Pascagoula Brain Injury Workers Comp Lawyer: Who Else Wants To Know If A Normal CT Scan Really Means Your Head Injury Is Fine

Discover the trick a Pascagoula brain injury lawyer sees played on injured workers over and over. A Pascagoula brain injury workers comp lawyer has seen the same trick play out enough times to know it by heart. The CT scan comes back clean, the emergency room releases the worker the same afternoon, and the insurance company treats “normal scan” as the end of the conversation. It is not the end. It is usually where the real fight starts.

Here is what the adjuster is counting on you not knowing. A concussion, a mild traumatic brain injury, routinely produces a completely normal CT scan even when the worker’s memory, concentration, and mood have genuinely changed. CT technology is built to catch bleeding and fractures, not the microscopic shearing injury that causes real, lasting cognitive symptoms. A carrier that leans on “the scan was clean” is either misinformed or hoping you are.

The Law Behind A Brain Injury Claim

Miss. Code Ann. Section 71-3-7(1) requires only that the injury arose out of and in the course of employment. A genuine traumatic brain injury with lasting cognitive or functional impact falls under Section 71-3-17(a), permanent total disability, paying up to 450 weeks, or the equivalent multiple of 66-2/3% of the state average weekly wage. The statute does not require visible damage on a scan. It requires an actual, medically documented inability to return to meaningful work.

The Specific Second A Steel Plate Changed Everything At Bollinger

He’s walking beneath a suspended steel plate section on the new-construction floor at Bollinger, headed to the next weld station, hard hat on, eyes on his footing. A rigging strap slips, just slightly, just enough for the plate’s corner to swing and clip the side of his hard hat, snapping his head sideways into a stanchion before he even registers what happened. He gets up, finishes his shift, and only starts noticing the headaches and the trouble concentrating two days later. Under Section 71-3-17(a), that delayed presentation does not disqualify the claim. It is exactly how a real concussion often behaves.

Why A Normal CT Scan Does Not End The Analysis

Here is the fact the carrier hopes never gets explained to you clearly. A CT scan is built to detect skull fractures and active bleeding, both genuine emergencies, and it is very good at that specific job. It is not built to detect the diffuse axonal injury that causes concussion symptoms, which shows up, if at all, on more sensitive testing like a neuropsychological evaluation, not a plain scan read in an emergency room in twenty minutes. A worker sent home with “normal CT, cleared to return to work” has not been cleared of a brain injury at all. He has been cleared of a bleed. Those are two very different medical findings, and the insurance company knows the difference even when the discharge paperwork does not spell it out.

Apportionment On A Brain That Has A History

Under Section 71-3-7(2), a prior concussion or neurological condition can reduce a benefit by the proportion it materially contributed, but that reduction requires actual medical findings, not an assumption. Under Section 71-3-7(3)(a), it cannot even be calculated until maximum medical recovery, and under Section 71-3-7(3)(b), only an administrative judge decides the final percentage, never the insurance company on its own. A worker who played football decades earlier does not automatically forfeit a workplace brain injury claim to that history. He forfeits only what an actual judge finds it contributed.

The Two Deadlines That End A Brain Injury Claim Early

Miss. Code Ann. Section 71-3-35 sets both deadlines together. Notice to the employer is due within 30 days. Regardless of notice, if no compensation is paid and no application is filed with the Commission within 2 years of the injury date, the claim is permanently barred. A worker whose symptoms build slowly over weeks, headaches first, then concentration problems, then irritability nobody connects to the workplace incident until much later, can burn a real portion of that clock before ever realizing a claim exists at all.

The Carrier’s Doctor Versus A Real Neuropsychological Evaluation

The carrier’s Independent Medical Examiner sees the worker once, often reviewing only the emergency room chart showing the clean CT scan, and produces a report calling the injury resolved. A full neuropsychological battery, ordered by a treating physician who actually specializes in brain injury, tests memory, processing speed, attention, and executive function in ways a single office visit never can. Mississippi law allows a carrier’s IME finding to be challenged in front of the Commission using exactly that kind of documented, specialist evaluation.

What Your TV Lawyer Has Never Argued In The Jackson County Courthouse

When a Pascagoula claim goes to hearing, it happens at one place, the Jackson County Circuit Court, 3104 Magnolia Street, in front of an actual administrative judge. Has the billboard lawyer ever presented neuropsychological testing results to that judge, explained why a normal CT does not rule out a real brain injury, or challenged a carrier’s IME doctor on exactly that point? I have never seen his name on a hearing docket in that building arguing anything, let alone a brain injury claim this technical.

Every workers’ compensation attorney in Mississippi takes cases on contingency, no fee unless you recover. Under the Foster Fair Fee Guarantee, you will always net more money than I take in fees, in writing, before we start. On a brain injury claim, here is the fact that should matter most to you. I take $0.00 out of your TTD check. Not a percentage, not a disguised administrative fee. That check is what covers your family’s bills while your head heals, if it heals, and I have never once taken a cut of it.

For the full statutory language governing permanent total disability, see Miss. Code Ann. Section 71-3-17 on Justia. For related reading, see the Pascagoula Workers’ Compensation Lawyer hub and the Pascagoula Legal Services page.

Who Else Wants To Know What “Cleared By CT” Actually Means

Who else wants to know why the emergency room discharge paperwork never once used the phrase “no evidence of concussion”? Because it can’t, honestly, from a CT scan alone, and a careful reader would notice that gap immediately. Ask yourself if it would matter whether your neurologist actually understood the difference between a structural bleed and a diffuse axonal injury before treating you. Ask yourself if it would matter whether your lawyer understood that same difference before telling you your case was weak because “the scan was clean.”

He has never ordered a neuropsychological evaluation for a client. He has never argued the distinction between a structural finding and a functional cognitive injury in front of a judge. He has never cross-examined a carrier’s IME doctor on why “normal CT” does not mean “no brain injury.” This is not a small gap in his experience. It is the entire fight on this exact type of claim, and a lawyer who does not know it exists will settle a real, permanent cognitive injury for the price of a headache that resolved in a week. The insurance company knows which lawyers understand this distinction and which ones do not, and it prices its offers accordingly, before you ever see a number.

Pascagoula Brain Injury: Questions Answered Straight

P.S. The insurance company already knows a clean CT scan does not mean a clean brain. You are not supposed to know it too. Get my free book before you accept “the scan was normal” as the final word on your claim, and find out what test actually measures what a CT scan cannot see.