How Does a Folsom Brain Injury Lawyer Prove a Brain Injury When the CT Scan Is Normal?

A normal CT scan does not mean your brain is uninjured. CT is built to find bleeding and skull fractures, not the microscopic axonal damage behind most concussions. A Folsom brain injury lawyer proves the injury with neuropsychological testing, advanced imaging, and testimony from people who knew you before the crash.

Kreeger Law Firm handles brain injury claims across Sacramento County, Placer County, and El Dorado County. Christopher L. Kreeger has practiced personal injury law in the Sacramento region for more than 35 years. He is AV Preeminent Rated and carries an Avvo Rating of 10.0 Superb. The Consumer Attorneys of California named him Trial Lawyer Association President of the Year in 2003.

If a Folsom crash left you with headaches or memory gaps, call Kreeger Law Firm at (916) 782-8400 for a free case review. There is no fee unless the firm recovers money for you.

Why a Normal CT Scan Does Not Rule Out a Brain Injury

The scan was normal, so the adjuster says nothing happened. That reasoning fails on the science. Kreeger Law Firm builds these claims from the medical record and from neuropsychology, not from a single image. Emergency imaging answers one urgent question. It does not answer whether the brain works the way it worked the morning before the crash.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states the point directly. A brain scan is not needed to spot a mild traumatic brain injury, and you may still have one even if the injury does not show up on that scan. Federal guidance for children goes further and tells providers not to order a head CT routinely for diagnosis. Imaging is a screen for bleeding, not a test for cognition.

What a Head CT Is Built to Find in the First Hour

A head CT is a fast search for the things that can kill a patient before morning. It looks for bleeding around the brain, skull fracture, and swelling that shifts brain tissue out of position. Those findings send a patient to a neurosurgeon within minutes. A scan that finds none of them has done its job. It has not measured attention, memory, or processing speed, because no scanner does.

How Diffuse Axonal Injury Escapes Conventional Imaging

Most mild traumatic brain injury is not a bruise in one spot. The National Library of Medicine chapter on diffuse axonal injury describes damage caused by rapid rotational or translational head movement. That motion places shear strain on the white matter tracts carrying signals between regions. The damage spreads across millimeters of tissue rather than pooling in one place a radiologist can circle.

Shear Forces Damage Axons Without Producing Blood

Axons stretch and tear when the head rotates fast and stops fast. Torn axons do not always bleed, and a CT sees blood. That same source notes that CT has limited sensitivity for small axonal lesions that do not bleed. A rear-end collision on East Bidwell Street can produce this motion at low speed.

Why a Standard MRI Can Also Read as Clean

Ordinary MRI sequences ordered weeks later are more sensitive than CT, and they still miss a great deal. Susceptibility weighted imaging finds the small hemorrhagic spots that mark axonal injury, but that sequence has to be requested. A routine brain MRI at a community imaging center usually does not include it. The report then reads as unremarkable.

What the Glasgow Coma Scale Number in Your Chart Actually Means

Open the emergency department record, and you will find a Glasgow Coma Scale score. If it reads 15, the defense will treat that number as the end of the argument. A score of 13 to 15 is classified as mild, and the word mild is doing work the scale never intended.

Teasdale and Jennett built the scale in 1974 to standardize how clinicians described a patient’s level of consciousness. Nothing in it measures whether you will still lose your train of thought six months later. Clinical reference sources state plainly that the scale is a poor predictor of long-term functional outcomes. That gap between the number and the outcome sits at the center of most traumatic brain injury claims.

The Scale Was Built to Track Consciousness Over Time

A score of 15 means you opened your eyes, spoke in sentences, and followed commands. It says nothing about whether you can hold a spreadsheet in your head. The scale earns its keep through repetition, because serial scores over several hours show a clinician whether a patient is deteriorating. One number copied into a discharge summary carries none of that meaning. Alcohol, sedation, and facial trauma all distort the value. The same reference sources warn against reading it as an injury severity grade.

How Sacramento County Field Triage Uses the Motor Score

Sacramento County Emergency Medical Services Agency Policy 5053 sets the trauma triage criteria Folsom paramedics apply. Its physiologic criterion is being unable to follow commands, which the policy defines as a motor score below 6. The version in force took effect on November 1, 2024. A person who answers questions at the scene does not meet that criterion. The ambulance then has no reason to run to a Level I trauma center.

Where a Folsom Head Injury Gets Treated and Written Down

Two records decide most of these cases before a lawyer ever sees them. One is the hospital chart. The other is the collision report. Folsom is one of the Sacramento area communities the firm serves, and its geography changes what your chart says.

A patient who walks into an emergency room with a headache gets a different workup than one who arrives by ambulance. The first patient often goes home with discharge instructions and no imaging at all. The second gets a CT, a trauma team, and a chart documenting every hour. Neither record proves or disproves an axonal injury, and only one of them looks serious to an adjuster.

Mercy Hospital of Folsom Stabilizes and Transfers

Mercy Hospital of Folsom sits at 1650 Creekside Drive and runs the emergency department most Folsom crash patients reach first. Its published service lines include emergency medicine, critical care, and general surgery. Neurosurgery and trauma center designation are not among them. A patient with a suspected serious head injury is stabilized there and then moved. That transfer is a clinical decision, and it leaves a paper trail worth reading.

The Emergency Department Note Sets the Baseline

The first note written about you is the one every expert will start from. It records what you said, whether you lost consciousness, and how oriented you seemed. Patients minimize symptoms in that first hour because adrenaline is still working. A note recording that the patient denied losing consciousness follows the file for years.

What a Transfer to UC Davis Medical Center Records

UC Davis Medical Center at 4301 X Street is California’s only Level I trauma center north of San Francisco. Its trauma service covers 33 counties and roughly six million people. The route runs west along Highway 50 toward Sacramento. A transfer from Folsom generates a second full assessment by a trauma team. That second set of eyes often catches what the first visit did not.

The Folsom Police Department Collision Report

The Folsom Police Department works out of 46 Natoma Street and releases collision reports through an online portal. Pulling yours requires the collision date, the driver’s last name, and the report number. The fee is $16. The department also publishes a weekly police log. That log recorded 25 traffic collisions during the week of July 26 to August 1, 2026. Logs stay online for 30 days, so an early request matters.

What Evidence a Folsom Brain Injury Lawyer Builds When Imaging Is Negative

Proof in these cases is cumulative. No single test says brain injury the way an x-ray says fracture. The case is built from measured function, from documented change, and from people who watched that change happen. Your job is to preserve the raw material while it still exists.

Order matters here. Treating physician records come first, because they were created for treatment rather than for litigation. Neuropsychological testing comes next and supplies the numbers. Testimony from family and coworkers comes last and makes those numbers mean something. The firm’s published case results include a $300,000 recovery in a claim involving concussion and soft tissue injury.

Neuropsychological Testing Measures Function Rather Than Structure

A neuropsychologist gives a battery of standardized tests that usually runs four to six hours. The battery samples attention and memory, executive function, and processing speed. Some examiners split the work across two days to keep fatigue from contaminating the afternoon results. Scores are then interpreted against normative data matched for age, education, and background. That comparison turns a complaint into a measurement. It is also the part the defense works hardest to unwind.

Estimating the Baseline the Injury Moved You From

A score in the average range is not reassuring if you were well above average before. The National Academies report on psychological testing notes that formal premorbid assessment is rarely available. Examiners therefore estimate the starting point from demographics and from history. Getting that estimate right decides whether the drop is visible at all.

School Transcripts and Work Records That Fix the Starting Point

Transcripts, standardized test scores, and performance reviews are the closest thing to a pre-injury baseline. A person who once scored in the top decile and now tests average has lost real ground. Those documents exist, and they are usually obtainable. Most claims never gather them, which is why the drop goes unproven.

Why the Defense Attacks the Normative Comparison

Defense experts argue that the normative sample does not fit the plaintiff. They point to education, first language, or a childhood learning difference. The answer is to select the norms before the results are known. A well-run examination makes that record in advance.

Performance Validity Testing and the Malingering Attack

Every competent battery includes performance validity tests, which measure whether the person is giving genuine effort. The National Academies report states that failure on such a test does not equate to malingering or lack of disability. Pain, medication, and fatigue also lower scores. A plaintiff who passes validity testing has removed the defense’s best argument before it is made.

Lay Witness Testimony About the Before and the After

California Evidence Code section 800 lets a lay witness give an opinion rationally based on perception and helpful to understanding. A spouse who now handles every bill can say so. A supervisor who quietly moved you off a task can describe why. Juries believe the people who eat dinner with the plaintiff. That testimony lands in a way a percentile score does not, and it costs nothing to gather.

Advanced Imaging and the California Admissibility Fight

When conventional imaging is negative, the next question is whether advanced imaging comes in. That fight centers on diffusion tensor imaging in California courtrooms. The argument is not about whether the scanner works. It is about whether a judge will let an expert tell the jury what the scan shows.

An honest answer here matters more than a confident one. California has trial court rulings admitting this evidence and no published appellate decision settling it. Any firm promising a guaranteed result on that question is guessing. Christopher Kreeger published an article on the admissibility of diffusion tensor imaging in the Consumer Attorneys of California Forum.

What Diffusion Tensor Imaging Measures

Diffusion tensor imaging tracks how water molecules move through white matter. Water travels along intact axon bundles and scatters where those bundles are damaged. The scan produces a number called fractional anisotropy for each region. Comparing that number against a control group is what suggests injury. The technique measures tissue organization rather than bleeding. That is a different question from the one a CT answers.

How California Judges Control What the Jury Hears

A California trial judge decides what an expert may tell the jury. Two doors have to open. The opinion must satisfy the Evidence Code, and a genuinely new scientific technique must satisfy a separate test. Losing at either door keeps the imaging out. Winning at both puts a picture in front of the jury. Most of the motion practice in a serious head injury case happens here.

Evidence Code Sections 801 and 802 After Sargon

California Evidence Code section 801 limits expert opinion to matter an expert may reasonably rely on. Section 802 lets the court examine the reasons behind that opinion. In Sargon Enterprises, Inc. v. University of Southern California (2012) 55 Cal.4th 747, the California Supreme Court read those sections together as a gatekeeping duty. A court may exclude opinion that is speculative or unsupported by the material relied on.

The Kelly Test for a New Scientific Technique

California also applies People v. Kelly (1976) 17 Cal.3d 24 to evidence built on a new scientific technique. The proponent must show the method is generally accepted, that the witness is qualified, and that correct procedures were followed. Defense counsel argues diffusion tensor imaging is new and therefore subject to that test. Plaintiff counsel argues the method has been used clinically for years.

Where California Law Stands on DTI Right Now

Trial courts in California have admitted this imaging. One example is a 2021 ruling from the San Mateo County Superior Court. No California appellate court has issued a decision settling the question. A judge in Sacramento County is therefore free to rule either way. The honest advice is to build the case so it survives without the imaging, and to fight for the imaging anyway.

Deadlines and the Courthouse That Hears a Folsom Case

None of this evidence matters if the claim is late. Two deadlines control a Folsom brain injury case, and they run very different lengths. A head injury makes both riskier, because the person tracking the calendar is the person with the memory problem. Write the dates down and give a copy to someone else.

The filing location also changed this year. Pages that have not been updated send people to a building that no longer hears their case. That is a small error with real consequences for a self-represented claimant. Christopher L. Kreeger has practiced in these courts since 1990. The current location appears below.

Two Years Under Code of Civil Procedure Section 335.1

California Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives two years to sue for injury caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another. The clock generally starts on the date of the crash. A delayed diagnosis does not automatically extend it. Someone told at discharge that the scan was normal often waits, and the wait is what costs the case.

Six Months When a Public Entity Is Involved

If a city, a county, or a transit agency is a defendant, a written claim comes first. California Government Code section 911.2, subdivision (a), requires that claim within six months of accrual for death or injury to person. Missing the six-month window generally bars the lawsuit. A crash with a city vehicle on Folsom Boulevard triggers that rule. The two-year statute does not rescue a claimant who skipped the claim.

Civil Filings Moved to the Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye Courthouse

A Folsom injury case is filed in Sacramento County Superior Court. Civil services opened at the Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye Sacramento County Courthouse at 500 G Street on April 13, 2026. Full court operations followed later that month. The Gordon D. Schaber Courthouse at 720 Ninth Street no longer appears on the court’s list of locations. Any page still directing civil filings to 720 Ninth Street is out of date.

Frequently Asked Questions About Proving a Brain Injury in Folsom

These are the questions people ask after an emergency room visit that ended with a normal scan and a discharge sheet. The answers below are general and are not a substitute for advice about your own file. Every case turns on its own records and its own timeline.

Can I Still Have a Brain Injury if I Never Lost Consciousness?

Yes. Loss of consciousness is not required for a mild traumatic brain injury. Feeling dazed, confused, or unable to recall the moments after impact can be enough. The emergency room note should record what you actually experienced.

How Long After a Folsom Crash Should Symptoms Appear?

Symptoms often start within hours and sometimes surface over the first few days. Headache, light sensitivity, and irritability are common early signs. A delay does not mean the symptoms are unrelated, but it does mean the record has to explain the gap.

Will the Insurance Company Say I Am Exaggerating?

Expect it. The standard defense in a normal-scan case is that the complaints are subjective and unverified. Performance validity testing inside a neuropsychological battery is the direct answer. Failure to mitigate damages is a separate affirmative defense under CACI 3930, and the defendant carries the burden of proving it.

Does a Concussion Diagnosis Mean the Injury Is Minor?

No. Concussion and mild traumatic brain injury describe the same event. The word mild refers to how the injury presented, not to how it ends. Some people recover in weeks, and others carry attention and memory problems for years.

Who Pays for a Neuropsychological Evaluation?

Health insurance sometimes covers it when a treating physician orders the referral. In other cases the evaluation is arranged through counsel and paid at the end of the claim. Ask before scheduling, because the referral path can affect how the report is treated later.

Talk With a Folsom Brain Injury Lawyer About a Normal Scan

A normal CT scan is a starting point, not a verdict on your brain. The proof in these cases is gathered after the emergency room visit. The two-year deadline does not pause while you wait to feel better.

Kreeger Law Firm has handled personal injury claims in the Sacramento region for more than 35 years. Christopher L. Kreeger is AV Preeminent Rated and holds an Avvo Rating of 10.0 Superb. The firm keeps offices at 1903 21st Street in Sacramento and 3300 Douglas Boulevard, Suite 145, in Roseville.

A Folsom brain injury lawyer can tell you in one conversation whether your records support a claim. Call Kreeger Law Firm at (916) 782-8400 for a free case review. There is no fee unless the firm recovers money for you.

You can also reach the firm through its contact page and ask for a call back. Bring your discharge paperwork, the collision report number, and the name of any doctor you have seen.