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24 April 2015 / Warren Collins
Issue: 7649 / Categories: Features , Personal injury
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Pushing boundaries?

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Warren Collins explores the legal implications of medical deterioration in brain injury cases

Clinicians working in the field of brain injuries as well as the self-styled “neuro lawyers” have traditionally pigeon-holed brain injuries into a range from minor to very severe. This categorisation can in itself lead to difficulties in that these injuries do not always follow the predicted path. By their very nature, brain injuries throw up some interesting outcomes: some patients achieve far more than expected and others do disappointingly worse. The added complication is that neither improvement nor deterioration tracks a straight line path. I have often found myself advising clients and reminding opponents and the court that the only consistency in brain injury is inconsistency. This can all be rather inconvenient to the experts, lawyers and judges involved in brain injury claims where the parties must do their best to predict the medical future for the brain injured accident victim.

This problem has been ameliorated to some extent by the introduction of periodical payments (which the court has the power to vary

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