Fort Lauderdale Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyer
The scan came back normal and you are still losing words, sleeping badly, and finding your own job harder than it was. We can take it from here. Call 954-522-5800 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Broward County since 1993.
Traumatic Brain Injury claims in Fort Lauderdale
The insurer will point at a clean scan and treat the rest as exaggeration. Meanwhile you are managing headaches, missed shifts, and a family who can see the difference even when a test cannot. Proving an injury that does not show up on film is our job, and we start the day you call.
A serious head injury in Broward routes to Broward Health Medical Center, and its trauma records are where the initial Glasgow Coma Scale scores, the imaging and the early neurological findings live. That record matters more than families realize, because the most damaging thing that happens after a head injury here is administrative rather than medical: the paperwork written in the first days decides how much of your own coverage is available, and it cannot easily be corrected afterward. Trauma records usually carry the finding that unlocks it. A concussion written up as a bad headache in an urgent care note usually does not.
A serious head injury in Broward routes to the trauma center at Broward Health Medical Center, where the first neurological findings and imaging live. A normal CT scan rules out bleeding, not injury. What is written in the first days also decides how much of your own coverage is available, and it cannot be corrected afterward.
What to do after a traumatic brain injury in Fort Lauderdale
- Say every symptom out loud, at the first visit. Headache, light sensitivity, ringing, nausea, trouble finding words, losing the thread of a sentence, sleeping badly, temper. Say all of it, even the parts that sound minor or embarrassing. Nobody in an emergency department asks whether you can still follow a conversation, and a symptom that is not in the first record is one the insurer will say began later and came from something else.
- Get the emergency finding made and written down. What a treating provider records in the first days decides how much of your own coverage is available to pay for the care that follows, and it is not automatic. A trauma unit usually produces that finding as a matter of course. A walk-in clinic frequently does not. It is a formal determination made by a physician, physician assistant, dentist or advanced practice registered nurse, and once the window has passed it cannot be fixed retrospectively.
- Have somebody else keep the record. A person with a head injury is the worst placed to notice what has changed, which is not a figure of speech but a feature of the injury. Ask a partner, a parent or a close friend to keep a short dated note: what was forgotten, what was repeated, what could not be finished, what the temper was like. Six months of that is more persuasive than any scan, and it cannot be reconstructed afterward.
- Do not resign, and tell somebody at work. People with brain injuries quit jobs they could have kept, because working feels impossible and they assume they are failing. Employment records showing performance falling away are among the strongest evidence in these cases, and a resignation letter saying you left for personal reasons is among the worst. Speak to a manager or human resources before making a decision, and keep what you send in writing.
- Keep going to appointments, and say why if you cannot. A gap in treatment gets read as recovery. A gap caused by a waiting list, no transport or no money is a different thing entirely and is defensible, but only when it is documented while it is happening: the referral date, the appointment offered, what you did instead. That is a five-minute phone call at the time and an argument you cannot win a year later.
Where brain injuries come from in Fort Lauderdale
Two things decide a Broward brain injury case and neither is the crash itself: which facility saw the person first, and what got written down there.
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The trauma center, and everywhere else
Where somebody was taken changes the record, and the record is the case.
- Initial Glasgow Coma Scale scores and early neurological findings, recorded at a trauma unit as routine
- Walk-in and urgent care notes, which frequently record a headache and nothing else
- The formal emergency finding, which a trauma unit makes and a clinic often does not
- Transfers between facilities, where a symptom mentioned once fails to follow the patient
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The roads that produce them
The mechanisms that put people into Broward trauma with head injuries are the ones this county has most of.
- I-95 and the I-595 interchange, where the speeds turn an ordinary collision into a brain injury
- Federal Highway and Broward Boulevard, and pedestrians struck at intersections along them
- Riders on A1A and the beach blocks with nothing between them and the road
- Falls at construction sites and on stairs, which are head injuries recorded as falls
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What happens in the weeks after discharge
The injury becomes visible after somebody goes home, and by then nobody is writing anything down.
- Symptoms that begin or worsen after the hospital record has closed
- A return to work that quietly fails, with nothing in writing about why
- Family noticing changes the person cannot see in themselves
- The first neuropsychological referral, which is often months late
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Where the evidence has to be built rather than requested
Most of what proves this case does not exist in any file yet.
- A dated account from a partner, parent or friend of what changed
- Employment records showing performance falling away
- Formal neuropsychological testing measuring the affected functions
- A treating physician willing to state what is permanent and what is not
What causes a brain injury
- Vehicle collisions, where the head strikes nothing at all and the brain still moves inside the skull
- Motorcycle, bicycle and scooter crashes, where a rider is at road level with no structure around them
- Pedestrians struck by vehicles, where the second impact with the road often does more than the first
- Falls from height at work, and falls on stairs, wet floors and unlit walkways
- Falls in older adults, which are frequently written up as a fall and never as a head injury
What a brain injury actually looks like
Why the scan being normal proves very little
A CT scan rules out bleeding, which is what it is for and why it is done first. Most traumatic brain injuries never appear on routine imaging at all, because the damage is to how cells connect rather than to structure a scanner resolves. Insurers lean on a normal scan precisely because it sounds conclusive to anybody who has not been told what the test measures. The diagnosis rests on the mechanism, the reported symptoms and formal neuropsychological testing.
What the word mild actually means
It grades how the injury presented in the first hours. It says nothing about the outcome. A substantial minority of people diagnosed with a mild traumatic brain injury have symptoms months later or permanently, and the word then appears in every letter the insurer writes as though it described the result. Grading the presentation and describing the consequence are two different exercises and only one of them has been done.
Memory, attention and finding words
The deficits that cost people their jobs, and the ones least visible in a medical file. Losing the thread of a meeting, rereading the same paragraph, forgetting a conversation from that morning, reaching for a word that will not come. Neuropsychological testing measures these directly, which is the point of it: it examines the functions that were affected rather than looking for structural damage that may not be there.
What Florida law requires you to prove
What has to be proved, and by when
A brain injury claim is an ordinary negligence claim in its structure: duty, breach, causation and damages. Most claims arising on or after March 24, 2023 carry a two-year deadline under Fla. Stat. § 95.11, and fault is shared under Fla. Stat. § 768.81, where somebody more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing. What makes these cases different is not the law. It is that the damage is invisible on the tests most people assume are definitive.
Causation is the whole fight
The defense in a brain injury case is rarely that the collision did not happen. It is that the symptoms come from something else: age, stress, depression, a previous concussion, a condition that predates the crash. Answering that needs a documented before and after rather than an opinion, which is why the accounts of people who knew somebody beforehand, employment records and school records matter as much as the medical file. A person is also taken as they were found: a defendant who injures somebody more severely because of a pre-existing vulnerability does not get a discount for it.
Proving what a lifetime costs
Future care and lost earning capacity have to be established with evidence. A life care planner sets out the therapies, medication, equipment, supervision and home modification that will be needed and how each changes over the years, working from the treating physicians rather than from a template, and an economist reduces it to present value. Defense experts attack the assumptions rather than the arithmetic, so the strength of the number depends on how well the underlying medical opinions were documented while treatment was happening.
The full statutory detail, and the parts that differ by claim type, sit on our statewide traumatic brain injury page rather than being restated in every market.
How we prove it in Broward County
A Broward brain injury case is assembled from two places at once: the records that already exist, and the account of daily life that nobody has written down yet.
- Trauma center records: the initial scores, the imaging and the early neurological findings
- Whether an emergency finding was made in the first days, and by whom
- Every subsequent medical record, including the symptoms mentioned once and never followed up
- Formal neuropsychological testing, which measures function rather than looking for structure
- A dated account from the people who knew the person before the injury
- Employment records, including performance reviews, hours worked and any accommodation asked for
- School or training records where the injured person is young
- A life care plan and an economist where the injury is permanent
The order matters, because the paperwork decides what pays for the treatment that produces everything else on that list. Where a vehicle was involved, your own policy covers the first bills whatever caused the crash, but only where care began within 14 days, and it reaches $10,000 only where a physician, physician assistant, dentist or advanced practice registered nurse determined there was an emergency medical condition. Without that determination the ceiling is $2,500, under Fla. Stat. § 627.736. Broward trauma records usually carry the finding. An urgent care note usually does not.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in Fort Lauderdale is hard enough without working out the legal side on your own. The trial lawyers below have handled traumatic brain injury claims across Florida since 1993, and one of them will take yours from the first call to the last check. They will tell you what your case is worth and why, and they will be straight with you about the parts that are hard.
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Richard P. Pravato Founding & Managing Attorney Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar since 2004, and by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Injury cases exclusively since 1996. Full profile → -
Brett J. Yonon Senior Trial Attorney Selected to Florida Super Lawyers in 2024 and 2025. Brett Yonon is who this firm puts on a catastrophic injury or a death in the family, and he has tried those cases to verdict. Full profile →
How insurance companies handle these claims
Every argument below rests on the same idea: that an injury nobody can see on a scan is an injury that is not there. They are answered with documentation rather than with indignation.
- The CT scan was normal
- It was, and that rules out bleeding rather than injury. Most traumatic brain injuries do not appear on routine imaging, because the damage is to how cells connect rather than to structure a scanner resolves. The answer is formal neuropsychological testing, which measures the affected functions directly, alongside a documented account of what changed from people who knew the person before.
- The hospital said it was mild
- That grades the first hours, not the outcome, and the two get used interchangeably in every letter that follows. A substantial minority of mild traumatic brain injuries produce symptoms lasting months or permanently. What settles it is what the person can and cannot do now, measured by testing and evidenced by employment records, rather than by a word written on a discharge note before anybody knew.
- You had a gap in treatment
- Gaps get read as recovery. A gap caused by a waiting list, transport or cost is a different thing and it is defensible, but only when it is documented at the time: the referral date, the appointment offered, what happened in between. Tell somebody while it is happening. It is a phone call now and an unwinnable argument later.
What a claim can include
Medical care, past and future
Everything already billed and what the treating physicians say is still ahead, including the neuropsychological and rehabilitation work that usually starts months after the injury.
A life care plan where the injury is permanent
Therapy, medication, equipment, supervision and home modification, costed over a lifetime by a professional working from the treating physicians and brought to present value by an economist.
Lost income and lost earning capacity
Wages missed, and separately what somebody can no longer earn. In this practice the second figure is usually far larger, because the injury takes the work rather than the time.
Why Wolf & Pravato in Fort Lauderdale
A Broward brain injury case is filed in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit at the Broward County Courthouse, and this office has worked in it since 1993. These cases turn on expert evidence that has to be arranged early rather than commissioned before trial, and on a treatment record that only holds up if somebody was watching it while it was being made.
Richard Pravato has been Board Certified in Civil Trial law by The Florida Bar since 2004. The Bar lists 861 lawyers in the state holding it against a membership over 109,000. What it means in practice is that the other side knows the file can go in front of a jury, and files that can go to trial are priced differently from files that cannot.
The first conversation is free. We are paid out of the recovery or not at all, and if we do not think there is a claim worth bringing we will tell you that rather than take it.
Fort Lauderdale traumatic brain injury questions
My scan was normal but I am not right. Is there still a claim?
Yes. A normal CT scan rules out bleeding, not injury. Most traumatic brain injuries do not appear on routine imaging at all, and the diagnosis rests on the reported symptoms, the mechanism and neuropsychological testing. Insurers lean on the normal scan precisely because it sounds conclusive. What answers it is a documented account of what changed, from people who knew you before, alongside the specialist testing.
I went to an urgent care clinic instead of the hospital.
Then the first thing to check is what that visit recorded, because it may be a headache note rather than a head injury one, and whether the formal emergency finding was made. That finding decides how much of your own coverage is available to pay for what comes next, and there is a window on it. It is worth establishing today rather than discovering in three months that the treatment you need is not funded.
How long does a case like this take?
Longer than most, and for a reason worth understanding. The evidence that establishes what was actually lost comes from testing and from watching what happens over months, and an offer made before any of that exists is an offer made on a discharge note. Settling early in a brain injury case is the mistake that cannot be undone, because a release cannot be reopened when the testing arrives.
My CT scan was normal. Do I still have a brain injury claim?
Possibly. A normal CT rules out the bleeding and fractures it is designed to detect; it does not rule out a traumatic brain injury. Persistent headaches, memory and concentration problems, sensitivity to light or noise, and personality changes are documented through neuropsychological testing and specialist assessment rather than through emergency imaging.
I never lost consciousness. Does that matter?
Not in the way people assume. A traumatic brain injury can occur without any loss of consciousness at all. What matters is the how the injury happened and the documented change in function afterward.
The questions that come up on every kind of claim, deadlines, fees, recorded statements and fault, are answered on our Florida injury claim FAQ.
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Tell us what happened
A lawyer will listen, tell you what Florida law does with those facts, and be straight with you about whether it is worth bringing. We are at 2101 W Commercial Blvd, Suite 1500, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33309.