A brain injury changes what a person can do, and proving that change is the whole task. A Grand Rapids brain injury lawyer builds a record showing how someone functioned before an injury and how they function now, because insurers pay for documented deficits rather than for diagnoses. Christensen Law handles these cases from our Grand Rapids office on Hall Street SW and from four other Michigan offices.
If someone in your family is recovering from a head injury, call our TBI accident lawyer in Grand Rapids, MI at (248) 900-9000. The early medical record shapes everything that follows.
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What Counts as a Traumatic Brain Injury?
A traumatic brain injury is any disruption of normal brain function caused by an external force, which includes injuries with no skull fracture and no loss of consciousness. That last point causes more harm to claims than any other misunderstanding.
The mechanism does not require a direct blow to the head. Rapid acceleration and deceleration alone can injure the brain against the inside of the skull and stretch axons throughout it, which is why a Grand Rapids traumatic brain injury attorney sees these injuries in crashes where the head never struck anything.
The injuries we handle include:
- Concussion and mild traumatic brain injury, including cases with persistent symptoms
- Diffuse axonal injury, which often appears normal on standard imaging
- Contusions and intracranial bleeding, including subdural and epidural hematoma
- Coup-contrecoup injuries affecting opposite sides of the brain
- Penetrating and open head injuries
- Anoxic and hypoxic injury from oxygen deprivation
Severity labels applied in an emergency room describe the presentation at that moment, not the eventual outcome. A person labeled mild can have lasting cognitive and emotional deficits that reshape their working life.
These injuries arise from more than car crashes. Falls, workplace incidents, struck-by events, pedestrian and bicycle collisions, and assaults all cause them, and the legal route varies depending on how the injury occurred.
What stays constant is the proof problem. Whatever the mechanism, the case depends on documenting a measurable change in function rather than on the label attached to the injury.
Why Are Brain Injury Claims Difficult to Prove?
The core problem is that the most disabling brain injuries are frequently invisible on the tests done in the emergency department. CT scans are ordered to rule out bleeding that requires surgery, and they do that job well while missing diffuse injury entirely.
A person who walks out of the hospital with a normal CT and no fracture now has a medical record that an insurer will read as evidence of no injury. Months later, when they cannot hold a schedule or follow a conversation, that early record becomes the defense.
Symptoms also arrive with a delay and get attributed elsewhere. Headaches, light and noise sensitivity, sleep disruption, irritability, word-finding difficulty, and difficulty concentrating are commonly attributed to stress or pain medication rather than to the injury.
What answers this? Documentation that goes beyond imaging. Neuropsychological testing, advanced imaging where indicated, treating physician opinion, and detailed accounts from family and coworkers about specific changes in function support these claims.
Access an essential guide detailing critical steps and resources for navigating complex brain injury claims.
Michigan’s Threshold and Why It Favors These Cases
Brain injury claims, once documented, generally clear Michigan’s tort threshold more readily than other injuries. MCL 500.3135 permits non-economic damages where there was death, permanent serious disfigurement, or a serious impairment of body function.
Serious impairment means an objectively manifested impairment of an important bodily function that affects the person’s general ability to lead a normal life. Cognitive function is plainly an important body function, and a documented cognitive deficit affects a person’s normal life in ways that are easy to demonstrate concretely.
The word objectively still governs. Neuropsychological test results, documented work restrictions, and specific observed changes in behavior satisfy it, while a general report of feeling foggy does not.
Under MCL 600.2959, damages are reduced by the injured person’s share of fault, and more than 50% responsibility bars noneconomic damages. Our Michigan brain injury practice covers the threshold analysis in more depth.
Which No-Fault Benefits Matter Most in a TBI Case?
Attendant care is usually the single most valuable no-fault benefit in a serious brain injury claim, and it is the one insurers contest hardest. Under MCL 500.3107, Personal Injury Protection covers allowable expenses for reasonably necessary care, recovery, and rehabilitation.
For a person with cognitive or behavioral deficits, that care is often supervision rather than nursing. A family member who prevents a spouse from leaving the stove on or wandering out of the house is providing attendant care, and it is compensable when a physician prescribes it.
The benefits that carry a TBI household:
- Attendant care, including care provided by family members at home
- Cognitive and vocational rehabilitation, and neuropsychological treatment
- Case management and residential or day treatment programs
- Up to 85% of lost wages for as long as three years
- Replacement services for household tasks the injured person can no longer do
- Home modifications and transportation to treatment
Coverage levels set the ceiling on the medical piece. Since the 2019 reform, drivers select from a set of PIP levels, and a catastrophic brain injury will quickly exhaust a $250,000 limit, which pushes the remainder into the third-party claim. The state’s guide to PIP medical coverage sets out the tiers.
Why Grand Rapids Families Choose Christensen Law
Brain injury work is medical work as much as legal work, and we approach it that way from the first meeting.
- A Grand Rapids office on Hall Street SW, serving Kent County and West Michigan
- A Michigan trial firm applying Michigan no-fault law, including the attendant care rules that decide TBI outcomes
- Five offices, in Southfield, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, and Troy, with statewide representation
- Catastrophic injury is our focus, and traumatic brain injury sits at the center of it
- We work with treating physicians, neuropsychologists, and life care planners to document lifetime needs
West Michigan offers real advantages for TBI recovery, including rehabilitation resources at Mary Free Bed and trauma care at Corewell Health Butterworth Hospital. Coordinating with those providers is part of how we build a claim. Call (248) 900-9000 and we will start with the medical record.
Proving What a Brain Injury Costs Over a Lifetime
The largest component of a serious TBI claim is usually future loss, and future loss has to be projected rather than tallied. This is where these cases are won or undersold.
A life care plan sets out the anticipated medical, rehabilitative, and supportive services a person will need over a lifetime, with costs attached. It is built from treating physician recommendations rather than from assumptions.
Lost earning capacity is the parallel exercise. A person who cannot return to their prior work, or who can work only part-time, has decades of diminished earnings that no-fault will never touch because wage loss benefits stop after three years.
Family losses also belong in the case, including the cost of care that a spouse or parent now provides and the effect on family relationships. Our Grand Rapids personal injury team handles claims arising from crashes, falls, and workplace incidents alike.
How Do Insurers Challenge a Brain Injury Claim?
The defense in a TBI case is usually built on the gap between how someone appears and how they function. A person who presents well in a short meeting makes an easy target for that argument.
- Pointing to normal CT or MRI results as proof of no injury
- Attributing cognitive complaints to depression, anxiety, pain, or medication
- Arguing that symptoms should have resolved within weeks
- Using surveillance or social media to suggest normal functioning
- Retaining a neuropsychologist to characterize test results as effort-related
- Relying on pre-existing conditions such as prior concussion or learning difficulty
Each argument has an answer grounded in the medical literature and the treating record. The strongest response is usually specific: not that a person has cognitive deficits, but that they were a shift supervisor who can no longer manage a schedule.
This is also why we ask families to keep contemporaneous notes. A dated log of missed appointments, repeated questions, and abandoned tasks is evidence that a memory reconstructed two years later cannot match.
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Deadlines and Early Steps in a Grand Rapids Head Injury Claim
Three years from the date of injury to sue the at-fault party under MCL 600.5805, and one year to give written notice of injury to a no-fault insurer under MCL 500.3145.
Michigan law provides limited tolling in some circumstances involving minors or a person who lacks legal capacity, which comes up genuinely often in severe brain injury cases. That question needs individual legal review rather than an assumption either way.
Practically, the more urgent clock is medical. Symptoms reported and documented in the first weeks are far more persuasive than the same symptoms described a year later, and baseline records from before the injury become valuable evidence.
A discussion of the symptoms and tests that identify a TBI after a crash covers what to raise with a physician and what to ask for.
FAQs Answered by Our Grand Rapids Brain Injury Lawyers
These are the questions we hear most from West Michigan families dealing with a brain injury.
Very possibly. CT imaging is designed to find bleeding that needs immediate surgery, and it routinely misses diffuse axonal injury. Neuropsychological testing and clinical evaluation are tools used to identify these injuries.
No. Loss of consciousness is not required for a traumatic brain injury diagnosis, and many people with lasting deficits never lost consciousness at all.
Yes, when the care is reasonably necessary and prescribed by a physician. Attendant care provided by family members is compensable under Michigan no-fault, though insurers dispute the hours and the rate, so contemporaneous logs are important.
Long enough for the medical picture to stabilize, which in a brain injury case often means a year or more. Settling while cognitive recovery is still uncertain risks accepting a figure that does not account for permanent deficits.
It can be a central part of it. Behavioral and emotional changes are recognized consequences of brain injury, and documenting them through treating providers and detailed family accounts is how they enter the case.
Talk With a Grand Rapids Brain Injury Lawyer
Brain injury claims are decided by the quality of the record, and that record is being built right now in appointments and discharge summaries. Getting involved early is the difference between a documented injury and a disputed one.
Call Christensen Law at (248) 900-9000 or reach us through our contact page. We serve Grand Rapids, Kent County, and communities throughout Michigan.
