Deciding Final Money Settlement Value
As a Lawyer for Children, many of my clients are the parents of young children that need to first understand the full scope of their child’s future needs.
How are parents going to determine whether to accept a money settlement offer, when their baby’s medical condition is not fully clear and known?
Only time can tell if a serious head injury will resolve. The law does not allow us to wait a very long time before filing a lawsuit. I always require a doctor’s opinion that enough time has passed so that your child’s medical condition can be basically fully understood.
How are attorneys able to give you definitive advice as to the money compensation value of your child’s head injury claim if it is a recent injury?
A attorney who upon first consultation gives you a simple immediate answer that provides and places a definitive dollar settlement value claim for your child’s recent head injury needs you to ask them how they came up with that specific number.
A head injury to an infant or toddler should include many of the same considerations as a brain injury. It should not be assumed that because there was no skull fracture that everything is going to be all right. The inability of children to communicate makes a head injury more difficult to assess.
This needs to be balanced with the decision as to how to followup on the head injury.
More tests? Observation? Some very sophisticated tests can be expensive, and certain high tech scans may only be available at top level Tier One equipped Trauma Centers.
Physicians may be hesitant to prescribe such tests and Insurance Carriers may fight you and deny to authorize payment. There is what I call a tension that develops about getting more brain scans and other brain injury related testing after a head injury to a child.
At first, maybe the well intended pediatrician wants to wait to see how the child recovers. Then, after some few weeks or months, the pediatrician is consulted by concerned parents who let the pediatrician know that they have kept telling and repeating to the pediatrician that their child is not acting as expected, or has tests that barely perform within expected milestones.
Now, the pediatrician decides to prescribe these tests. The insurance company says they are so far in time past the injury that they are not needed or serve little diagnostic value and refuses to authorize them.
The wide variety of Head Injuries makes this topic too broad to custom tailor information for each specific person researching this topic. For example, I break down the topic of concussions into different severities and each of these different severities warrants a separate discussion.
concussions
multiple concussions
concussions with transitory loss of consciousness
concussions with prolonged unresponsiveness
concussions with tremors and seizure
concussion with skull fracture
And so on.
In a serious child head injury lawsuit, a few steps to arriving at a dollar settlement amount include a careful and informed review of all the evidence – to have both of us on the same page as to your child’s future medical care and treatment expectations of the physicians and health care and other specialists; child development assessments, future care costs; education and other issues.
Experienced Child Head Injury Attorneys know that sometimes, but not always, the treating doctors and their opinions need to be reviewed and other types of experts consulted. Your child is unique and small facts can make a difference.
I have several sections in this website that discuss the need to retain and consult with a wide variety of experts. I pay the costs up front and if you do not win money by way of settlement or verdict, you do not have to pay back these costs.
I invite you to give me a call. It’s free and we can talk about your child’s injury case.
If you decide to use my law firm to represent you and your child, the legal fees are what they call ” contingent”, meaning that if you do not win or get money from a settlement or jury verdict then you do not owe my law firm anything, not even a single penny. I charge a percentage of the gross amount recovered. My fees are reasonable.
