Attorney Michael Rehm - (916) 233-7346
In 2021, 69,473 people in the United States died from traumatic brain injuries — approximately 190 every day. TBI accounts for roughly 30 percent of all injury-related deaths in the country. Motor vehicle crashes are among the leading causes of TBI hospitalizations and the leading cause of TBI death for people between the ages of five and twenty-four.
Those numbers describe a national pattern. The individual cases look different: a driver T-boned at an intersection, a pedestrian struck crossing Stockton Boulevard, a construction worker who took a fall. What they share is this — the brain does not heal the way a broken bone heals. The damage accumulates, manifests weeks or months later, and does not follow a predictable schedule. What looks like a minor injury at the scene can become a permanent disability.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles brain injury cases in Sacramento County. The legal work in these cases is specific: establishing liability, proving that the defendant's conduct caused the neurological harm — not some preexisting condition — and building a damages case that accounts for what the injury will cost over a lifetime, not just what it has cost so far.
What You Can Recover
California law divides damages into two categories. Both are available in TBI cases.
Economic damages are the measurable financial losses: past and future medical expenses, lost earnings to date, and impaired earning capacity going forward. In a serious TBI case, future economic damages often represent the largest component of the overall claim. That category includes not just future medical care but life care costs — ongoing attendant care, adaptive equipment, housing modifications, and transportation assistance that may be required for the rest of the plaintiff's life.
Future medical expenses must be proven with reasonable certainty. California Civil Code § 3283 allows recovery for detriment certain to result in the future. In practice, this requires testimony from a life care planning expert establishing the scope and cost of future care, medical experts establishing the prognosis, and an economist projecting those costs and reducing them to present value.
Noneconomic damages are the losses that do not come with a receipt: pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life. For TBI victims, this category also includes the cognitive and behavioral changes that are often the most disruptive consequences of the injury — personality changes, memory impairment, inability to concentrate, loss of the activities and relationships that defined a person's life before the crash. Those losses are compensable under California law (CACI 3905A), and they are not capped in personal injury cases.
Loss of consortium is an independent claim available to the spouse or registered domestic partner of a seriously injured person. When a TBI permanently alters someone's personality, cognitive function, or capacity for intimacy, the effect on the marriage or partnership is real and legally compensable — for loss of companionship, affection, and the day-to-day relationship that the injury has damaged. Loss of consortium is a separate tort under California law (Civil Code § 1714, CACI 3920).
Economic damages are subject to joint and several liability — any defendant whose negligence contributed to the harm can be held responsible for the full amount of economic loss. Noneconomic damages are allocated severally under Civil Code § 1431.2 (Proposition 51) — each defendant pays their proportionate share.
Liability, Causation, and the Eggshell Skull Rule
Most TBI cases involve negligence. Under Civil Code § 1714(a), every person is responsible for injury caused to another by want of ordinary care or skill. In a crash case, the defendant who ran the red light, rear-ended a stopped vehicle, or drove while impaired had a duty to exercise reasonable care. Breach of that duty, causation, and damages are the four elements the plaintiff must prove (CACI 400, CACI 401).
Causation in TBI cases is frequently contested. Defense lawyers and their medical experts look for ways to attribute the neurological symptoms to something other than the defendant's conduct — a prior concussion, a prior mental health diagnosis, age-related cognitive decline. California's substantial factor causation standard (CACI 430) does not require the defendant's negligence to be the only cause of the injury. It must be a substantial factor. That is the standard the jury applies.
The eggshell skull rule. California law does not permit a defendant to escape liability because the plaintiff was more susceptible to injury than an average person. California courts have applied this rule for decades. In Rideau v. Los Angeles Transit Lines (1954) 124 Cal.App.2d 466, 471, the Court of Appeal stated the governing principle plainly: "The tortfeasor takes the person he injures as he finds him. If, by reason of some preexisting condition, his victim is more susceptible to injury, the tortfeasor is not thereby exonerated from liability." That principle applies directly to TBI cases where the defense argues that a prior concussion, prior neurological condition, or prior psychiatric history caused the current symptoms. The law does not accept that argument as a complete defense (CACI 3927 — Aggravation of Preexisting Condition; CACI 3928 — Unusually Susceptible Plaintiff).
California's comparative fault system means that even if a plaintiff shares some responsibility for the accident, recovery is not barred. In Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804, the California Supreme Court adopted pure comparative fault: a plaintiff's damages are reduced in proportion to their own fault, but they are not eliminated. A plaintiff found 30 percent at fault recovers 70 percent of their damages (CACI 405).
TBI in Sacramento: The UC Davis Connection
The CDC reports that falls account for nearly half of all TBI-related hospitalizations nationally, and motor vehicle crashes remain among the leading causes of TBI death — particularly for people under twenty-five. Sacramento's Office of Traffic Safety ranked Sacramento first among California's fifteen largest cities in speed-related crash victims and alcohol-involved crash victims in 2023. The crash record and TBI statistics are related.
The regional trauma center for Sacramento and most of inland Northern California is UC Davis Medical Center, 2315 Stockton Boulevard, Sacramento. UC Davis is one of approximately 20 Level I trauma centers in the United States verified by the American College of Surgeons for both adult and pediatric trauma — the only such center in California north of San Francisco. It serves a 33-county, 6-million-resident region spanning 65,000 square miles of inland Northern California and the Central Valley. When a serious TBI case originates in Sacramento, UC Davis is almost always where the patient was taken first.
Ongoing TBI rehabilitation — cognitive, occupational, and physical — is handled by the UC Davis Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, with outpatient services at the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center, 4860 Y Street, Sacramento. Patients requiring inpatient rehabilitation are served by the UC Davis Rehabilitation Hospital, which operates a specialized TBI rehabilitation program.
The UC Davis medical records — acute care, imaging, neuropsychological testing, rehabilitation progress notes — form the evidentiary foundation of a TBI damages case. Building that case requires understanding what those records say, what they don't say, and how the gap between initial presentation and long-term prognosis is established through expert testimony.
The Statute of Limitations and Why It May Be Paused
California Code of Civil Procedure § 335.1 gives a TBI victim two years from the date of injury to file a lawsuit. Miss that deadline and the claim is barred.
What many TBI victims and their families do not know is that the two-year clock can be paused.
California Code of Civil Procedure § 352(a) tolls — stops — the statute of limitations during any period in which the plaintiff lacks the legal capacity to bring the action due to physical or mental incapacity. A TBI victim who is unconscious, in a coma, or otherwise incapacitated following their injury is not expected to file a lawsuit during that period. The clock does not run. It resumes when the incapacity ends.
This matters in practice. A person who suffers a severe TBI in a crash, spends weeks in the ICU at UC Davis, and requires months of inpatient rehabilitation may not be in a position to consult an attorney for a significant period after the injury. The § 352(a) tolling provision exists precisely for that situation. The two-year limitations period does not begin consuming time during the incapacity.
There is an important exception for cases involving government entities. If the defendant is a public agency — a city, a county, CalTrans, or another government entity — a separate administrative claim must be filed with the entity within six months of the date of injury under Government Code § 911.2. The six-month government claim deadline operates under a different tolling scheme than § 335.1. Missing it generally bars the claim regardless of the underlying strength of the case. If a government-owned vehicle, a poorly maintained public road, or a public agency's negligence contributed to the injury, call as soon as possible. The six-month window is not forgiving.
Filing a Brain Injury Case in Sacramento
Personal injury cases in Sacramento County are filed at the Gordon D. Schaber Sacramento County Courthouse, 720 Ninth Street, Sacramento. In FY 2023–24, the Sacramento County Superior Court handled 2,232 motor vehicle personal injury filings.
TBI cases involving serious and permanent injury frequently warrant complex civil designation under California Rules of Court, Rule 3.400, where multiple parties, retained experts, and extensive damages evidence are involved. Complex designation assigns the case to a single judge for its duration, which typically produces a longer but more organized process — one with greater judicial involvement in managing discovery disputes and expert witness issues.
The expert requirements in serious TBI cases are real: a neurologist or neuropsychologist to establish the diagnosis and prognosis; a life care planner to project the scope and cost of future care; a vocational expert to address impaired earning capacity; and an economist to reduce future damages to present value. Understanding those requirements early — before the statute runs — allows time to build the case properly.
Attorney Michael Rehm handles brain injury cases throughout Sacramento County on a contingency fee basis. No fee without a recovery. Call (916) 233-7346 for a free consultation — office visits, home visits, and hospital visits available.