$8M Settlement: Motorcyclist Suffers Severe Facial Injuries and Brain Trauma

The plaintiff initially required multiple facial surgeries to reduce and fixate the numerous fractures and to close multiple facial lacerations. Six months following the collision, the plaintiff underwent numerous additional surgical procedures to further correct the facial boney injuries and facial scarring.

For more than a year, the defense minimized the severity of the plaintiff’s injuries by leaning heavily on the argument that, although the injuries were initially severe, the residual, long term suffering was not. They suggested that broken bones in the face did not mean brain damage and that the plaintiff was not being truthful in describing his cognitive and neuro-psychological challenges since the incident. For someone who hadn’t known the plaintiff before the incident, nothing about a normal, one-on-one interaction with the plaintiff would tip the person off to the fact that the plaintiff had been in a serious accident – or that he was suffering from the worsening effects of a traumatic brain injury.

MediVisuals + High Impact's illustrations helped make the defense’s argument seem more ridiculous as time went on. As you can imagine, it became increasingly difficult to say with a straight face that the fragile brain tissue was spared after seeing the extent of the fractures all over the plaintiff’s face in the graphics. The legal exhibits were attached to each defense doctor’s deposition, one deposition after the next. Their argument was ultimately blown up for good when the attorneys pressed the defense neuroradiologist in his deposition to show evidence of a traumatic brain injury on recent CT scans. He had to point out atrophy in the frontal lobe in the dark area in the front of the plaintiff’s skull, visible on a CT scan. The defense expert admitted that it was the result of a traumatic event and that the atrophy was getting worse over time. Thereafter it was essentially impossible for any defense expert to claim that the plaintiff’s life was not going to be forever seriously impacted by his traumatic brain injury.

An initial mediation resulted in failure. After dozens of expert depositions, another mediation was scheduled. During the second mediation, the Dordick team used MediVisuals + High Impact’ illustrations.

As a result of the second mediation, a settlement of $8,000,000 was obtained for the plaintiff. Special damages, economic losses, and past medical bills were relatively minor, or even a non-issue, in the grand scheme of what the Dordick team believed to be the extent of their client’s suffering from largely invisible, but very real, brain damage.