A brain injury claim is the one personal injury matter where the worst version of the case is invisible on paper. The CT scan comes back clean. The ER discharge says “concussion, follow up with primary care.”
The injured person goes home thinking they got lucky. Six weeks later they cannot read for more than ten minutes, they are sleeping fourteen hours a day, and they have lost their job because they can no longer keep up.
That gap — between what the initial medical record says and what the long-term picture actually looks like — is the entire battle in a brain injury case. Insurers know it. They settle these claims fast, before symptoms develop, before the neuropsychological testing happens, before the family understands that the person they live with has changed.
A Texas brain injury lawyer’s job is to keep that window open long enough for the case to actually be evaluated.
Slingshot Law Injury Attorneys handles brain injury claims across Austin and Travis County, including injuries from motor vehicle crashes, falls, workplace incidents, assaults on commercial property, and other negligence-driven causes. Free case reviews are available.
Call (800) 488-7840 for a case review.
Why the Medical Record Underreports Brain Injuries
The framework most ER physicians use for traumatic brain injury is built around the Glasgow Coma Scale, imaging findings, and loss of consciousness. A mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), which is what most concussions and the majority of brain injuries in personal injury cases actually are, often produces normal results on every one of those measures.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention classifies mild TBI as the most common category of brain injury, accounting for the substantial majority of TBI-related ER visits in the United States.
What a Negative CT Scan Does Not Mean
A CT scan in the emergency room rules out the kinds of brain bleeds that need immediate surgery. It does not rule out diffuse axonal injury, which is microscopic damage to the white matter tracts that connect parts of the brain. It does not rule out the metabolic and neurochemical disruptions that produce post-concussive syndrome.
It does not rule out the slow-developing symptoms that show up weeks after the impact. The negative CT becomes the first piece of defense evidence in a contested case, and it should never have been treated as conclusive in the first place.
What Symptoms Actually Look Like Over Time
Brain injury symptoms in the first 72 hours often look manageable — headache, some nausea, brain fog, sensitivity to light. The symptoms that drive the long-term case usually appear later. Difficulty concentrating that does not resolve. Sleep disruption that does not resolve.
Mood changes the injured person cannot explain. Word-finding problems. Slowed processing speed that affects work performance. Personality changes that family members notice before the injured person does.
The symptom progression is what separates a brain injury case from a routine personal injury claim, and documenting it requires consistent medical follow-up that most patients do not pursue when their ER discharge told them they were fine.
What the Right Workup for a Brain Injury Case Looks Like
A brain injury case lives or dies on the quality of the medical documentation. The medical workup that produces a defensible case is more involved than what the initial treatment usually includes, and putting that workup in place is part of the early case work.
Neuropsychological Testing
A neuropsychological evaluation is a multi-hour battery of cognitive testing administered by a licensed neuropsychologist. It measures attention, processing speed, working memory, executive function, verbal and visual memory, and other cognitive domains against normed data.
The results identify specific cognitive deficits and quantify their severity. Without neuropsychological testing, a brain injury case rests on the patient’s self-report. With it, the case rests on objective measurement.
Advanced Imaging Beyond the ER Scan
Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), functional MRI (fMRI), and other advanced techniques can detect white matter injury that conventional CT and MRI miss. These studies are not standard ER workup, and they are not standard outpatient neurology either. They require a referral to a specialist familiar with TBI imaging, and they need to be done by facilities equipped to perform and interpret them.
Vestibular and Vision Specialists
Brain injuries frequently produce vestibular dysfunction — balance issues, dizziness with head movement, motion sensitivity — and visual processing disruption that conventional vision tests miss. Specialists in these areas document deficits that primary care providers and general neurologists routinely miss, and the documentation supports both the diagnosis and the daily life impact.
Speech-Language Pathology
Cognitive-communication deficits — slow processing, word-finding difficulty, comprehension problems with complex material — fall in the scope of speech-language pathology evaluation. SLP documentation is particularly useful in cases where the injured person was in a cognitively demanding profession before the injury.
What Causes Most Brain Injury Cases in Austin?
The causes of brain injury cases follow the patterns of negligence in the area. The Austin practice we handle reflects the city’s mix of motor vehicle crashes, construction- and commercial-property-related falls, and assault-related cases stemming from negligent security failures.
Motor Vehicle and Commercial Truck Crashes
Crashes on I-35, MoPac, US-183, and Austin’s surface streets produce both the violent impact crashes that cause moderate to severe TBI and the lower-speed rear-end and side-impact crashes that produce mild TBI. Commercial truck crashes are over-represented in severe TBI cases because of the impact forces involved.
Falls on Commercial Property and at Construction Sites
Falls from heights at construction sites and falls on commercial property — retail, hospitality, apartment common areas — produce a significant share of Austin brain injury cases. Premises liability and negligent-maintenance claims drive these cases, and the property owner’s documentation of the hazard becomes central evidence.
Assault and Negligent-Security Cases
Brain injuries from assaults at apartment complexes, bars, parking garages, and other commercial properties run as negligent-security claims under Texas premises law. The Timberwalk foreseeability framework applies, and the brain injury documentation runs alongside the foreseeability investigation.
Workplace Incidents at Non-Subscriber Employers
Workplace brain injuries at Texas non-subscriber employers — falls, struck-by incidents, equipment incidents — proceed as negligence lawsuits rather than workers’ comp claims. The non-subscriber framework eliminates several employer defenses, which produces materially different recoveries than the comp system would.
Why Slingshot Law for Your Austin Brain Injury Case?
Brain injury cases require an attorney who treats the medical workup as part of the legal case, who understands the gap between ER documentation and actual injury severity, and who is prepared to litigate against insurers who price these cases based on the negative CT scan rather than the long-term picture.
Direct Attorney Involvement Throughout a Long Case
The attorney you talk to at intake is the attorney handling your case. Brain injury cases typically run eighteen months to three years from intake to resolution, with the medical picture developing throughout. Hand-offs between attorneys lose the continuity that drives these cases.
Methodical Case Building Across Specialists
Scott Crivelli served as an active duty Army Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps officer. Brain injury cases involve coordinating neurologists, neuropsychologists, vestibular specialists, speech-language pathologists, life care planners, and vocational analysts. Carrying that work without losing track of the medical timeline or the legal deadlines is structured project management, which is what JAG work trains.
Prosecutor Background That Anticipates the Defense Playbook
Drew Gibbs served as a Texas prosecutor before joining Slingshot Law. Insurance defense in TBI cases follows a predictable playbook: attack the diagnosis, attribute symptoms to pre-existing conditions, point to the negative imaging, and argue secondary gain. Drew’s background in adversarial case work shapes how we build the medical record to anticipate those attacks rather than respond to them.
Litigation-Ready When Insurers Price the Case at the ER Discharge
The cases that settle for fair value are the cases the insurer believes will be tried. Brain injury cases are particularly vulnerable to lowball offers because the medical picture is harder to put in front of a jury than a broken bone. Building the case for trial from the first day is what produces settlements that reflect what the injury actually cost.
Call (800) 488-7840 for a case review.
FAQ for Austin Brain Injury Lawyer
If My CT Scan Was Normal, Do I Still Have a Brain Injury Case?
Possibly. Most mild traumatic brain injuries produce normal CT scans. The diagnosis depends on the mechanism of injury, the symptoms in the days and weeks after the incident, and findings from neuropsychological testing and advanced imaging that the ER did not order. A negative CT scan rules out the bleeds that need surgery; it does not rule out a TBI.
How Long Do I Have to File a Texas Brain Injury Lawsuit?
Two years from the date of the injury under Texas Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. The clock runs from the incident, not from the date the symptoms became severe enough to seek follow-up care. This is a particular trap in brain injury cases because the full extent of the injury often becomes clear only after months of symptoms.
Will the Insurer Use My Pre-Existing Conditions Against Me?
Yes, every time. The defense playbook in brain injury cases includes deep review of prior medical records looking for headaches, anxiety, depression, ADHD, prior concussions in sports or other contexts, and any other condition that produces symptoms that overlap with TBI.
Texas law follows the “eggshell plaintiff” rule, which means a defendant takes the victim as they find them, but in practice pre-existing conditions become a point the case has to address proactively.
What Damages Are Available in a Texas TBI Case?
Standard personal injury damages — medical expenses, future medical costs, lost wages, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of consortium, and disability and impairment damages — are all available.
Brain injury cases often produce some of the largest damages calculations in personal injury law because the lifetime earning capacity loss and the lifetime medical and care costs can be substantial. Punitive damages are available for grossly negligent conduct.
The First Decisions in a Brain Injury Case Are the Ones You Make Without Knowing It
The most consequential decisions in a brain injury claim get made in the first three to six weeks, before the injured person understands a brain injury is what they are dealing with. Recorded statements, early settlements, and missed specialist referrals shape the case in ways that are difficult to undo later.
If your symptoms are not matching what the ER discharge said they would be, that is the data point the case is built on.
Call (800) 488-7840 or visit our Austin office at 1802 Lavaca Street.