Most traumatic brain injuries do not show up as bleeding on an emergency room CT. They show up months later, in a job someone can no longer hold and a personality their family no longer recognizes. Insurers price those claims off the imaging. We build them off the evidence.
Updated September 2026
This page is attorney advertising. It offers general information about Missouri law and is not legal or medical advice for your situation. Reading this page or contacting the firm does not create an attorney-client relationship, which is formed only by a written agreement signed by both you and the firm. Any case results described are specific to the facts of those cases; past results do not guarantee, warrant, or predict a similar outcome in any other matter. Finney Injury Law is licensed to practice law in the State of Missouri. The full disclaimer appears at the bottom of this page.
A traumatic brain injury is the injury most often undervalued, because it is the one hardest to photograph. There is no X-ray that shows a lost ability to concentrate, no scan that displays the loss of the person someone used to be.
That evidentiary gap is where insurance companies live. Our job is to close it, with neuropsychological testing, treating-provider testimony, vocational and life care analysis, and the observations of the people who knew our client before the crash.
The county's interstates produce the high-energy collisions most likely to cause a closed head injury: rear-end impacts at speed, rollovers, and crashes involving commercial vehicles on the I-70 freight corridor.
Head-on and intersection crashes on routes like Highway 94, Highway 79, and Route Z happen at combined speeds that generate severe acceleration and deceleration forces, the mechanism behind diffuse axonal injury.
A fall from height, or a fall onto a hard surface from a hazard a property owner failed to guard, is a leading cause of serious brain injury. The county's construction and retail growth makes these cases common here.
A skull fracture or brain bleed in a young child is often the result of an unsupervised fall or an activity that should never have been permitted. Those cases turn on staffing records and on how quickly help was called.
A professional musician was crossing the street when he was struck by an SUV. He suffered a traumatic brain injury. His livelihood depended on faculties the crash took from him, and the insurance company opened its valuation of that loss at $350,000.
The gap between that offer and the outcome was closed with evidence: what the injury actually was, what it had cost him already, and what it would cost him for the rest of his working life. The case settled for $3.5 million — ten times the opening number.
Past results do not guarantee a future outcome, and every case depends on its own facts. These are public-record results that show what trial-prepared representation can produce.
A professional musician suffered a traumatic brain injury after being struck while crossing the street. The insurer opened at $350,000. Read full story →
A traumatic brain injury suffered in a motorcycle crash ended a planned career in the U.S. Navy. Read full story →
A young driver ran a red light and caused a serious head injury affecting memory, vision, and quality of life. We secured the full $250,000 policy limit. Read full story →
A normal CT scan does not rule out a brain injury. CT looks for bleeding and skull fractures; it routinely misses the diffuse axonal injury behind lasting cognitive symptoms. Ask about neuropsychological testing and follow through on the referral.
Keep a dated log of headaches, sleep, memory lapses, word-finding trouble, irritability, light and noise sensitivity. Contemporaneous notes are evidence. A recollection built two years later is testimony a defense expert will attack.
Brain injury is frequently more obvious to a spouse, parent, or supervisor than to the person living it. Those observations become some of the most persuasive testimony in the case.
Adjusters routinely price brain injury claims off the emergency room record alone. Establishing the full picture -- lost earning capacity, life care needs, the cost of supervision -- takes expert work that has to start early.
Yes, and it is common. A CT scan is designed to find bleeding, swelling, and skull fractures, the things that require emergency surgery. It is not designed to detect diffuse axonal injury, the widespread microscopic damage that causes most lasting problems with memory, attention, mood, and processing speed. A normal CT rules out an emergency, not a brain injury.
Neuropsychological testing is the core of it: a battery of standardized measures that compares cognitive performance against expected baselines and includes validity measures to detect exaggeration. Depending on the case, advanced imaging, vestibular and vision testing, and vocational assessment add to the picture.
Sometimes immediately, but frequently not. Headaches, sleep disruption, irritability, light and noise sensitivity, and difficulty with memory or word-finding often emerge or worsen over the following days and weeks, particularly once someone tries to return to work or school and encounters demands that rest at home did not impose.
Because the injury is invisible on the documents an adjuster reviews first. A claim valued off an emergency room record showing a normal CT and a discharge the same day looks minor on paper. Establishing what the injury actually costs over a lifetime requires expert work that the insurer is betting no one will pay for.
Generally in the Circuit Court of St. Charles County, the 11th Judicial Circuit. Finney Injury Law has tried a case to verdict in that courthouse, obtaining $20,025,000 in a wrongful death trucking case after the defense offered nothing.
Yes. A properly built claim accounts for lost earning capacity, future medical and rehabilitative care, the cost of any supervision or accommodation required, and the non-economic loss of the abilities and relationships the injury took. Documenting those future components is what a life care plan and vocational analysis are for.
Claims on behalf of an injured child follow a different timeline and require court involvement in how any recovery is structured and preserved. Because a young brain is still developing, the full consequences may not be apparent for years, which makes careful documentation and appropriate expert involvement especially important.
No cost, no obligation, and nothing is shared outside our firm. We read every message and respond quickly.
The decisions you make in the days after an injury affect your ability to recover fair compensation. Free case review. An attorney personally reviews every case. English- and Spanish-speaking staff available.