The key experts tend to be neuropsychologists or neuropsychological testing evaluators. Sometimes psychologists will address the repercussions of the brain injury, but usually there’s the neuropsychologist who provides insight into the real life implication of post-brain injury cognitive deficits.
If there is an impact on their ability to work, you would bring in a vocational expert to talk about how that brain injury effects the individual’s ability to try to do their job, complete a future degree, or maintain their employment at the level they had been prior to their injury.
Do you bring in neurologists to show schematic and CT Scans or is that done by the neuropsychological evaluator?
Depending on the case and whether or not there are radiographic images, scans can be very powerful to bring into court when talking about where the injury to the brain is and how it manifests itself.
Not every brain injury has visible manifestations; things we can see on photos, MRI’s and the like, and it is not necessary to provide this kind of evidence in court. But, when damage to the brain is apparent in medical images, it can be helpful.
The physicians, the neuropsychological evaluator and other experts sound really expensive. How can I afford that when I’m already impaired with my brain injury?
One of the advantages of working with a reputable personal injury lawyer is that on a contingency case, which is the sort of thing we use at Jacobs Injury Law, we pay the expenses upfront as a part of our work for you.
We are responsible for the expert fees and costs. We pay for them to travel to trial. We will drive to them and sit down and meet with the experts to go over your materials, and we are responsible for those costs and when we are successful at the end of your case, we are paid back for those amounts as a portion of the settlement.