires. However, the circumstances surrounding your brain injury impact how long you have to file an applicable claim.

If you believe that your brain damage was the result of a personal injury, New York Civil Practice Law and Rules § 214(5) gives you three years to act on your losses. Brain damage that results from medical malpractice has that same three-year deadline.

However, personal injury case deadlines begin on the day that an individual endures their injury. Comparatively, the deadline for medical malpractice suits begins on the day you discover that trauma. You can work with a brain injury lawyer in Long Island to determine how these deadlines might impact your right to recover.

Filing a Brain Damage Claim in Civil Court Versus an Insurance Company: What to Expect

You purchase insurance to avoid bearing the cost of a motor vehicle accident, pedestrian accident, or similar collision alone. Unfortunately, insurance companies don’t always have your best interests in mind. These parties can take extreme steps to deny you support, even in the face of a catastrophic injury.

What does this mean if you’re recovering from a brain injury? It means you shouldn’t work with insurance claims adjusters alone. Insurance adjusters can take advantage of someone’s stress and confusion to:

• Request an inaccurate statement about the nature of your accident
• Purposefully slow down your claims paperwork
• Deny you access to key evidence
• Refuse your request for financial aid

It’s in your best interest to have a brain injury attorney in Long Island with you during conversations with an insurance adjuster. We can run interference on your behalf to minimize an insurance company’s bad faith conduct.

Personal Injury Claims and Brain Damage

Brain damage cases qualify as personal injury cases in the eyes of New York courts. Long Island residents can work with our attorneys to build up an applicable complaint and to present that complaint to the right parties.

Personal injury suits involving brain injuries must detail the following:

• A liable party, be that an individual or an institution
• A duty of care owed to the injured individual
• Evidence of that duty’s violation
• An estimate of the injured party’s losses
• A request for compensation

It’s a personal injury lawyer’s job to help you gather the information you need to submit your complaint. When you submit professional witness statements and other evidence along with your complaint, you can more effectively argue for financial support.

Even a comprehensive body of evidence doesn’t mean that your complaint will lead to a trial, though. Rather, complaints let you first enter legal negotiations with the person you want to hold liable for your losses. If negotiations fall through, your case may go to trial.

Representation in Court

There are some brain injuries that make it impossible for a person to speak for themselves. In these cases, the injured party may need to turn to an alternative representative to present their losses to a county clerk.

New York state does not allow an injured person’s family members to file a personal injury lawsuit on the victim’s behalf. Instead, injured individuals must be represented by personal executors.

You can elect family members as your personal executors, of course. However, it’s best to establish that kind of responsibility long before an accident. Anyone interested in establishing a personal executor or discussing representation in brain injury cases can meet with our team.

Overcoming Financial Hurdles With Brain Damage Claims

Accidents involving brain damage tend to be expensive. Even if you don’t need reparative surgery, you may need to attend physical therapy or counseling. These kinds of treatments aren’t always affordable, even with insurance on your side.

Fortunately, you can fight for financial support. The compensation you request in a brain damage claim can cover your medical expenses as well as other losses related to your accident. These can include the following:

• At-home medical attention
• Pain management or mobility aids
• Reduced quality of life
• Property damage
• Trauma
• Lost wages or reduced opportunities to work
• Loss of enjoyment of life

Unfortunately, some types of brain injuries can result in a loved one’s wrongful death. If you find yourself dealing with this unexpected grief, you may include the cost of a loved one’s funeral and post-life expenses in your request for support. 

Our team knows that no amount of money can bring a person back into your life. However, we can take steps to account for the cost a loved one’s death may have on your physical and emotional well-being. Your brain injury lawsuit can account for that cost while respecting your right to grieve.

The Benefits of Working With a Long Island Brain Injury Attorney

Your post-accident concerns likely involve your bills, your treatment, or some combination of the two. All that stress makes reaching out to a legal team seem impossible. There’s a lot of good work that a brain damage attorney on Long Island, NY, can do for you, though. Much of that work can make your life post-accident all the simpler.

After your first case consultation, our team can:

• Interview accident witnesses
• Assess the extent of your losses
• Establish liability
• Contact liable parties and the appropriate legal bodies
• Gather evidence to support your claim
• Calculate your maximum compensation

Whether or not your case goes to trial, you can count on our legal team to represent your best interests. We’ll even manage communications between you and an at-fault party. At the end of the day, if we haven’t reduced your stress levels, we’re not doing our jobs.

Morelli Law Is Here for You

It’s difficult to contend with brain damage alone. That’s why our team strives to give you every legal opportunity you need to address your losses. Our brain damage lawyers in Long Island at Morelli Law Firm can take the weight of legal responsibility off of your shoulders. All the while, we’ll advocate for your financial support.

Don’t let the party accountable for your losses get away with their negligence. To start your brain damage claim, connect with the representatives in our office. You can schedule a free case evaluation via phone or through our website.