Head & Brain Injury Attorney Serving Rhode Island & Massachusetts

Legal Guidance After Head Trauma

Brain injuries are among the most complicated and most consequential injuries a person can sustain. They don’t always look serious from the outside, and they don’t always feel serious in the days immediately following an accident. That’s part of what makes them legally difficult, and part of why insurance companies are so willing to dismiss them early. A traumatic brain injury can reshape every part of a person’s life: work capacity, relationships, emotional regulation, memory, personality. The medical and financial consequences can stretch for decades. At Corrao & Robles Law, attorney Amanda L. Corrao represents individuals in Rhode Island and Massachusetts who have suffered head and brain injuries in accidents caused by someone else’s negligence.

How Do Head and Brain Injury Claims Work?

Severity, Diagnosis, and Why Insurers Dispute These Claims

Traumatic brain injuries are classified along a spectrum from mild to severe based on initial clinical indicators: the Glasgow Coma Scale score at the scene, loss of consciousness duration, and post-traumatic amnesia. “Mild” traumatic brain injury, the clinical category that includes concussions, is a misleading label. A concussion is a brain injury. When symptoms persist beyond the expected recovery window of days to weeks, the condition is called post-concussion syndrome. Some individuals experience symptoms for months or years. Cognitive impairment, chronic headaches, light and noise sensitivity, sleep disruption, memory problems, and emotional dysregulation are common. The injury doesn’t show up on a standard CT scan, which gives insurers their opening.

More severe injuries, like those involving prolonged loss of consciousness, skull fractures, hemorrhage, or diffuse axonal injury, produce consequences that are harder to dispute but more catastrophic in nature. Permanent cognitive deficits, motor impairment, personality changes, and the need for ongoing supervisory care are real outcomes in severe TBI cases. Moderate injuries occupy the middle ground: real deficits, often permanent, frequently invisible to casual observation.

The legal challenge in brain injury cases is proving the injury’s existence and extent when imaging is normal, and demonstrating how the injury, however it appears on film, has actually changed this person’s life. Neuropsychological testing, functional MRI, and expert medical testimony all play roles in building that picture. Vocational experts assess what work the injured person can still perform. Life care planners project the cost of future care needs. These cases require expert collaboration that ordinary car accident claims do not.

Insurance companies know the difficulty of proving cognitive injury and exploit it. They will dispute causation, arguing the accident wasn’t severe enough to cause a brain injury, even when medical evidence supports the diagnosis. They will minimize symptom reporting by arguing the injured person is exaggerating or that symptoms are attributable to pre-existing conditions. They will push early settlements before the full extent of neurological consequences is understood, banking on the fact that the injured person and their family don’t yet know how serious this is.

Acquired Brain Injury and Anoxic Brain Damage

Not all brain injuries result from direct trauma. Acquired brain injuries caused by oxygen deprivation (anoxic or hypoxic brain injury) can result from near-drowning, surgical complications, or medical negligence. These injuries follow a different legal and medical path but require the same thorough expert-supported documentation. Damage from oxygen deprivation can be extensive and produce many of the same long-term deficits as traumatic brain injury.

How We Can Help After a Brain Injury

Building a brain injury claim means building the medical and functional picture methodically.

  • Coordinating with neurologists and neuropsychologists to document the injury’s scope and prognosis
  • Challenging insurer attempts to minimize symptoms or attribute them to pre-existing conditions
  • Projecting the full lifetime cost of the injury, including care, lost income, and lost quality of life

Building Your Head and Brain Injury Claim

  • Obtaining all emergency and follow-up medical records, including imaging studies and clinical notes
  • Coordinating neuropsychological testing to establish cognitive baseline and deficits
  • Working with neurology and rehabilitation experts to document the diagnosis and prognosis
  • Retaining vocational experts to assess impact on the injured person’s ability to work
  • Engaging life care planners to project future medical and supportive care costs
  • Documenting the effect of the injury on daily function, relationships, and quality of life through personal history and caregiver statements
  • Preserving employment records showing the before-and-after impact on work performance
  • Investigating all applicable insurance coverage across every liable party

What to Expect: The Brain Injury Claim Process

Medical Stabilization and Initial Evaluation:

We begin working while you and your family are focused on medical care. The early record, or what was documented at the scene, in the emergency room, and in initial follow-up visits, is critically important, and we make sure it’s preserved and understood.

Expert Retention and Evaluation:

We assemble the team of experts needed to document the injury: neurologists, neuropsychologists, rehabilitation specialists, vocational consultants, and life care planners. This phase takes time. It should take time. Settling before this work is complete means settling for less than the case is worth.

Demand and Negotiation:

A brain injury demand is built on the expert foundation developed in the prior phase. We document not just current losses but the full lifetime consequences of the injury. This is where the difference between competent legal representation and inadequate representation shows up most clearly.

Litigation:

These cases are contested. Insurers hire their own experts to challenge diagnosis and causation. Attorney Corrao is prepared to litigate brain injury cases through discovery, expert depositions, and trial in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts when necessary.

Why Choose Corrao & Robles Law?

Expert-driven approach:

We build brain injury cases on medical expert foundations, not just medical bills

Long-term damages focus:

We project lifetime costs before any settlement is discussed

Direct attorney involvement:

Attorney Corrao personally manages the expert coordination

Contingency representation:

No fees unless we recover

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Normal CT and MRI results do not rule out a traumatic brain injury. Standard neuroimaging cannot detect the diffuse axonal injury and cellular-level damage that produce the symptoms associated with mild to moderate TBI. Neuropsychological testing, a battery of assessments measuring memory, attention, processing speed, executive function, and other cognitive domains, can document deficits that imaging misses entirely. Functional MRI and advanced imaging techniques may reveal changes that standard scans miss. The diagnosis of traumatic brain injury is a clinical judgment based on the totality of the medical picture, not just imaging results. Attorney Corrao works with neurologists and neuropsychologists who are experienced in documenting these injuries in ways that withstand insurance company scrutiny.

Traumatic brain injury is not always a static condition. Some individuals experience a slow decline in function over time, particularly if the injury affects areas of the brain involved in cognitive reserve. Others plateau and then face setbacks triggered by additional stressors. A life care plan developed by a qualified specialist projects the full trajectory of the person’s care needs, not just what’s happening right now. We don’t approach settlement until that projection is in place, because the difference between what someone needs today and what they’ll need over a lifetime is often the difference between a claim that’s adequate and one that truly compensates for the injury.

Prior concussions or pre-existing neurological conditions complicate the claim but don’t defeat it. Rhode Island and Massachusetts both follow the eggshell plaintiff doctrine, which holds that a defendant takes the victim as they find them. If your pre-existing vulnerability made you more susceptible to serious injury, the responsible party is still liable for the full extent of the harm caused. The challenge is establishing what was attributable to the new injury versus what pre-existed. Neuropsychological baseline testing, if it exists from before the accident, is valuable evidence. Expert review of pre-accident medical records compared to post-accident evaluation can often establish the difference. Attorney Corrao handles these cases and understands how to document the incremental harm caused by the accident.

Brain injury claims can recover economic and non-economic damages. Economic damages include past and future medical expenses, rehabilitation costs, lost wages, reduced earning capacity, and the cost of future care, which, in severe cases, can include around-the-clock supportive care for the rest of the person’s life. Non-economic damages cover pain and suffering, the loss of enjoyment of life, and the impact of personality and cognitive changes on the injured person’s relationships and identity. These cases routinely involve the largest damage figures in personal injury litigation because the consequences are permanent and pervasive. Attorney Corrao focuses on building a complete picture of both damage categories before any number is put on the table.

Brain injury cases take longer than most personal injury cases for the same reason they should: the full extent of the injury takes time to understand. Resolving a brain injury claim before the injured person’s medical and functional condition has stabilized risks accepting a settlement that doesn’t account for years of future consequences. The timeline depends on the severity of the injury, how quickly the injured person stabilizes medically, and whether the case resolves through negotiation or litigation. Attorney Corrao will give you an honest assessment of the timeline from the start and will not push a premature settlement to close the file.

Talk to a Brain Injury Attorney

Head and brain injury claims require careful, expert-supported legal work. If you or someone in your family suffered a traumatic brain injury in an accident in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, Corrao & Robles Law can help you understand what a proper claim looks like.

Contact us today for a free consultation.