West Palm Beach 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 833-370-8692 for a free consultation. You pay us nothing unless we win. Our West Palm Beach personal injury lawyers have taken these cases across Palm Beach County since 1993.
Traumatic Brain Injury claims in West Palm Beach
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.
Where a brain injury is severe, the claim is not really about the hospital bill. It is about the cost of care, lost earning capacity and support over the rest of a life, and Florida requires that to be established with evidence. That usually means a life care planner setting out what will be needed and an economist reducing it to present value. Palm Beach County juries see these cases regularly and the defense is well practiced at attacking the assumptions in the plan, so the plan has to be built on the treating physicians' actual recommendations rather than on a template.
Where a brain injury is severe the claim is about care, lost earning capacity and support over a lifetime rather than about the hospital bill. Florida requires that to be proved with evidence: a life care planner working from the treating physicians, and an economist reducing it to present value.
What to do after a traumatic brain injury in West Palm Beach
- 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 West Palm Beach
Palm Beach County juries see these cases regularly and the defense here is well practiced at attacking the assumptions in a life care plan, which shapes how one gets built.
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What a life care plan actually contains
It is a costed schedule of what somebody will need, year by year, not a total with a justification attached.
- Therapies and their frequency, tapering or increasing over time
- Medication, equipment and the replacement schedule for each
- Supervision and attendant care, which is usually the largest single line
- Home and vehicle modification, and when each will need doing again
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Where the plan comes from
A plan built on a template is the one that gets taken apart, so it is built on the treating physicians instead.
- Written recommendations from the physicians actually providing the care
- Consistency between what the plan assumes and what the records show was happening
- Local pricing for services in this county rather than national averages
- An economist converting the schedule to present value, with the discount rate defensible
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Lost earning capacity
Separate from wages missed, and usually much larger, because the injury takes the career rather than the weeks.
- What somebody was on track to earn, evidenced rather than asserted
- Vocational assessment of what work is still realistically available
- Pension, benefits and progression, not just salary
- Records from before the injury that establish the trajectory it interrupted
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What the defense goes after
The attack is never on the arithmetic. It is on every assumption underneath it.
- That the injury is less severe than the plan assumes
- That the person will improve, so the later years are overstated
- That care could be provided more cheaply, or by family
- That something other than the crash caused part of it
What causes a brain injury
- 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
- Objects falling from scaffolding, shelving and overhead work
- Assaults on premises where the security was inadequate
What a brain injury actually looks like
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.
Temper, mood and who somebody is now
The change families find hardest and mention last, because it feels like a betrayal to describe. Irritability, flat mood, no tolerance for noise or crowds, an absence of the patience somebody always had. It is a consequence of the injury rather than a reaction to it, and it belongs in the claim. The people who knew somebody before are the only witnesses to it.
Fatigue, sleep and light
Sleeping badly and then being exhausted by an ordinary day, unable to tolerate bright light or background noise. It is why somebody who looks recovered cannot hold a full shift, and it is the symptom most often dismissed as unrelated because everybody is tired.
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 Palm Beach County
A number this size is only as strong as the medical documentation underneath it, which is decided during treatment rather than at the point somebody sits down to build a plan.
- The complete treatment record, with the physicians’ own written recommendations for ongoing care
- Formal neuropsychological testing, repeated over time where the picture is still changing
- A life care plan built from those recommendations rather than from a template
- An economist’s present value calculation, with defensible assumptions
- Vocational assessment of what work remains realistically available
- Employment and earnings history establishing the trajectory before the injury
- Dated accounts from family and carers of what daily support actually involves
- Evidence of care already being provided informally, which the defense will otherwise treat as free
Care given by a family member is still a cost. Where a spouse has given up work or a parent provides supervision daily, that has to be recorded as it happens, because it is invisible in a medical file and the defense counts on it staying that way. At the other end of the scale, check what the first days recorded: where a vehicle was involved, Fla. Stat. § 627.736 gives $10,000 of your own coverage only where a qualifying provider determined there was an emergency medical condition, and $2,500 where none was made.
Who would handle your case
Being hurt in West Palm Beach 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.
- 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.
- This was going on before the crash
- Raised in almost every one of these cases, usually pointing at age, stress, depression or an earlier concussion. It is answered with a before and after rather than a denial: what work looked like, what the school reports said, what the family noticed. And Florida takes a person as they were found, so a defendant who injured somebody more severely because of an existing vulnerability does not get a discount for it.
- Surveillance shows you doing fine
- It shows a few hours out of months, chosen for how they look. Somebody with a brain injury can carry a shopping bag and still be unable to hold a shift, follow a meeting or tolerate a crowded room. Fatigue and cognitive load are not visible from a parked car. What answers it is the whole record, including the days that were not filmed.
What a claim can include
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.
Pain, suffering and loss of the ability to enjoy life
The largest head of loss in a serious brain injury case, and the one an early offer prices lowest, because it is the one with no invoice attached.
The claim a spouse has of their own
Loss of consortium is a separate claim belonging to the husband or wife, for the companionship and support the injury took. It is regularly left out, and in this practice it is often the loss the family feels most.
Why Wolf & Pravato in West Palm Beach
A Palm Beach County brain injury case is filed in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit in West Palm Beach, and the firm’s office on Vista Parkway is in the county rather than across the state. Building a plan on local providers and local pricing means knowing them, and juries here have seen enough of these cases to notice the difference between a plan and a spreadsheet.
Board Certification in Civil Trial law is the Bar’s own measure of trial experience, and 861 of Florida’s 109,000-plus lawyers hold it. Richard Pravato has held it since 2004. It is the credential that changes how an adjuster reads a file, because it says the case has somewhere to go if they will not pay it.
Asking costs nothing and there is no fee unless we win. If we look at what happened and think the claim is not worth pursuing, we will say so on the first call instead of signing you up.
West Palm Beach traumatic brain injury questions
How is the cost of future care calculated?
By a life care planner working from the treating physicians’ recommendations: therapies, medication, equipment, supervision, home modifications and how each changes over time. An economist then converts that to a present value. The strength of the number depends entirely on how well the underlying medical opinions are documented, which is another reason consistent treatment matters.
I have given up work to care for my husband. Does that count for anything?
It should, and it needs recording as it happens rather than described afterward. Care provided by a family member is a real cost whether or not anybody invoiced for it, and your own lost earnings are part of the picture. Keep a note of hours and what the care actually involves. Without that record the defense treats the whole thing as free, which is precisely why it argues that family can provide it.
What if he improves? Does that mean the claim was overstated?
Not necessarily, and it is the argument to expect. A plan built properly accounts for a realistic range rather than assuming the worst forever, and it is grounded in what the treating physicians actually expect rather than in hope on either side. Improvement in some areas alongside permanent deficit in others is the usual picture in serious brain injury, and a plan that says so is harder to attack than one that does not.
Should I accept the offer while I am still recovering?
Almost never, and in a brain injury case especially not. Settling ends the claim permanently, and the long-term consequences of a brain injury are frequently not apparent for months. An offer made early is priced on what is not yet known, which is precisely why it arrives early.
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.
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 Vista Parkway, Suite 4500, West Palm Beach, FL 33411.