Everyone told you a concussion clears up in a few weeks. It has been months. The headaches still arrive by noon, the words still go missing mid-sentence, and the person your family knew still has not come all the way back. That is not weakness, and it is not imagination. Persistent symptoms after a concussion are a recognized medical outcome, and they can be proven. The Vertanous Firm has recovered more than $60 Million for injured Californians, including a $22.6 Million jury verdict for a pedestrian struck on the head by a falling municipal light-pole cap, and we build these cases on the medicine and on the people who were there.
The Short Answer
Here is the truth the insurance company will not volunteer: the statement that most concussions resolve in weeks is accurate, and it says nothing about you. Most is not all. A meaningful number of people carry headaches, fog, dizziness, and mood changes for months or longer after a concussion. Clinicians call that pattern post-concussion syndrome, or persistent post-concussive symptoms. The name matters less than the fact. It is a recognized outcome, and it is treated as one by the physicians who manage it.
The legal problem is not the diagnosis. It is the story the defense builds around it: you should be better by now, so either you are exaggerating, or something other than the crash is to blame. Every section below answers one piece of that story. This page is part of our complete guide: California traumatic brain injury lawyer. If you are still in the first weeks after the injury, start with our page on concussion after a car accident.
What It Is
Post-concussion syndrome is not diagnosed from a picture. There is no scan that lights up and no blood test that confirms it. It is a clinical diagnosis, made by physicians from the mechanism of injury, the history, the examination, and the course of symptoms over time. The symptoms tend to fall into four groups:
Two features make these cases hard for the injured person and easy for the defense to misdescribe. First, the symptoms are ordinary. Everyone has a headache sometimes. Everyone forgets a name. What is not ordinary is the frequency, the combination, and the break from the person you were before. Second, the symptoms feed each other. Poor sleep worsens concentration. Struggling at work raises anxiety. Anxiety worsens sleep. A defense doctor can point at any single thread and call it unrelated. The medicine looks at the whole cloth.
The Defense Playbook
Persistent concussion cases draw the same three defenses, in roughly the same order. We plan for all three from the first month.
"Concussions resolve in weeks." The defense quotes the typical course and implies that anyone outside it is inventing symptoms. The answer is that typical is a description of a group, not a diagnosis of a person. The question for a jury is what happened to this plaintiff, and that is answered by the treating clinicians who followed the symptoms month after month, not by a statistic about strangers.
"It is stress, depression, or the lawsuit." Anxiety, low mood, and poor sleep commonly travel with persistent concussion symptoms. The defense relabels them as psychological and argues that psychological means unrelated. It does not. Emotional harm caused by an injury is part of the injury, and the real question is causation: did the crash or the fall set this in motion? The answer lives in the timeline. A person with no history of these problems who develops them after a head injury presents a sequence that labels cannot explain away.
"It was there before." The defense subpoenas every record you have, looking for a prior concussion, a migraine history, or a note about anxiety. Prior history does not end a case. In general, a defendant is responsible for the harm its negligence causes, including making an existing condition worse, though not for the condition as it already was. What a prior history does is make the before picture decisive, which is why we build it deliberately.
Example: Maria, a paralegal in Pasadena, had a concussion playing high school soccer and recovered fully; she worked full-time for a decade with no headaches or memory complaints in her records. She is rear-ended on the 134. Six months later she still has daily headaches, cannot keep up with deadlines, and has been moved to part-time work. The defense points to the soccer concussion and argues her symptoms are the old injury.
Conclusion: The prior concussion does not defeat the claim; it frames it. A decade of full-time work, clean medical records, and performance reviews show that the old injury had resolved. The treating neurologist addresses whether the prior injury made her more vulnerable and whether the crash caused or worsened her current symptoms. The question for the jury is what changed after the crash, and ten years of evidence answers it.
Family Observation Evidence
A brain injury often hides from the person who has it. The injured person adapts, compensates, and underreports, sometimes out of pride and sometimes because the ability to notice the change is part of what was injured. The spouse notices. The coworker notices. The friend who has known you for twenty years notices. That is why before-and-after witnesses are some of the strongest evidence in a persistent concussion case, and why we develop that testimony with care instead of collecting general statements.
Good observation evidence has four qualities:
We also gather the documentary before picture: performance reviews, school transcripts, certifications, calendars, work product, and the ordinary records of a capable life. The contrast between that record and the months after the injury is often the most persuasive exhibit in the case.
Neuropsychological Testing
When the CT and MRI are normal, the question becomes how the brain is functioning, and that is what neuropsychological testing measures. A neuropsychologist administers a battery of standardized tests covering attention, processing speed, learning and memory, language, visual and spatial skills, and executive function: planning, organizing, shifting between tasks, and controlling impulses. Results are compared against normative data and against what the person's history suggests they could do before the injury.
Three points about testing matter to a case.
Modern testing includes measures designed to detect inconsistent effort or exaggeration. That cuts both ways, and it is exactly why it helps an honest plaintiff: when the validity measures are passed, the defense argument that the plaintiff is faking loses its footing.
Testing is a medical decision, made with the treating team, at a point where results will be meaningful. It should be performed by a qualified neuropsychologist, not improvised from a screening questionnaire.
Expect a defense examination by a doctor retained by the other side. Preparation for that exam is not coaching. It is making sure you know what the day involves, that you give full effort, and that you describe your symptoms accurately, neither minimized nor enlarged.
Example: David, a middle school teacher, suffers a concussion when a loose handrail gives way on a stairway. His imaging is normal. Four months later, he still loses his place during lessons and needs hours to grade what used to take one evening. The defense examiner reviews his chart and concludes that he recovered within six weeks, noting that he returned to work.
Conclusion: Returning to work is not the same as recovering. Neuropsychological testing with passed validity measures documents deficits in processing speed and working memory. His principal describes specific classroom changes, his wife keeps dated notes, and his lesson plans from before and after tell the same story. A single retained opinion based on a return-to-work date now faces months of treating records, objective testing, and three independent witnesses. The defense has an opinion. We have evidence.
Months later and still not yourself? Talk to a firm that takes the medicine seriously.
Free Case ReviewWhat to Do Now
Persistent symptoms call for more than rest. Depending on the symptoms, that can mean neurology, physical medicine, vestibular therapy for dizziness, vision therapy, cognitive rehabilitation, and psychological care. Ask your doctor about referrals.
A chart that mentions only neck pain becomes the defense's favorite exhibit. Memory lapses, irritability, and sleep trouble belong in the record every time they are present.
A long gap in care reads as recovery in a claim file, even when it was exhaustion, cost, or confusion. If you cannot get appointments, tell us.
Three lines a day: what you could not do, what it cost, and how long it took to recover. Dated, specific, and honest about the good days.
Defense investigators review social media and sometimes conduct surveillance. A photo from the one good afternoon of the month will be shown without the week that followed it. Post less, and never exaggerate.
A settlement is permanent. Signing before your doctors can say what the future holds prices the case at its least developed point.
Value and Deadlines
A concussion that resolves in a few weeks and a concussion that alters a career are not the same case, and they are not valued the same way. When symptoms persist, the case can include future medical care, lost earning capacity, and the human losses of living with an injured brain, each proven with its own evidence. We explain that arithmetic in full on our page about what a brain injury case is worth.
The clock does not wait for the medicine. California personal injury claims are generally subject to a two-year deadline from the date of injury, and far shorter deadlines, measured in months, apply when a public entity may be responsible. Persistent concussion cases are especially vulnerable to this trap, because by the time people realize the symptoms are not leaving, much of the time has already passed. Our guide to the personal injury lawsuit deadline in California covers the rules plainly.
The injury may have come from a car crash, a truck collision, or a fall on dangerous property. The case is built the same way: medicine first, witnesses who knew you before, and a defendant who understands we are prepared to try it. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome, and every case turns on its own facts. Call (626) 888-2223 and tell us what has not come back.
If we don't win, you don't pay.
The consultation is free. The representation is on contingency. If there is no recovery, you owe no attorney fee.
Questions We Hear Every Week
It is the name clinicians use when concussion symptoms persist beyond the period in which most people recover. The symptoms are the familiar ones: headaches, dizziness, trouble concentrating, memory lapses, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, and disrupted sleep. There is no single scan or blood test that confirms it. It is a clinical diagnosis, built from the mechanism of injury, the symptom history, examination, and how the person has actually functioned over time.
There is no honest universal answer. Many people improve over weeks. Some improve over months. Some carry symptoms much longer, and some changes do not fully resolve. The legal question is not how long it lasts for most people. It is how long it has lasted for you, and what your treating clinicians expect going forward, documented as it happens.
Yes. Standard imaging is used to find bleeding, swelling, and structural damage, and a normal study is common after a concussion. Persistent symptoms are proven with function rather than anatomy: treating physician records, neuropsychological testing with built-in validity measures, therapy records, and witnesses who can describe concrete changes in the person they knew before the injury.
No. Anxiety, low mood, and sleep disruption commonly travel with persistent concussion symptoms, and emotional harm caused by an injury is part of the injury. The real question is causation: whether the crash or fall caused the symptoms, or made them worse. That is answered with the timeline, the treating records, and the before-and-after picture, not with a label.
Often, yes. A person with a prior injury is not fair game. In general, a defendant is responsible for the harm its negligence causes, including making an existing condition worse, though not for the condition as it already was. Prior concussions make the before picture more important, so tell your lawyer and your doctors about them early and honestly.
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