Acquired Brain Injury Claims
If you or a loved one are the victim of an acquired brain injury, we’re here to support you to get compensation that can help you cope with the way it has changed your life.
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An acquired brain injury can be catastrophic for individuals and families. It may be the result of infection, disease or lack of oxygen. This can be due to medical negligence.
If you or a loved one have been put in this situation because of what you think may have been an avoidable medical mistake, that’s when you need to speak to one of our experienced acquired brain injury lawyers.
Having a brain injury in the family is often accompanied by financial hardship. That may be due to its impact on the ability to work and earn both for the person affected and family members who may need to care for them. It can also be because getting the right care and equipment to allow for someone who has a brain injury often comes at a cost.
We understand that the idea of seeking compensation can seem stressful, but a settlement may also make life much better for you and loved ones. We’ll be there to support you every step of the way.
Acquired brain injury law
It can sometimes be very difficult to understand if an acquired brain injury is the result of medical negligence or an unavoidable outcome.
If you have any suspicions, worries or concerns about how a brain injury or brain damage arose, it’s important to speak with a specialist solicitor. We offer free initial half hour consultations to help.
An acquired brain injury (sometimes abbreviated to ABI) can lead to extreme loss of mental capacity and cognitive ability or severe issues such as epilepsy. It can also change your personality, cause brain fog or thinking difficulties. Effects can be immediate or may emerge much later.
Causes of acquired brain injury
Some ways an acquired brain injury may be suffered include:
- failures in meningitis detection and treatment
- in cerebral palsy cases
- stroke treatment
- delay in diagnosis or treatment of brain tumours
- delay in diagnosis or treatment of aneurysms (a bulge in a blood vessel, particularly in an artery or the brain)
- An anaesthetic error
- a failure during brain surgery
- via an assault or violent crime
- a fall or being hit on the head by an object
What is acquired brain injury?
An acquired brain injury is any kind of damage to the brain that is not the result of a genetic or congenital disorder.
It can be as a result of a head injury or traumatic brain injury, including being hit in the head by an object, via a road traffic accident, assault, fall or workplace injury, for example.
It may also be the result of medical issues such as tumour, stroke, meningitis or brain haemorrhage. It could even be the result of poisoning such as carbon monoxide poisoning.
In some cases brain injury may have been avoidable or less severe if medical care was better or provided more quickly. This may also be the case with a brain injury that was present from birth, such as if there were clinical failings during pregnancy or labour. In these cases you may have a brain injury claim.
Symptoms of acquired brain injury can include paralysis, coma, permanent brain damage causing mental or physical disability and even death.
Compensation for acquired brain injury
Our acquired brain injury solicitors have many years of experience working with clients who were left with the need for specialised care following their brain injury.
We understand how important an effective care and rehabilitation programme is after this kind of injury.
If someone else was wholly or partially responsible for the brain damage our job is to work with you to identify what you need to live as full a life as possible and to gain you compensation to contribute to or cover the cost of the care, equipment, adaptations and living expenses necessary to make that possible.
As specialists in serious injury compensation claims, with an experienced mental capacity team, we have in-depth knowledge and contacts within the rehabilitation and care communities. We understand the types of care and support that may be available to you and it’s our job to ensure you can access it.
Acquired brain injury solicitors
Our team at Enable Law includes specialists with a background in medicine and the clinical world who understand the intricacies of treatment and what can go wrong.
Our experienced teams work with clinicians who are up-to-date with emerging technologies, treatments and support for people with brain injuries, as well as more tried-and-tested forms of treatment, to ensure we can help you to seek and access the best available.
Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss your case.
How much compensation can you get for acquired brain injury?
Compensation payments for an acquired brain injury may be very substantial and necessarily so.
Brain injuries may cause huge changes to life and lifelong need or even result in a fatality which impacts your entire family’s income.
Compensation claims reflect the level of harm that has been done, and any ongoing changes to your need created by the negligent act that resulted in the injury.
Claims are broken down into special damages, which are unique to the individual, and general damages, which are defined and limited more by guidelines and precedent (what has been paid in similar cases).
The special damages element is calculated by showing specific costs for the care and support needed now and in the future.
Instructing a specialist acquired brain injury lawyer means you’ll be dealing with someone who understands that you need specialist care and will thoroughly investigate all of the help that is out there for you and fight to ensure you have the means to access it.
Maximising the amount of compensation achieved means you’ll have more opportunities to access things to make your life easier and more comfortable.
A table of general damages payment guidelines is available on our page: brain injuries claims
Is concussion an acquired brain injury?
Concussion can be referred to as an acquired brain injury. Concussion causes mild brain damage because the brain was shaken inside the skull.
Concussion may result from a fall, blow to the head, accident or a sports injury, for example.
Often concussion leads to no long term damage but in some cases people suffer for much longer. Ongoing symptoms are sometimes called post-concussion syndrome, which can be unpleasant and debilitating for months, as detailed in the brain injury charity Headway’s leaflet mild head injury and concussion.
Suffering concussion due to someone else’s negligence may give you a valid reason for a compensation claim. Contact us for an informal discussion if your life has been affected by concussion.
ESTHER WAS LEFT WITH COGNITIVE DAMAGE AFTER DOCTORS MISTAKENLY TREATED HER FOR A VIRUS.
£2m award for acquired brain injury – Esther’s story
Esther* went to hospital several times over two days with severe headaches and sickness. Eventually she was admitted. Blood cultures showed a rare strain of tubercular meningitis. Doctors thought this must be a mistake and treated her for a virus. After three weeks she started to have fits and she was correctly diagnosed. By then she had abscesses on her brain. These caused serious damage to her brain. She needed surgery to her brain and a shunt was inserted (a channel to ensure fluid was able to drain from her brain). Unfortunately, the shunt became blocked twice and each time her brain injury became worse.
Esther was left with cognitive damage (i.e. her ability to think, learn, remember, understand and communicate was reduced). She managed to complete her secondary schooling but failed to cope with a university course.
Enable Law assisted Esther in bringing a claim against the hospital and she received damages of £2 million including a lump sum and an annual payment for life (periodical payment). This enabled her to pay for some support at home, particularly to plan and organise her activities. It should also meet her loss of earnings for life.
* Names have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals
Enable Law’s acquired brain injury charity partners
We are delighted to support the excellent work of Scope and Headway (local and national) and to be a corporate partner with Child Brain Injury Trust.
