Virginia traumatic brain injury lawyer
Your head CT came back clean, and the hospital discharged you that evening. A CT is designed to find bleeding that requires emergency surgery, not damage that appears months later when you cannot work a full shift, tolerate a screen or follow a conversation. A Virginia traumatic brain injury lawyer starts with that contradiction.
Recognized. Reviewed. Trusted.
A normal scan doesn’t mean nothing happened. The CDC says you may still have a mild TBI or concussion even when the injury does not appear on these tests. That is why these claims depend on early evidence from people and records, not just a scan. Request a consultation to discuss what your records already show.
How a brain injury is graded, and why “mild” is misleading
Severity grading describes how a person presented in the hours after the injury. It is not a forecast. The Defense Department’s own definition says injury severity “is determined at the time of the injury, but this severity level, while having some prognostic value, does not necessarily reflect the patient’s ultimate level of functioning” (2015).
| What clinicians record | Mild · moderate · severe |
|---|---|
| Glasgow Coma Scale. Best available score in the first 24 hours. EMS records one in the field and the hospital records another on arrival, and a claim pulls both. | 13 to 15 · 9 to 12 · below 9 |
| Loss of consciousness. How long the person was out, if at all. | 0 to 30 minutes · more than 30 minutes and under 24 hours · more than 24 hours |
| Post-traumatic amnesia. How long the person could not form continuous memory afterward. | 0 to 1 day · more than 1 and under 7 days · more than 7 days |
Two things the table doesn’t say. Where a person meets criteria in more than one row, the higher severity level is assigned, and the bands do not apply to penetrating injury at all.
Most TBIs that occur each year are mild TBIs or concussions, and the VA and Defense Department guideline expects most people to recover fully within weeks to months. It also records that cognitive problems in attention, thinking speed, memory and executive function persist for months or years in some people.
Neither figure predicts which group a particular person is in. What that looks like in practice is someone who passes every test in a quiet exam room and still cannot manage an open-plan office, a school pickup schedule and a phone that will not stop.
What the scans show, and what they do not
Imaging finds structural damage. Much of what disables a person after a brain injury is not damage a standard scan resolves.
The head CT in the emergency department
It exists to answer one question fast: is there bleeding, a skull fracture or swelling that a neurosurgeon needs to see tonight. CDC’s guidance is that a brain scan isn’t needed to spot a mild TBI or concussion. A normal CT after a mild injury is ordinary, not exonerating.
MRI
More sensitive than CT to more subtle brain changes that a CT scan may miss, and the modality the American College of Radiology treats as usually appropriate for subacute or chronic head trauma with unexplained cognitive or neurologic deficits. The practical claim point: a long gap between injury and first MRI hands the defense an argument.
DTI and advanced imaging
Diffusion tensor imaging estimates the direction and degree of restriction of water diffusion in tissue, which researchers read as an indirect signal of damage to nerve fibers. Whether it comes into a courtroom is a different question, covered below.
Neuropsychological testing
A battery measures memory, attention, processing speed and executive function, and it produces measurable output where imaging produces none. A competent battery also includes validity measures, which matters when the defense argues exaggeration. Timing is deliberate: the VA and Defense Department guideline suggests against a full neuropsychological workup in the first 30 days after a mild injury.
On DTI specifically, the honest answer is narrower than most are aware of. The American College of Radiology’s own review concluded there is “insufficient evidence at the time of writing this article that DTI can be used for routine clinical diagnosis and/or prognostication at the individual patient level” (2015).
Courts across the country have taken different approaches to these techniques, and no published Virginia appeals court decision appears to address DTI specifically. Virginia also doesn’t use the federal Daubert standard. Instead, under Spencer v. Commonwealth, a judge must first decide whether the scientific method is reliable enough to be used in court.
Proving an injury that does not appear on a scan
A brain injury that doesn’t show up on a scan is proved with people, records and testing gathered before the defense builds its alternative story. Six sources do most of the work.
Before-and-after witnesses
A supervisor who watched the work slip. A teacher. A friend from the same shift. Their value is describing change over time, not diagnosing anything, and the ones who matter most are usually the people with no stake in the case.
Employment and academic records
Performance reviews, attendance, production numbers, transcripts. These turn “he is not himself” into a document with dates on it, which is what a jury can hold.
The treating clinicians
A treating physician or neuropsychologist who followed the person over months is often more persuasive than a retained expert who saw them once. They were there before anyone was thinking about a lawsuit.
The medical record chain
The EMS run report and its field score, the emergency department note, imaging reports and the images themselves on disc, discharge instructions, primary care follow-up, therapy notes. Gaps in this chain are where cases weaken.
The person's own record
A symptom log kept from early on, and the ordinary digital residue of that period: text messages, calendar entries, the reminders someone started needing who never needed them before.
Causation, answered twice
Legal causation and medical causation are different questions. A claim needs both answered, and evidence that satisfies a physician does not automatically satisfy the standard a Virginia court applies.
How the defense may attack the claim
In a brain injury case, the defense often accepts that the crash happened and challenges the injury instead. Three arguments usually follow.
01
It was already there
Prior concussions, migraines, ADHD, depression, sleep apnea or substance use may come up. The answer is the person’s baseline: what could they actually do before the injury? A medical history does not mean a new injury did not occur.
02
Symptom exaggeration
Validity testing works both ways. A neuropsychological exam that includes performance and symptom validity testing provides stronger evidence than one without it. A properly conducted exam can strengthen the claim rather than hurt it.
03
Treatment gaps
A brain injury itself can make it difficult to schedule and attend follow-up care. That can explain gaps in treatment, but the reason should be documented when it happens, not reconstructed a year later.
One more issue matters in Virginia. Contributory negligence can bar recovery entirely, while a person with a brain injury may struggle to explain what happened. That makes physical evidence and independent witnesses especially important.
Where brain injuries are treated in Virginia
Virginia has six Level I trauma centers as of March 2026: VCU Health and Chippenham Hospital in Richmond, Sentara Norfolk General, Inova Fairfax, UVA Health and Carilion Roanoke Memorial. A serious head injury on Virginia highways may be treated at one of them.
Richmond is the only Virginia metro area with two adult Level I trauma centers.
VCU also hosts one of 16 federally funded TBI Model System centers, with its current funding cycle running through Aug. 31, 2027. That describes the hospital’s participation in a federal research program, not any connection to this firm.
After a trauma admission, the key records include the admission file, copies of the actual imaging rather than just the radiologist’s report, therapy notes and rehabilitation records after discharge.
What a Virginia brain injury claim can recover
Virginia jury instructions list the losses a jury may consider in a personal injury case. They are model instructions, not binding law, but clearly lay out the main categories:
- Physical injuries and how long they are expected to last
- Physical pain and emotional suffering, past and future
- Scarring or disfigurement and related embarrassment
- Inconvenience, past and future
- Medical expenses, past and future
- Lost income from time away from work
- Future lost income and reduced ability to earn
Calculating future care costs and lost earning ability may require a life care planner and economist. One practical example is a spouse who leaves a job to manage the injured person’s appointments and medications. That loss can become part of the claim.
Deadlines, and what happens when the injured person cannot decide
Virginia generally gives an injured adult two years to file a personal injury lawsuit, although exceptions apply.
One important exception involves incapacity. Virginia generally pauses the deadline while an injured person is incapacitated. But if a guardian is appointed, different timing rules apply. Families sometimes assume a guardianship automatically gives them more time. Depending on when the appointment occurs, it can actually shorten the remaining window.
For an injured child, time during childhood generally does not count toward the deadline. If the person dies from the injury, the case becomes a wrongful death claim, brought by the personal representative generally within two years after the death. Do not calculate your own filing deadline from a website.
Contact a Virginia Traumatic Brain Injury Attorney Today
Gray Broughton was not practicing personal injury law when he signed his first personal injury case. A close friend he had served with in Iraq and Germany suffered a brain injury in a crash and could not practice law for a year. That is the concrete version of this page’s argument: a brain injury shows up in cognitive work before it shows up anywhere else.
The friend’s wife called the day after the crash. Not because he was a personal injury lawyer, but because she trusted him. He brought in an experienced injury lawyer and learned the work from the inside.
The firm has handled brain injury cases since that day. Gray Broughton Injury Law is veteran owned and veteran led, and it takes cases to trial.
Recent Case Results
The results below include brain injury cases. Every case turns on its own facts, and no result here predicts what another claim is worth.
$10,000,000
Gray Broughton represented a seven-year-old boy who suffered a traumatic brain injury and lost his right leg above the knee after his family’s car was rear-ended by a pick-up truck hauling a utility trailer. Gray Broughton was able to settle his case for $10,000,000 shortly after filing suit. The client’s net proceeds were structured to ensure that he can be compensated for life. He is a tremendous young man who has overcome daunting odds. We wish him all the best for his future.
$1,250,000
Gray Broughton represented an attorney who suffered a traumatic brain injury after his car was struck by a commercial vehicle. After missing a year of work and undergoing intensive therapy, he was able to make a full recovery and return to work. Gray Broughton was able to settle his case for $1,250,000 shortly before depositions.
$750,000.
Gray Broughton represented an 83-year-old woman who slipped and fell on a restaurant floor. The fall broke her right shoulder in three places; it also broke her right hip. Through his investigation, Gray Broughton was able to prove that the restaurant had not been mopping its floors properly and knew that its floors were abnormally slick. Gray Broughton settled her case two months before trial for $750,000.
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Important: This page provides general information only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading this content does not create an attorney-client relationship. Outcomes vary based on the specific facts of each case.
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Frequently asked questions
A normal CT does not rule out a traumatic brain injury. CDC’s guidance is that even if an injury doesn’t show up on these tests, you may still have a mild TBI or concussion. What fills the gap is the record: treating clinicians, before-and-after witnesses, employment records and neuropsychological testing.
The labels describe how someone presented in the first hours: the Glasgow Coma Scale, how long consciousness was lost and how long post-traumatic amnesia lasted. The Defense Department’s definition notes that severity is set at the time of injury and does not necessarily reflect a person’s ultimate level of functioning.
Usually, and it generally helps rather than hurts. A neuropsychological battery produces measurable results where imaging produces none. It also includes validity measures that cut both ways, which is why a well-run examination answers the exaggeration argument instead of feeding it.
Two years from accrual is the general rule for an injured adult (Va. Code § 8.01-243(A)). The exceptions matter here: the minority period generally is not counted for a child, a conservator or guardian appointment carries a carve-out that can shorten the window, and a fatal injury runs on the wrongful death deadline instead.
A guardian or conservator is appointed through a court process. What families do not expect is that the appointment can shorten the filing window rather than extend it, because the claim must then be brought within the ordinary period or one year after qualification, whichever is later. Talk to a lawyer before the appointment, not after.
Nothing for the first conversation. The firm works on contingency and is paid only out of money it recovers. No percentage appears here because a brain injury claim can arise from a car crash or a premises case, and those are not charged at the same rate.
Longer than an ordinary injury case, because it cannot be valued reliably until the picture is stable enough to know what recovery looks like, and the labels assigned in the first hours do not settle that. Records, testing and expert work continue during that period rather than waiting for it to end.
Possibly, but Virginia’s rule is narrow. If you signed the release within 30 days of the injury and did not have a lawyer, you generally have until midnight of the third business day after signing to cancel it. The cancellation must be in writing, and any settlement money or check received must be returned. Discovering brain injury symptoms later does not by itself reopen that three-day window.
Not automatically. A Virginia circuit court can review and approve a settlement for someone under a legal disability and decide whether it protects that person’s interests. The court can also control where the settlement money goes, including payment to a guardian or conservator. Once approved, the settlement generally becomes binding.
For policies effective since Jan. 1, 2025, Virginia’s minimum bodily injury coverage is $50,000 per person and $100,000 per accident. A serious brain injury can exceed that quickly. Your own underinsured coverage may provide more, depending on how the policy was written. That can make a major difference in a serious injury case.