Moderate Acquired Brain Injury Claim

Moderate Acquired Brain Injury Claim

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$1.85 Million

What should have been the “best of times” turned into the worst of times for two suburban young men preparing to leave for college in the summer of 2008. At an end of the summer party at the home of some friends, whose parents were not home, a deck railing gave way, and the two college-bound men fell headfirst to the driveway below. Stewart Casper was asked by the family lawyer of the most seriously injured man to take the lead in pursuing a claim for personal injuries. Casper quickly learned that the value of the devastating nature of his client’s injuries would vastly eclipse all conceivable limits of insurance coverage that would be divided between the two boys. These injuries included a left temporal epidural hematoma; a right frontal temporal intracerebral hemorrhage; a right frontal temporal parietal subdural hematoma; and a right frontal temporal intracerebral hemorrhage; and required a hemicraniectomy with bone flap stored in the right abdominal subcutaneous compartment; and left the client with a seizure disorder, a blood disorder known as a coagulopathy, with numerous cognitive deficits documented on neuropsychological testing. Early on it was learned that the homeowners had insured their home for liability purposes for only $500,000. In addition, one parent of the hosts ran his construction business from the home and the business had a $2,000,000 excess policy. Casper carefully marshaled the evidence and made a presentation to the defense lawyers and insurance companies that argued that liability for the defective deck railing rested with the parties in control of the premises. In this case, both the homeowners and the construction company exercised dual control over the premises. Thus the homeowners and the construction company were concurrently responsible for the condition of the deck. The argument was enough to convince the excess carrier for the construction company that with significant exposure for damages that easily exceeded all of the insurance coverage, Connecticut law imposed upon it a huge risk if it exposed its insured (the construction company) to a potential verdict in excess of the coverage. Accordingly, the excess carrier added its $2 million in coverage to funds that could be divided by the two young men. The next hurdle became the other young man and his lawyers. One of the goals was to attempt to preserve the insurance funds and avoid filing a lawsuit. A lawsuit would have made available various compulsory tools to conduct traditional discovery, but it also would have added significant expenses to the claims, thus diminishing the resources available for distribution at the end of the case. The goal was to reach an agreement, either directly or in mediation, to resolve the division of the insurance proceeds. It was not difficult for Casper to assemble a credible assessment of his client’s damages, as the medical and neuropsychological evidence was very compelling. With such significant injuries, Casper was also able to draw from the full assessments that had been performed on other moderate brain injury clients to assemble a comparative profile for a life care plan, vocational evaluation, loss of earning capacity, and economic appraisal. In contrast, the lawyers representing the other young man revealed next to nothing. They were either operating in a vacuum without the benefit of a “library” of similarly situated clients or set as their strategy a refusal to actually share specific information on their client. Fortunately, Casper had the benefit of the other young man’s medical records as provided by his attorneys. He did sustain a subdural hematoma with a midline shift of the brain demonstrated on imaging studies. Casper felt confident that despite the other side’s unwillingness to be forthcoming before and during mediation, the other young man certainly did sustain a traumatic brain injury that more than likely would be revealed on proper neuropsychological testing or as a result of advanced neuroimaging studies. The latter would likely reveal injury on 3T MRI with diffusion tensor imaging that would demonstrate disruption of white matter tracts. This level of knowledge enabled Casper and his clients to reach a level of comfort that the division of the $2,500,000 made sense, even though all participants who observed the conduct of the other side understood that they chose their own rules for the day.