Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Trial

High-tech proof in brain injury cases: new developments in biomechanical animation and brain imaging can help jurors 'see' the damage caused by head trauma.

Article Excerpt
People see only what they are prepared to see. These words, attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1) bear a message for trial lawyers faced with proving mild to moderate brain injuries. Such injuries result from trauma to the brain, but the damage is microscopic, often failing to appear on standard brain scans. Further, people who have been injured often do not exhibit external symptoms of their injuries.

Take John Olsen, whose life was changed after a 500-pound steel beam fell down an elevator shaft at a construction site and knocked him unconscious. Jurors may see John walk, with full use of his legs and arms, to the witness stand. He may seem to speak and think the same way others do. But his testimony--that he experiences ongoing, severe pain; is moody and depressed; cannot relate to his family in the way that he did before the accident; and cannot perform tasks that he easily accomplished before his injury--will be unconvincing unless his attorney is able to show his invisible injuries.

Making invisible injuries visible helps jurors and judges understand their severity and see the plaintiff as permanently injured even before the defense calls its first witness or plays the inevitable surveillance videotape in an attempt to present the plaintiff as perfectly healthy. (2)

This is a challenging task, but advances in technology are providing plaintiffs with the tools they need to win tough cases. Biomechanical assessment animations, the technical term for computer graphics that illustrate forces and counterforces, can help the jury virtually witness the incident that caused the injury.

Also, advances in functional neuro-imaging give lawyers access to pictures of microscopic mild traumatic brain injury that were unheard of just a few years ago. Electronic brain scans can provide evidence of injuries to brain tissue that might otherwise remain unseen.

Biomechanical animation

A negligently constructed luggage bin on a commercial airliner pops open in flight, dumping a 40-pound suitcase on a passenger's head. A woman bumps her head on the dashboard when the car she is riding in is rear-ended.

These do not sound like life-altering events, and there probably are no photos or videos to document them. However, what happens inside the skulls of accident victims such as these is often dramatic and severe and can cause brain injuries that are life-altering. Jurors must be made to somehow "see" the precipitating events to help them understand why.

The science of biomechanics can be viewed as the link between an event and its outcome. For example, if your body is poked with a finger, it has the mass to withstand the jab without much adverse effect. But if a truck strikes it instead, the story is quite different.

Biomechanical animation illustrates this commonsense notion. It enables jurors to envision how violently the brain moves inside the skull when the head suddenly accelerates and then abruptly stops when it hits an object like a car's dashboard.

Most people do not realize that the brain moves inside the skull and that even "minor" accidents can result in severe tearing, twisting, and bruising as the brain literally bangs up against...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!