Louisiana Brain Injury Lawyers

Louisiana courts, insurers, and medical experts classify traumatic brain injury as mild, moderate, or severe using the GCS. The score recorded by EMS at the scene and by the emergency department on admission is primary causation evidence in your case.

Mild TBI and Concussion

Mild TBI, commonly called concussion, often produces no visible abnormality on a standard CT scan. That does not mean the injury is insignificant. Symptoms including headache, cognitive fog, memory gaps, and irritability are real, documented, and compensable.

Moderate and Severe TBI

Moderate TBI involves loss of consciousness from 30 minutes to 24 hours. CT or MRI findings are more likely at this severity level. The risk of post-traumatic epilepsy rises substantially. Post-traumatic epilepsy is a seizure disorder caused by the brain injury that affects 5 to 20 percent of people with moderate or severe TBI, and it can start weeks or months later. It usually means long-term seizure medication and can affect your driving, your job, and living on your own. Severe TBI, defined by a GCS score of 3-8, typically involves DAI, extended unconsciousness, and permanent cognitive or physical impairment. DAI stands for diffuse axonal injury, which is widespread tearing of the nerve fibers inside the brain when the head is twisted or whipped around, and it is behind many cases of severe disability after TBI. Standard CT scans often miss it entirely.

Other TBI Categories

Two additional injury categories are worth understanding. Penetrating TBI, or open-head injury, occurs when an object enters the skull and brain tissue. This can result from high-speed collisions where vehicle components intrude into the passenger compartment, gunshots, or industrial projectiles. Non-traumatic acquired brain injury results from internal causes such as stroke, oxygen deprivation (anoxia), or infection. When a non-traumatic brain injury results from a medical provider’s failure to act, a medical malpractice framework applies.

Trey Morris Injury Lawyers handles the full range of Louisiana catastrophic injury cases, including all TBI severity levels.

No. CT scans are fast and available at every Level I and Level II trauma center in Louisiana. They reliably detect acute bleeds, skull fractures, and large contusions. They do not detect axonal damage, which is the mechanism behind many of the most debilitating TBI symptoms.

Where a Standard MRI Falls Short

Standard MRI improves on CT for soft tissue resolution. But even a conventional MRI misses diffuse axonal injury in many mild-to-moderate cases. The structures being damaged are the white matter tracts, which require specialized protocols to visualize.

DTI and SWI: The Scans That Show the Injury

Insurance companies will cite the absence of findings on a standard CT as grounds to deny or minimize a TBI claim. This is a predictable tactic. DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging) is a special MRI scan that tracks how water moves along the brain’s wiring, so it can show torn nerve fibers that a standard MRI cannot see. SWI (Susceptibility-Weighted Imaging) is another special MRI scan that finds tiny traces of blood left behind when torn nerve fibers cause small bleeds. DTI and SWI findings provide specific, documentable evidence that defeats it.

TBI symptoms do not always appear at the moment of impact. Brain inflammation, neurochemical disruption, and white matter tract injury produce symptoms that develop over hours, days, and sometimes weeks after the accident. This is documented in medical literature. It is not unusual. But it creates a predictable litigation problem.

The absence of immediate emergency room findings does not rule it out.

How the Defense Uses the Gap

Insurance companies and defense attorneys treat the gap between the accident and symptom onset as an opportunity. The argument is that symptoms appearing days or weeks later must be pre-existing or caused by something else. This argument has no medical basis. It is a litigation tactic, not a clinical conclusion.

Documentation Is the Counter

The counter is documentation. Every symptom must be reported to a treating physician as it appears, and the physician’s notes must connect the symptoms to the injury mechanism. Gaps in medical treatment are gaps in your case.

Traumatic brain injury produces cognitive and behavioral consequences that are often more disruptive to daily life than the physical injuries and harder to document without specialized testing.

Memory, Processing Speed and Executive Function

Post-TBI cognitive deficits include memory impairment, slowed processing speed, and executive function loss covering planning, sequencing, and impulse control. These affect job performance, relationships, and the ability to manage daily tasks. Personality changes, including impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, depression, and aggression, are direct neurological consequences of brain injury. They are not character flaws. They are documented sequelae with established neurological mechanisms.

Post-Traumatic Epilepsy

Post-Traumatic Epilepsy represents a separate long-term consequence that adds ongoing medical costs and functional limitations to the damages calculation.

Why These Injuries Are Called Invisible

These injuries are called “invisible” because they do not appear on imaging that non-specialist reviewers consider routine. Defense IME doctors (an IME is an independent medical examination, an exam by a doctor the insurer picks rather than your own) routinely dismiss cognitive and behavioral TBI sequelae as exaggerated or unrelated. Neuropsychological testing is the primary documentary counter to this tactic.

A neuropsychologist is not a psychiatrist. A neuropsychologist is a licensed psychologist with specialized doctoral-level training in brain-behavior relationships. They do not prescribe medications. They administer and interpret standardized test batteries that quantify how brain function has changed.

The Standard Test Batteries

The standard test batteries used in TBI litigation include the WAIS-IV (intellectual function and processing speed), WMS-IV (memory across multiple modalities), Trail Making Test A and B (processing speed and cognitive flexibility), and the Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System (planning, sequencing, inhibition, and problem solving). Each test has population norms and statistical thresholds. The results are not subjective. They are numbers.

The neuropsychologist compares your test results against population norms and against your estimated pre-injury intellectual functioning. The deficit documented is specific, quantified, and tied to a particular cognitive domain. The report states whether those deficits are consistent with the known injury mechanism. This is the document that turns “she seems fine” into a measurable, compensable impairment.

Performance Validity Tests and the Defense Challenge

Defense neuropsychologists challenge test validity using PVTs. PVTs, or Performance Validity Tests, are tests built into the testing or given as separate tests that show whether you were giving real effort. If you fail many of them, the defense uses that to argue your memory and thinking problems are exaggerated. An experienced plaintiff’s neuropsychologist addresses this directly in their report by documenting consistency indicators across the entire battery.

Expert Qualifications

Expert qualifications matter, and the defense will challenge them.

Where the Injuries Come From

The Louisiana Department of Health told the legislature in January 2023 that motor vehicle accidents are the leading cause of both traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries in the state. The crash counts show where that exposure sits. In 2024, 8,198 people were injured in Orleans Parish crashes and 7,979 in East Baton Rouge Parish, according to LSU’s Center for Analytics and Research in Transportation Safety. Lafayette Parish had 4,525 people injured, Calcasieu Parish 2,487 and St. Tammany Parish 2,241, and Caddo Parish recorded 2,015 injury crashes. A share of every one of those columns is a head injury that did not show on the first CT scan.

Where They Are Treated

The level of the trauma center that received you is part of your medical record and part of your case. University Medical Center New Orleans is a state-designated Level I trauma center. Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport is the only American College of Surgeons-verified Level I center in north Louisiana; the nearest others are in Dallas and Little Rock. Lake Charles Memorial Hospital is a Level III center, so a severe brain injury in southwest Louisiana is often stabilized there and transferred. The transfer records, the first Glasgow Coma Scale score and the imaging from each hospital are the earliest evidence of how serious the injury was.

The full economic cost of a severe TBI case is not known at the time of the accident. It is not known at the time of the initial settlement offer. It becomes known through a structured process of medical evaluation, vocational analysis, and financial projection.

The Lifetime Care Team

Severe TBI survivors typically require a coordinated team of providers over their lifetime: neuropsychology follow-up, occupational therapy to rebuild daily living skills, speech-language pathology for cognitive-communication deficits, and physical therapy for motor impairment. Home modifications, assistive technology, and personal care attendants add to the long-term picture.

The Life Care Plan

A certified life care planner (CLCP) builds the formal documentation of future medical needs. The life care plan is a line-item document specifying each type of care, frequency, cost, and duration over the survivor’s projected lifetime. It is prepared by a credentialed specialist, not estimated by the attorney. This document is required to support a full future damages claim.

Lost Earning Capacity

Lost earning capacity is calculated separately. A vocational rehabilitation expert assesses the difference between pre-injury work capacity and post-injury work capacity. An economist converts that difference to present value using actuarial methods. Together, these form the economic damages foundation of a severe TBI case.

Louisiana’s TBI Trust Fund Program

Louisiana’s Traumatic Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Trust Fund Program, managed through the Louisiana Department of Health, provides ongoing services to qualifying Louisiana TBI survivors. This program is a resource for long-term care coordination independent of litigation outcomes.

Why Early Offers Fall Short

Insurance companies make early settlement offers before life care planning is complete. Accepting an early offer on your injury claim ends that claim against the people you settle with, for everything the settlement covers (La. C.C. art. 3080). Once you settle, you cannot return for additional compensation if the true extent of long-term care needs becomes clear later.

TBI cases produce predictable defense tactics. Understanding them in advance reduces their effectiveness.

Recorded Statements

Early recorded statements are the most damaging. An insurance adjuster contacts the injured person within days of the accident and asks open-ended questions about symptoms. TBI symptoms often have not fully manifested yet. The injured person says they feel “okay” or “not that bad.” That statement is recorded. It is later used to contradict claims of ongoing cognitive impairment. The standard practice at Trey Morris Injury Lawyers is to require all communications to go through counsel once we are retained. We do not allow adjusters direct access to our clients on catastrophic cases.

Insurer Medical Exams

IME reports frequently conclude TBI symptoms are exaggerated, pre-existing, or unrelated to the accident. They are contestable through the treating physician’s longitudinal records, neuropsychological testing, and advanced imaging.

Timeline Attacks

Timeline attacks argue that symptoms appearing weeks or months after the accident are not related to it. Thorough treating physician records that document the progression of symptoms from injury date forward defeat this argument.

Louisiana’s personal injury law changed substantially from 2024 through 2026, and the changes do not all apply to every claim.

The End of the Housley Presumption

The 2025 tort reform package eliminated the Housley v. Cerise presumption. Under the old rule, a plaintiff who was healthy before an accident and developed symptoms after it benefited from a presumption that the accident caused the symptoms. The defense had to overcome that presumption. Under La. Code Evid. art. 306.1 (effective May 28, 2025), that presumption is gone for causes of action arising on or after that date. You must prove causation affirmatively. This shifts the burden and makes thorough medical documentation and expert testimony more important, not less.

Medical Bills Paid by Insurance

In lawsuits filed on or after January 1, 2026, past medical bills paid by health insurance or Medicare are limited to what was actually paid, plus your deductibles and co-pays, not the billed amount (La. R.S. 9:2800.27). TBI medical bills are often substantial. This change requires careful analysis of what was billed versus what was paid when calculating economic damages.

Comparative Fault and the 51% Bar

Comparative fault under La. C.C. Art. 2323 applies the 51% bar to causes of action arising on or after January 1, 2026. Comparative fault means that if you were partly to blame for the accident, the money you can get is cut by your share of the blame. Insurance defense strategies routinely include efforts to push fault attribution to or past 51%. In TBI cases where the accident mechanism is disputed, comparative fault analysis requires accident reconstruction evidence.

The Two-Year Filing Deadline

The prescriptive period for personal injury in Louisiana is two years from the date of injury under La. C.C. Art. 3493.1. This is Louisiana’s name for the statute of limitations, the legal deadline to file a lawsuit. If you miss it, you lose your claim for good. A later TBI diagnosis delays the start only in narrow circumstances, so count from the date of the accident.

Evidence in a TBI case has a natural decay rate. Some of it can be gone within days of the accident. Building a complete evidence record is time-sensitive.

First Responder and EMS Records

First responder and EMS records document the GCS score at the scene, the initial neurological assessment, and transport decisions. These are often among the most important documents in the case because they establish baseline neurological status at the moment closest to the injury. Emergency department records, CT and MRI imaging, and radiology reports document the initial clinical picture.

Surveillance Footage and the Preservation Letter

Surveillance footage from traffic cameras, commercial properties, and dashcams is often recorded over on a short cycle. Employment records establish pre-injury work capacity and salary history. These form the baseline for the earning capacity calculation.

Once the facts give an honest basis for one, a preservation letter tells the at-fault party and its insurer to keep the vehicle data, surveillance footage, and communications records. It is a formal legal demand to hold on to all evidence tied to the accident, and it puts them on notice that a lawsuit may be coming. If they destroy evidence after they get the letter, they can be held responsible for that.

Reconstruction and the Later Neuropsychological Evaluation

Accident reconstruction reports become important in cases where the crash mechanics are disputed. The forces involved in the collision directly relate to the biomechanical plausibility of the claimed injury. This is especially relevant in mild TBI cases where the defense argues the collision was too minor to cause brain injury.

Neuropsychological evaluations completed after sufficient time post-injury, typically at three to six months, document the stabilized cognitive picture. Employment and academic records from before the injury establish the pre-injury baseline for comparison.

Why Early Involvement Matters

The practical implication is that the attorney needs to be involved early. The window for preserving time-sensitive evidence closes quickly.

Trey Morris Injury Lawyers has handled catastrophic injury cases across Louisiana for over 20 years. Our attorneys hold AV Preeminent ratings from Martindale-Hubbell and have been recognized by Super Lawyers. We work with board-certified neuropsychologists, neuroradiologists who read advanced imaging studies, and life care planners with Louisiana-specific cost data. We have taken cases to verdict.

Trey Morris Injury Lawyers operates on a contingency fee basis. You pay no attorney fees unless there is a recovery.