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bjbj Hello my name is Stuart Kightley and I am a partner in Osbornes Personal Injury
Department. I specialise in head injury claims and just want to talk for a few minutes about
maybe some key elements to head injury claims and the role that a lawyer plays to hopefully
give you some idea of the way these cases work and how we can help. So three things
really, recognition, rehabilitation and resolution. Starting with recognition, the vital thing
first of all is to find out whether or not there is a head injury claim and how serious
it is. It often is in the more serious claims where there are the cardinal signs as perhaps
a skull fracture, there is depressed consciousness even coma or perhaps there is an abnormal
brain scan. In these cases the hospital normally picks things up pretty quickly, prescribes
appropriate treatment and starts to move towards rehabilitation. It is not clear often in multiple
injury cases where the head injury might be missed so by way of an example there is a
case I settled recently where the claimant suffered multiple serious orthopaedic injuries
and facial and dental injuries as well. Now they were addressed and the claimant was transferred
from one hospital to another but it was kind of lost in the process that although he hadn't
suffered a fractured skull, he had broken bones in his face and there was depressed
consciousness initially. He was agitated in hospital, he was confused and then he was
discharged without any follow up. It only became apparent talking to him and his friends
and his family that there were issues with memory, concentration, fatigue, those sorts
of things and depression. As a result we got him assessed by private medical experts Neuro-Psychologists
and they concluded and more importantly the defendant s experts agreed that he had suffered
significant head injury and so we were able to put in place some rehabilitation and some
compensation for him for that. So with multiple injuries there is a possibility of the head
injury being missed. Other cases with often less serious but still significant head injuries
the injured person may have some or just one of those cardinal signs but no scan takes
place at the hospital and they are discharged home. In those cases it might not become apparent
by speaking to the injured person their family and friends what symptoms there have been
since the accident and whether they might be down to a head injury, there might be altered
personality, psychological psychiatric issues going on, affected memory, concentration,
and fatigue. So it is important that your lawyer picks up on those things early on even
if the hospital hasn t done so. The second issue is rehabilitation and this is where
the lawyer can really earn his spurs because it is kind of universally accepted that sooner
a rehabilitation package is put in place the better the long term outcome. So what we try
to do is get in a specialist right at the start of the case to assess the injured person
and what their needs are and usually these days we get buy in on that from the insurance
company who agree to fund it. The sorts of things we are talking about are recommendations
for a case manager to get in place who does the job of coordinating everything else. When
you have suffered a head injury it is bad enough living your day to day life, you don't
want to be having to deal with your own investigations, your own rehabilitation and those sorts of
things. The other things that will then be put in place might be domestic assistance,
support worker, and lots of therapies are often necessary such as physiotherapy, speech
and language therapy, occupational therapy and those sorts of things. If those things
are put in place fairly early on then even in the very serious cases where there is not
perhaps a great deal of improvement in the organic brain injury, the person can be rehabilitated
to hope as well as possible and to return as far as possible to the life they had before.
Finally I want to talk about resolution because ultimately it is the job of the lawyer to
get compensation for the injured person and put them back on track and compensate them
for the losses they have suffered and will suffer in the future. The lawyer has to prove
fault on the other party's part. So what we will be doing as lawyers in the background
is getting the evidence, issuing Court Proceedings if necessary to take the matter to trial if
the defendants don't back down in order to establish liability. Then once the medical
expert evidence is obtained, we can value the claim and then look to settle it. Often
these days we do that in an approach doesn't involve a Judge because that often works best
so we have settlement meetings where the case can be resolved on a full and final basis
and sorted out so that the injured person can finally move on with their lives. The
real issues for me and where a lawyer can add value in these cases is in terms of maximum
rehabilitation and maximum compensation. If I can help with any further questions you
might have, please feel free to ring me personally, to email me or anybody else in the team on
the telephone number or email on our website. PAGE h%-3 h7V7 h7V7 gdug gdug h7V7 h%-3 h%-3
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- ,t - ,t - ,t - ,t Sarah Davies DocSingle Chris Aubeeluck Microsoft Office Word Hewlett-Packard
Company Title DraftNumber DraftNumberDate FileNameKey DocumentType 1.8.2012 Legal options
available if your child has been taken abroad by the other parent without your consent Microsoft
Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDoc Word.Document.8