Copyright © 2024 Gelb & Gelb, P.C. All rights reserved.
If you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury, you may immediately feel the stress of bills piling up. These bills may be for the medical treatment you receive for your brain injury. Or, simply, everyday expenses like car payments, groceries, and a mortgage seem to pile up quickly when you cannot work. Unfortunately, this is only exacerbated when you have a brain injury. A traumatic brain injury can have both short and long-term effects on your work capacity.
As Maryland brain injury attorneys, we work to recover compensation for your lost wages, both past and future. Of course, we can calculate past lost wages relatively easily. We will discuss how we do that in detail below. We account for losing vacation days and being unable to show up at work. In many instances, brain injury victims lose favor with their supervisors at work due to an injury that is not their fault.
If you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury, we have no way of helping you regain favor with your employer. However, we will fight so you receive compensation from the defendant in proportion to that lost favor. This is oftentimes a jury question and depends on the facts of your case. Note that to win compensation for any specific damage, such as losing favor with your employer, we must prove that loss by a preponderance of the evidence. Accordingly, any witness testimony from your boss, text message evidence, or email evidence from a coworker, text can help bolster this claim. Below, we discuss how various brain injuries affect your work life and career. We will also address what solutions you have to remedy your job after the legal process.
When you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury, you may face several challenges. The nature of these challenges varies considerably depending on the severity of your brain injury. For a mild concussion with occasional headaches, the quality and speed of your work may be reduced. However, your employer will likely still keep you employed as you recover. This is a temporary injury, and a mild concussion is not likely to have long-term consequences. When you suffer a brain injury, physical limitations are not your biggest issue the way they may be if you suffer a back injury. However, physical limitations may still include decreased stamina and strength, impacting physical job requirements. Accordingly, while you may expect a brain injury to have less of an impact on physically demanding jobs, our experience as brain injury attorneys is that this is not the case.
Of course, the crux of a brain injury for a Maryland job is the cognitive impairment you suffer from a more severe brain injury. Even with less severe injuries, you may suffer impairments. Cognitive impairments, such as issues with concentration, memory, and problem-solving, can affect performance in all types of employment. For less severe brain injuries, you may even suffer emotional and behavioral changes. This is exceedingly common with brain injuries. This may make interacting socially at work more difficult. For the more serious brain injuries, you may find yourself lost at work. This is through no fault of your own, but you may be left behind. After a while, your employer may start to notice, and you can lose your job altogether.
Medical documentation is critically important when you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury. As the plaintiff, the burden of proof lies with us. This means we must rely on evidence to establish liability and damages. While your testimony is useful, none is as important as the medical documentation created by your treating physician. Not only do they have a degree of expertise, but they have also had the opportunity to treat you from the beginning of your injury through to present at trial. Furthermore, medical documentation proves that you have received treatment to begin with. Otherwise, all we have is your testimony that you have been receiving treatment a few times a week.
Medical records should clearly outline the extent of the injury, prognosis, and any recommended work restrictions or accommodations. If nowhere in your medical documentation does it say that you are unable to work because of your brain injury, we may be unable to recover missed wages or a loss of future earning capacity. For example, suppose that your medical records read in detail about your shoulder injury but nothing about a brain injury. What is a jury to think? Or, your records may read that you have a moderate brain injury but say nothing of your ability to work.
A jury may still believe that you cannot work because of your brain injury, but it is less likely. Meanwhile, if your doctor writes that you cannot work because of your brain injury, and work may lead to further injury, you are justified in not working and more likely to recover compensation for missed wages. Medical documentation helps with your legal case and crafting a plan for rehabilitation and a return to work if that is in the cards for you. Thus, medical documentation has several upsides with few to no downsides.
Returning to work after a brain injury is often not immediate and requires a carefully managed approach. For more severe cases where you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury, a gradual return is necessary. This must be coordinated with your Maryland brain injury lawyer and your doctor. Your attorney needs to know precisely what days and how many hours you are missing from work. Our goal is to ensure you receive maximum compensation for your missed time.
Throughout this process, you should be upfront with your supervisor or employer. They should understand that you have limitations and you may not be able to perform at the level you did prior to your brain injury. If they do not wish to retain you with your limited ability, that is a compensable damage that ultimately falls on the defendant.
Legal assistance in securing compensation when you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury is critical to your success in navigating the recovery process. Just recovering medically back to the state you were in before your injury can be highly complex. Between your physical recovery, your financial difficulty from being unable to earn a wage, and your status at work, navigating a complex legal battle is an additional stressor you do not need. The brain injury attorneys at Gelb & Gelb have decades of experience handling these cases. While it is a highly complex process, we simplify it so you can focus on getting your life back on track.
If you can’t work after a Maryland brain injury, contact our office today for legal assistance. Our attorneys have practiced personal injury law in Maryland since 1954. Since then, we have handled thousands of cases and recovered over $150,000,000 for our clients. We understand how to value a brain injury case and establish liability against the defendant.
Call our office today for a free consultation at (202) 331-7227.
Copyright © 2024 Gelb & Gelb, P.C. All rights reserved.