Catastrophic Injury Litigation
Catastrophic Injury Trial Lawyer
A catastrophic injury changes every day that comes after it — how you work, how you move, how your family lives. The defense will spend heavily to minimize that reality. We prepare every one of these cases for trial, because the recovery has to last as long as the injury does.
Why These Cases Are Different
The Verdict Has to Last a Lifetime
A catastrophic case is not a bigger version of an ordinary injury claim. The damages span decades, the medicine is complex, and the defense brings experts of its own to shrink every category. Preparation decides these cases.
Damages Measured in Decades
Future surgeries, attendant care, lost earning capacity, and a home rebuilt around the injury. The number has to account for every year of it — because there is no coming back for more.
These Cases Run on Experts
Neurosurgeons, physiatrists, neuropsychologists, life-care planners, economists. Building the right expert team — and preparing it for cross-examination — is the core of the case.
The Worst Injuries Can Be the Hardest to See
A brain injury with a clean CT scan. Nerve damage no X-ray shows. The defense calls these injuries invisible; our job is to make them undeniable.
One Recovery. No Do-Overs.
A settlement or verdict in a catastrophic case is final. If it is not enough, there is no second lawsuit when the money runs out. That is why every case is prepared as if a jury will decide it.
What We Prove
The Injury Is the Exhibit
Catastrophic cases are won by making invisible injuries visible. Jurors cannot see nerve pain or a sheared axon — so we build the medicine into evidence they can see. This is the anatomy of the cases we try.
01
The Brain
A traumatic brain injury does not require a fractured skull — or even a loss of consciousness — to change who a person is.
- Diffuse axonal injury that standard CT scans miss
- Neuropsychological testing that documents real cognitive deficits
- Before-and-after witnesses — family, coworkers, friends
- The defense playbook: calling it "mild" and hoping jurors agree
02
The Cervical Spine
Neck injuries from a violent crash end careers and lead to surgeries that last a lifetime — no matter what an adjuster calls them.
- Disc herniations and radiating nerve pain
- Artificial disc replacement and fusion surgery
- The "degenerative changes" defense — separating age from trauma
- Proven at trial: $3.09 million jury verdict — cervical disc replacement
03
The Lumbar Spine
The low back carries the body’s load — and after a crash, it can carry a lifetime of surgeries, injections, and lost work.
- Herniations, stenosis, and nerve-root compression
- Decompression and fusion surgery — now and in the future
- Future medical care the defense refuses to price honestly
- Proven at trial: $2.64M and $1.37M jury verdicts — decompression surgeries
04
The Spinal Cord
When the cord itself is damaged, the case becomes about a lifetime — of care, of equipment, of a home and a future rebuilt around the injury.
- Complete and incomplete paralysis — paraplegia and quadriplegia
- Life-care plans built by physicians, priced by economists
- Attendant care, home modification, and adaptive equipment
- Damages measured across decades — not medical bills to date
05
The Whole Person
Catastrophic harm is rarely confined to one diagnosis. Amputations and multi-site orthopedic trauma — femurs, shoulders, pelvis — add up to a whole person whose life has changed.
- Amputation and limb-loss cases — prosthetics replaced for life
- Fractured femurs, pelvis fractures, and shoulder injuries requiring surgical repair
- Poly-trauma: multiple injuries that compound each other
- Proven at trial: $5.47 million jury verdict — orthopedic injuries, disputed liability
Brain Injuries
Traumatic Brain Injury Cases
A traumatic brain injury is the injury the defense fights hardest — precisely because it can be invisible. Emergency-room CT scans are built to find bleeding that requires surgery, not the diffuse axonal injury a violent crash can cause. A client can be discharged with a “normal” scan and still wake up a different person: memory lapses, headaches, personality changes, a career that quietly falls apart.
Proving a brain injury case means building the full medical and human record — neuropsychological testing, treating physicians, and the before-and-after witnesses who knew the person best. When the injury is documented that thoroughly, “mild” stops working as a defense.
Spine & Spinal Cord Injuries
Spinal Cord & Spine Injury Cases
Spine injuries are the core of Evan Garcia’s verdict history. As lead trial counsel, he has won a $3.09 million jury verdict for a cervical disc replacement in Los Angeles County, a $2.64 million jury verdict for a two-level decompression surgery in Contra Costa County, and a $1.37 million jury verdict for a lumbar decompression surgery in Los Angeles County — cases where the defense contested the injury, and a jury decided otherwise.
Spinal cord injury cases — paraplegia, quadriplegia, and incomplete cord syndromes — demand more than proof of negligence. They demand a life-care plan that prices decades of attendant care, equipment, home modification, and future surgeries, built by the right experts and defended at trial.
The TrialReady Approach
Prepared for Trial From Day One
Catastrophic injury cases are where trial preparation matters most. As lead trial counsel, Evan Garcia has secured more than $86 million in verdicts and settlements for injured clients — including jury verdicts in contested spine-surgery cases across California.
Insurers track which lawyers actually try cases. When a catastrophic case arrives prepared — the experts retained, the life-care plan built, the exhibits ready — settlement negotiations change. And when they don’t change enough, we are ready.
$86M+
Recovered for Injured Clients
See Case ResultsReady to Talk About Your Case?
Free consultations. No fees unless we win. Call or message us today.