How Brain Injury Cases Have Been Impacted by the Pandemic

by Steven Gursten
Michigan Auto Law

Unfortunately, individuals with brain injury have been impacted by the pandemic in significant ways. Treatment has been made more difficult, as has people’s access to medical care. This threatens their health and chances for a successful recovery. Defense lawyers and insurance companies have been using these treatment delays to minimize brain injury cases and lower settlements. 

Add to all of this the financial hardship and desperate economic times brought on by the pandemic and it poses real challenges for people with brain injury who are now more vulnerable to pressure to settle their cases for less than what they are worth.

People with Brain Injury Suffer Loss and Denial of Vital Medical Care

Most individuals with brain injury have encountered significant obstacles in getting the medical care and treatment they need as a result of treatment delays, social-distancing measures, and shutdown orders imposed in order to contain the COVID-19 virus.

Transitioning to telemedicine took weeks and sometimes months for too many health care providers. Many people with brain injury could not receive the in-person therapy they desperately needed. Even someone who suffered a concussion after a car accident may have had delays in receiving a diagnosis.

Individuals with brain injury are being hit doubly hard. First, they have encountered real delays in treatment and lost valuable time during which they could have been getting better. Second, auto insurance companies and their defense lawyers are using delays caused by COVID-19 to argue that the value of these cases has declined because of delays and difficulties in getting treatment.

Finally, insurance companies are also arguing that they are not responsible for the full extent of the harms caused by brain injury because the people would have gotten better if not for the delays in treatment – and not by the accidents themselves that caused their injuries. The companies argue that patients have failed to mitigate their damages by failing to treat.

Auto Insurance Companies Are Using COVID-19 to Force Unfair Settlements on People with Brain Injury

Even before the pandemic, auto insurance companies, adjusters, and defense lawyers used the financial challenges of individuals with brain injury to try to force them to agree to unfair and low-ball settlement offers. Unfortunately, this behavior has only accelerated during the pandemic.

How Can I Protect Myself?

If you have a brain injury, you can take the following steps to protect yourself:

• Take advantage of alternative treatment options now being offered by your doctor and therapist. Use telemedicine as much as possible if you cannot treat in-person.
• Always try to attend all of your doctor appointments (whether they are telemedicine or in-person). Insurance companies will argue that failing to treat means you don’t consider these problems to be serious yourself, or at least serious enough to treat for them.  
• Do your best to comply with all of your doctor’s and/or therapist’s recommendations for treatment, care, therapy, and juries admire people who work hard to get better and who don’t give up.  
• Hire an experienced brain injury lawyer who can protect your legal rights and your right to compensation for your injury. You want a lawyer who understands the underlying medicine of brain injury.  

Steve Gursten is the immediate Past-President of the American Association for Justice’s Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group. He lectures across the country to personal injury and wrongful death lawyers on how to prove and win these cases at trial. Steve has received the highest recorded jury verdicts and settlements for traumatic brain injury cases over multiple years, including a $5.65 million jury verdict and a $4.2 million jury verdict on insurance company offers of less than $100,000.