Richmond Virginia Personal Injury Lawyer articles in category: Head & Brain Injuries

When representing victims of traumatic brain damage, I typically ask the treating physicians whether, to a reasonable degree of medical probability, he or she can say that, as a result of the head...

On March 5 2008 I criticized the use by professional defense neuropyschologists of a controversial malingering test called the Fake Bad Scale See Fake Bad Scale Weapon of Defense...

A recent hearing before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee highlighted the bureaucratic hell wounded war veterans are facing when they return home from Iraq. The mountains of Department of Veterans' Affairs paperwork and red tape encountered by veterans seeking medical care is especially problematic for those with traumatic brain injuries. Sadly, brain damage from improvised explosive...

The Fake Bad Scale (FBS) is a bogus test created by Paul Lees-Haley to wrongly label personal injury claimants as "fakers." The FBS is junk science and should not be allowed in a court of law. Indeed, it violates the province of the jury by attempting to divine the credibility of witnesses. No test can act as a lie detector, which is how forensic defense neuropsychologists are trying to use...

The American Academy of Neurology has expanded the definition of the acute or immediate signs of concussion. Symptoms of brain injury can be mild to severe with some symptoms showing up immediately and others not appearing until several days or weeks after the injury. The AAN categorizes the signs of concussion as follows:Immediate Signs of Concussion(Seen within seconds/minutes):* Any loss of...

No matter how politicians view the war in Iraq, they all say publically that they support the troops. The signature injury of this war, brain damage, results in a host of symptoms including depression, suicidal ideation, and post traumatic stress. In opposing a proposed class action lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to troops returning from Iraq and...

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine represents the military's first large-scale effort to gauge the effect of mild head injuries -concussions (many from roadside blasts)- that some experts worry may cause a host of undiagnosed neurological problems. My last blog reported on a study concluding that undiagnosed head trauma is the cause of a host of later cognitive and...

Researchers studying brain injury believe that people with unrelated social or cognitive problems may have something in common: a long-forgotten blow to the head. It is widely accepted that severe head injuries can lead to cognitive and behavioral problems. What is new, according to brain researchers Wayne A. Gordan, M.D. and Mary Hibbard, Ph.D., is the contention that there are many other...

On Tuesday, Rhode Island's Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of The Lead Hazard Mitigation Act (LHMA) which went into effect in 2005. The purpose of the LHMA is to reduce the hazards of deteriorating lead based paint to humans. Lead is a neurotoxin which can cause severe brain damage. Toddlers are particularly susceptible because they tend to put everything in their mouths and...

Scientists studying traumatic brain injury from bomb blasts are finding disturbing news. The invisible surge of compressed air traveling from these blasts is causing cellular death in the brain that leads to symptoms like memory deficit, headaches, vertigo, anxiety, apathy, or lethargy that may not surface for months or years. This newly discovered brain damage at the cellular level can be...

At a time when doctors across the country are flocking to a meeting in Texas to support caps on the amount of medical malpractice recoveries, Rhode Island Hospital reports that its neurosurgeons have mistakenly operated on the wrong side of a patient's brain three times in 2007. One of the patients died. This hospital serves as a teaching hospital to Brown University. If the tort reformers...

I am so proud to represent, along with co-counsel Yvonne Griffin, one of the finest people I've ever met. Our client taught third grade to inner-city kids for 33 years and also worked a second job in order to put three of her own children through college. Last year, a truck crashed into her car and she suffered a fractured femur. She stopped breathing at the ER, and a CT scan revealed that...

Two days after his team won the National Lacrosse League championship, Jay Jalbert was laying in a hospital bed recovering from his seventh concussion. Jay was forced to retire from professional Lacrosse. Four weeks after taking a routine shot off his face mask, Denver Outlaws goalie Trevor Tierney was still experiencing symptoms of his seventh concussion. Concussions are prevalent in contact...

As part of National Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, Senator Hillary Clinton today introduced legislation to improve coordination among federal, state and local government agencies, update standards for pre-lease or sale inspections required by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and establish pilot projects to target areas of high incidence of lead poisoning in...

The Virginian Pilot reported recently that an estimated 150,000 Virginians may have long-term disabilities because of brain injury. Brain damage typically is caused by trauma such as a fall, a car accident, or violence. Like so many other states, Virginia is ill equipped to deal with this epidemic. A study commission of the General Assembly found that Virginia has only 20 specialized beds...