050 TBIs & Head Injuries

VERONICA: Hello, hello, hello. And welcome to lawyers in-house with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters, happy to have you back in the house with us for another special episode.

MICHAEL: Thank you.

VERONICA: Who has been practicing law for how many decades now?

MICHAEL: Well, over two.

VERONICA: More than 20 years.

MICHAEL: Oh yeah.

VERONICA: And you’ve been with Montlick, how long, Michael?

VERONICA: So, the whole time, pretty much.

MICHAEL: Yeah, essentially, except for 6 months between law school and finding the best place to work I could imagine.

VERONICA: Yeah, so Michael’s reputation for caring for his clients and caring most about their well-being and checking on them and seeing how they’re doing is pretty much unparalleled at the firm. He really likes to fight for justice, but he also wants to make sure that his clients are just simply feeling okay.

MICHAEL: That’s correct. Go terps.

VERONICA: And New England Law. Go terps. Okay. And once told us all, if you remember this, your passion for helping people came from your granddad.

MICHAEL: That’s exactly right.

VERONICA: Watching your granddad.

MICHAEL: That’s right. That’s right, my grandfather practiced for twice as long, more than, three times as long as I have at this point.

VERONICA: How did you know what field of law you wanted to go into, though?

MICHAEL: Not until I met Alan.

VERONICA: Really?

MICHAEL: Yeah. I mean, I really had no idea what this type of field would be like. Or… and you know 25 years ago, things were looked at a little differently in our profession in terms of billboards and certain things. Now, I mean, it’s the only way people will really understand they have a case or have the right.

VERONICA: And what a lead in to our next guest, Alan Saltzman, Alan, are you getting a little misty over there?

ALAN: I am.

VERONICA: Alan Saltzman, managing attorney at Montlick injury attorneys, what in the world goes through your mind when you hear that? I mean, you, I know, have preached for decades about the importance of ethics, the importance of integrity.

ALAN: Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that. And Michael is truly a throwback because when I came to Montlick & Associates way back in 1987, I was practicing law all over the place.

VERONICA: He’s amazing. Right. Yeah, that sounds good.

ALAN: It means that we have experience. It means that we care and that we get results.

VERONICA: Alan Saltzman and Michael Rubin, Montlick injury attorneys here with us on Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Thanks so much for being in the house, fellas. As you introduced us to it, traumatic brain injury. Something that we have seen, as I said, in real life and on the movie screen, one of my favorite movies when I was younger was Regarding Henry starring Harrison Ford.

ALAN: Right. Right. They sort of creep in over time. A client will call, and he won’t tell you that he has had injuries. His wife will call. His sister will call and say, my brother, my husband, just isn’t the same. And we tell our legal assistants to be very attuned to that.

VERONICA: Because maybe they don’t sense them themselves, right?

ALAN: Yes. And they become very abusive even to us. We’re trying to help them, and they become abusive to us.

VERONICA: For not getting the schedule right.

ALAN: Right.

VERONICA: And they just don’t know. They just don’t know what they’re experiencing.

ALAN: And doctors don’t see these things sometimes.

VERONICA: How… is that how you would define a traumatic brain injury? Are we leaping ahead? How do you define it? What’s a TBI?

MICHAEL: Really… I mean, the way I look at it is any time you hit your head. I don’t care what it is.

VERONICA: But even a concussion is a TBI.

MICHAEL: Yes. That’s where I think people… the confusion, or the… you know, TBI sounds horrible, right? Traumatic brain injury. Concussion just sounds better. I have a concussion. But a concussion is a traumatic brain injury. And you really have to, as I’m just reiterating because it is this important, you have to have people watching you. You have to have somebody looking after you.

VERONICA: All right, let’s put a pin in that. Head, shoulders, knees and toes, talking about traumatic brain injuries and how to sniff them out. Coming up on Lawyers in the House, exactly what lawyers are going to ask about to excavate TBIs.

You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Join us 8 a.m. every Sunday if you want to listen live on 95.5 WSB.

MICHAEL: Oh, well, I think that it’s not sometimes it’s always.

VERONICA: Always about a Q&A.

MICHAEL: In the sense that you really need, if someone’s hurt, you really need to talk to them. I don’t care. I didn’t hit my head, but there was a possibility that they could have. Like, let’s say they’re airbag came out. I didn’t hit my head.

ALAN: Good point, Michael.

VERONICA: Sometimes things sometimes it’s obvious. A head injury is very obvious.

MICHAEL: Right. I think that

ALAN: if you lose consciousness, it’s obvious.

MICHAEL: Right. Right.

ALAN: If you have stitches in your head, if you have glass in your forehead, it’s obvious.

VERONICA: I’m bleeding from my head.

ALAN: Not so obvious if your neck and back are hurting and that’s your main concern.

MICHAEL: Right. And I think the body sometimes tricks us.

VERONICA: You told me that you had a case involving a little kid that stuck with you.

VERONICA: 9 times out of ten you may not know you have a traumatic brain injury. sSo how do these attorneys sniff it out? We’re talking to Alan Saltzman and Michael Rubin here on Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Investigating head injuries coming up next on Lawyers in the House.

VERONICA: Welcome back to Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters here talking about traumatic brain injuries with Montlick injury attorneys Alan Saltzman and Michael Rubin. And if you missed any of the great nuggets in the first half of the show, make sure you just check us out on your favorite podcast platform for the replay or on YouTube where you can also see our smiling faces and remember you can reach us 24/7 and send us a question if you log on to LawyersintheHouse.com and follow us on every social media platform @Montlicklaw.

ALAN: Let me give you an example, Veronica. I had a young man one time that was involved in a rear end collision on I-75. And he had a failure of his seat belt, his head hit the windshield, his forehead was bleeding, they dug glass out of his eyes. But he was mainly concerned with his neck and back injuries, which were pretty serious by themselves.

VERONICA: Talk about being able to have the lives of the people around you changed because of that. You know, because we’ve talked a lot about the mental aspects of a TBI, you know, the way that it manifests in some physical symptoms even to yourself, maybe the headaches or the dizziness, the lethargy, that kind of thing.

ALAN: Right. And you may be able to do jumping jacks and play football. You can still do things, but you’re different. A neuropsychologist can examine you. They can look at your IQ prior to the accident and they can give you tests and see how you’ve changed.

VERONICA: And don’t think that you necessarily, as you mentioned earlier, are going to see it right away. Sometimes it takes a while to manifest itself.

MICHAEL: It’s going to keep going on. But I actually… getting back to something you said, you know, these TV shows. You know, I’m sure they’re sensationalized, but in a way it’s good because it’s making people more aware of these types of injuries.

VERONICA: So, when you guys are sort of getting to the bottom of this, you’re not only talking to the person, probably most of whom you never know before you see them. So, you have to depend on what? The testimony, if you will, the experiences of their friends. Their family, their coworkers, their bosses, their military records, their school records. Like who was this person before and after?

ALAN: Did the seatbelt fail?

MICHAEL: Right. The size of the vehicle you know, a smaller car, you’re going to be closer to your, what are they – A-pillars or whatever they are? In a big Lincoln town car (I’m dating myself)…

MICHAEL: You probably hurt… What’s interesting also is a lot of people say their neck hurts, but it’s their shoulder or the opposite. My shoulder hurts, but it’s their neck.

VERONICA: That could be a brain injury, perhaps, with the nerves sending the signals to your brain that, you know, they could be damaged. One part of your… it’s telling you that something’s hurting when it’s really something else that’s injured.

MICHAEL: Well, yeah.

ALAN: We’re not doctors. We’re lawyers and we’re advocates, and we’re

VERONICA: Well, I wanted to go to med school. Just FYI.

VERONICA: Thank you, gentlemen.

ALAN: We’re in the proof business and one time I had a client who called and said he had double vision and insisted it was caused by the accident. He had other injuries from the accident as well. And we suggested that he see an ophthalmologist. The ophthalmologist looked into his eye and saw something organic. He saw a tumor that was growing. And it was…

VERONICA: It’s all about listening to your lawyer, too, isn’t it, Michael?

VERONICA: But what about the client who may have a TBI? And it’s like, well, there’s nothing wrong with me.

MICHAEL: That’s right. That, to that point, only multiplies that. So, think about how hard it is to get someone like that. And Alan makes a very good example of sometimes you end up arguing and we never want to argue with our clients. I mean, we care about them and fight for them.

VERONICA: Yeah, you never think fighting for your client is going to be fighting with your client, right?

MICHAEL: Right, but sometimes the goal, the first goal always, and I tell them… is getting you better or getting the person better. Then the next goal is, okay, let’s work on a recovery to compensate you for what you’ve gone through if it’s there. But no money helps you get better. It’s the treatment that helps you get better.

VERONICA: Tell me a case that sticks with you.

MICHAEL: Oh, well. Young lady who was pregnant and in a car, and passenger and her boyfriend, the father of the unborn child, got distracted and hit a tree. And she ended up with as severe a brain injury as you can basically get without being in a coma.

VERONICA: And as you said, it can culminate – that swelling, those symptoms, all of that stuff that you do and don’t feel. The stuff that you do feel, the stuff that you don’t know about, it could culminate in a real tragedy. Sometime after the fact of the accident. So, thank you so much for painting that picture for me, Alan Saltzman, Michael Rubin, coming up, the MCA is on the way.

You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with mount lick. If you want to listen to our radio show live, you can hear it every Sunday, 8 a.m. on 95.5 WSB.

VERONICA: And welcome back one more time to Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters here with Montlick injury attorneys Michael Rubin and Alan Saltzman. Here with what you’ve been waiting for all hour long the Montlick closing argument.

MICHAEL: Sure. So, you know I think the first thing to start out with is that if you hit your head, I don’t care what it’s on. Or someone hits you in the head. I mean, however it happens, go to a doctor. Get checked out. I mean, urgent care. It doesn’t matter. Just have somebody look at you to look for the signs, blurry vision… things right away. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re going to find it either. So, then you got to have somebody else watching you.

ALAN: It’s really important. And I think we’ve pointed out how important it is to get treatment first. We’re not doctors or lawyers. But if you do know somebody that was involved in an accident and had a potential brain injury or just bad injuries from an accident, they should call a lawyer. A lawyer who listens, a lawyer who cares, a lawyer without a call center who’s going to talk to you. You can call a very large law firm and you can call a call center and they might not ever ask you if you hit your head.

MICHAEL: Well, that gets back to the core values that I said. It really is. The whole goal is to make these people feel comfortable. They’ve probably never gone through anything like this. Especially if it’s a head injury, a severe… you want them to feel part of our family in some way.

ALAN: Michael said the other day, we don’t have egos. Right? We just want to get to the bottom of things and help people. Yeah.

MICHAEL: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of them ridiculing you because you’re… it’s that important.

VERONICA: It’s that important. Michael Rubin, Alan Saltzman, Montlick injury attorneys here with Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters. Thanks for being with us. We will see you at the House next time.