Oregon Brain Injury Lawyer
Aaron DeShaw is a nationally recognized Oregon brain injury lawyer. Approximately 95% of our firm’s clients have sustained a traumatic brain injury. We have become known by doctors, other lawyers, and the Brain Injury Alliance of Oregon for handling traumatic brain injury cases.
We are experienced and well versed in representing brain injury survivors and their families in legal cases. Leading Oregon brain injury attorney Dr. Aaron DeShaw has handled hundreds of traumatic brain injury cases including insurance company settlements, mediation, arbitration and jury trials on behalf of people who have sustained a traumatic brain injury. These cases involve everything from mild traumatic brain injuries to severe traumatic brain injuries to wrongful death from a traumatic brain injury. We also handle cases involving seizures and neurodegerative conditions after a traumatic brain injury.
If you or a loved one has suffered a brain injury or is the survivor of a brain injury accident, then please contact us for a free consultation.
Oregon Brain Injury Lawyer
Brain injury cases are special to our firm. Dr. DeShaw donates his time to helping advise people with traumatic brain injury cases and their lawyers nationally. DeShaw is a former board member at the Brain Injury Alliance of Oregon, a support network of health care providers and brain injury survivors. He consults for free on many cases per year with injured people and their families where he is not involved as the lawyer. But, where he really shines is in understanding our client’s injuries, and helping them to move forward in the best way possible to improve their quality of life after a traumatic brain injury.
DeShaw is one of few lawyers in the country to practice in the field of traumatic brain injuries nearly full time. For over a decade he was a member of the Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. He is presently the chairman of the Trial Guides Brain Injury Litigation Group, and closely follows medical research in this field as well as litigation trends in the United States involving traumatic brain injury litigation.
Our staff is educated and experienced in helping brain injury survivors, recognizing the challenges that people with traumatic brain injuries experience. Even our office is designed with brain injured people in mind, avoiding certain types of lighting and patterns that can impact those with vision changes or photophobia (sensitivity to light) after a brain injury.
We only accept legal cases that require our expertise in serious injuries, so that we can focus our attention on the people who need us most. This allows us to have a quiet and calm atmosphere for brain injured clients who are sensitive to noise or who become overwhelmed easily.
We take an exceptional amount of time with our clients at the first meeting. Usually, this involves between an hour and five hours face to face with your lawyer, not a staff member. This helps us to understand the type of symptoms you are having and how we can best help you.
While our staff will help you with day to day issues on your case, our lawyer is very involved in advising you throughout the time we handle a brain injury case, often does research on unique issues in your cases, handles the settlement letter to the insurer, as well as all aspects of deposition, trial preparation and trial if the client is not made a reasonable settlement offer by the insurance company.
A Law Firm That Understands Traumatic Brain Injury Cases
Our firm handles a small number of traumatic brain injury cases every year to a successful conclusion. We understand the problems associated with these injuries, and advise clients and their families through the serious changes that take place after a traumatic brain injury.
We also work on large brain injury cases nationally. In addition to handling hundreds of traumatic brain injury cases as a lawyer, Aaron DeShaw has an additional doctorate degree that required over 4,000 hours of classroom instruction, including over 700 hours of classroom instruction on issues pertaining to traumatic brain injuries including gross anatomy, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and neurological diagnosis.
Dr. DeShaw has continued to build on this education in the field of brain and neurological injuries by reading new articles nearly every day on traumatic brain injuries, neuropsychology, advanced brain imaging, neurology, cognition, memory, and on legal issues pertaining to brain injury cases. Our database of medical research articles just on the topic of traumatic brain injury exceeds 500 articles in nearly 100 different categories, and contains research on issues including; Addiction after brain injury, Alzeheimers after brain injury, Amnesia after brain injury, brain injury assessment forms, autoimmune conditions after brain injury, Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction after brain injury (including dysautonomias such as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), Behavioral changes after traumatic brain injury, Increased suicide risk after TBI, the biochemical cascade after traumatic brain injury, biomarkers of TBI, Biomechanics of traumatic brain injury, traumatic brain injury resulting from blast injuries and natural gas explosions, blood brain barrier disruption after concussion, child and pediatric brain damage, cognitive effects of traumatic brain injury, Coma resulting from TBI, Concussions in sports, Traumatic Brain Injury medical society consensus statements, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE following both subconcussive head strike and traumatic brain injuries, delay in symptoms of concussion and traumatic brain injury, Major Depressive Disorder following a traumatic brain injury, Diagostic criteria of mild, moderate and severe traumatic brain injury, Diffuse Axonal Injury, Disability after TBI, Dizziness after concussion, Dystonia after brain injury, Defense junk science including the diagnosis of malingering and somatoform disorder, the effect of age in permanent symptoms of TBI, Endocrine and hormonal changes after brain injury, Explosion and TBI, failure to diagnose brain injury in the Emergency Room, Fatigue after traumatic brain injury, Foreign Accent Syndrome after brain injury, Frontal lobe injuries in a traumatic brain injury, the role of Functional Neurology in the treatment of traumatic brain injury, future symptom risk in post-concussion syndrome, genetic testing for Alzheimers as a Prior infirm condition for traumatic brain injury, genital and sexual dysfunction after brain injury, gasterointestinal dysfunction after TBI and the neuro-enteric system, Impact on the Gut-Brain Axis caused by concussion, onset of autoimmune conditions after TBI caused by alteration of the gut flora following a traumatic brain injury, Glasgow Coma Scale, Head strike not necessary as a definition of concussion or traumatic brain injury, hearing changes and their relation to brain injury, Imaging methods for traumatic brain injury (including research on MRI, CT, DTI, Magnetoencephalography or MEG, fMRI, QEEG, SPECT, PET, and HDFT), Impairment from traumatic brain injury, urinary incontinence following brain injury, fecal incontinenece after traumatic brain injury, infertility after traumatic brain injury (including articles on both endocrine / hormonal changes and infertility caused by temporal lobe seizures), intracranial pressure and abnormal CSF flow after brain injury, lab testing for health effects of TBI, loss of consciousness after TBI (and its lack of validity in diagnosing TBI or predicting permanent symptoms of brain damage), the Malingering defense and its lack of credibility, microglia effect after traumatic brain injury, mild traumatic brain injury or mTBI, missed diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, moderate traumatic brain injury, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test, Mortality or Death following traumatic brain injury, neuroinflammation, neurological changes after traumatic brain injury or concussion, neurometabolic cascade as a secondary effect of traumatic brain injury, nutrition after a concussion, loss of sense of smell as part of post-concussion syndrome, pain and brain damage, Parkinsons' Disease after brain injury, post concussion syndrome, Practice Effects of Repeated Neuropsychological testing, Prosopagnosia, Psychological and neuropsycholgical testing after traumatic brain injury (including research articles on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or MMPI, neuropsychological testing on causation of brain injury, neuropsychological testing raw data, neuropsychological remote testing, neuropsychological testing guidelines, APA code of conduct, testing validity and the Test of Memory and Malingering, the Fake Bad Scale as junk science, Videotaping of neuropsychological testing), psychological conditions arising from traumatic brain injury and the impact on people's lives, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ("PTSD") and Traumatic Brain Injury, Second Impact Syndrome, Seizures following traumatic brain injury, Severe Traumatic Brain Injury, Permanent symptoms follwing a single concussion, skull fractures and associated traumatic brain injury, sleep disorders following TBI, the invalidity and legal inadmissibility of the diagnosis of "Somatic Symptom Disorder" from the DSM-V, speech disorders following traumatic brain injury, stroke following traumatic brain injury, Transcranial magnetic stimulation in the treatment of traumatic brain injury, Tremor following traumatic brain injury, vestibular injury as a concurrent injury with TBI, Vision Disturbances after traumatic brain injury, and white matter changes following concussion. Not only do we have extensive research on all of these issues, but we have handled traumatic brain injury cases involving nearly every one of these issues.
In his brain injury cases, Dr. DeShaw has gone head to head with several well known Oregon insurance defense neuropsychologists and psychiatrists including Laurence Binder Ph.D., Larry Friedman Ph.D., Donna Wicher, Ph.D. and many others. He is known for challenging the use of unqualified test technicians who are performing testing in litigation cases, as well as discrediting the use of the “Fake Bad Scale” which insurers and their doctors attempt to use to discredit legitimately injured people. Many lawyers who face these defense witnesses call Aaron DeShaw for advice on how to cross examine insurance defense doctors during depositions, arbitration, and trial. We maintain significant databases on defense expert witnesses who make a living claiming that injured people are not injured.
In addition to lecturing for the public, injured people and health care providers (including the VA) for free, DeShaw is known in the physician and legal communities for lecturing nationally on the topics of traumatic brain injuries, the defenses used by insurance companies and their doctors in traumatic brain injury cases, and in advanced brain imaging.
Brain Injury Cases are Different
A brain injury can have permanent personal and economic impact on the brain injury survivor. These may not be apparent at first. These can include huge future medical bills, as well as a future loss of employment even if the person remains employed directly after the crash.
Statistically it is known that even with a non-severe cognitive disability, a person’s earning capacity and quality of life will be significantly impacted. Behavioral changes after brain injury can have an even larger effect on the person’s quality of life, relationships with friends and family, as well as employability. For this reason, it is important that someone with a traumatic brain injury consult with an Portland brain injury lawyer who understands the long term consequences.
Brain Injury Information
A brain injury can have devastating effects on injured people, their family, their friends, and their workplace. The additional brain injury pages on this web site are a brief summary of our firm’s extensive experience on the topic brain injuries. In addition, check the our blog posts for updated information on brain injury topics.
This information is intended to assist members of the community, as well as those with brain injury symptoms, by providing a better understanding of the symptoms they experience after trauma. This information is not intended to serve as medical advice, and you should see a doctor immediately if you believe you have sustained a brain injury.