Pain is a core claim in almost every personal injury lawsuit. Yet, its invisibility can obscure its agony and greatly discount its compensation. At The Flomenhaft Law Firm we are committed to preventing this injustice. We understand that pain is much more than a bad feeling. Rather, we see chronic severe pain as a disease.
Chronic severe pain can damage brain cells, shrinking the brain and deteriorating the mind. It exhausts the body, saturating it with destructive stress hormones which can accelerate aging and depress the individual’s immune function, increasing the vulnerability to illness and disease. Pain is intensified by its accompanying anxiety and depression. Indeed, over time chronic severe pain can inflict changes in the nervous system, transforming it into an engine producing even more severe and unrelenting pain.
Our trial experience in handling severe pain cases includes representing many clients afflicted with almost unbearable suffering and assisting other law firms throughout the United States who seek our help so that their own pain clients can be better represented.
Vital to proving pain persuasively is addressing these questions: What causes it? Why is it so severe? How can pain overwhelm even the most powerful medications? Has the brain been harmed? Helped by our neuroscience knowledge and experience, we enable juries to answer these questions.
Many of our severe pain cases involve Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), also referred to as Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD). These conditions refer to the traumatic triggering of excruciating burning or agonizing pain, featuring heightened sensitivity to touch (allodynia), or disproportional pain severity or duration (hyperpathia). CRPS can develop rapidly or emerge over days, weeks or months. Early phase CRPS is often evidenced by swelling, color changes, or temperature intolerance. Moreover, CRPS/RSD can spread to parts of the body that were not originally injured. Unfortunately, because CRPS is often triggered from relatively minor injuries such as an ankle or knee sprain or even mild whiplash, physicians often overlook this potentially catastrophic problem. CRPS/RSD Information
Whether the pain stems from the spinal cord, neck, back, arm or leg injuries or from surgeries aimed at treating the injury, or from negligently-caused trauma or medical malpractice, its best chance of proof entails even more than understanding neuroscience. It requires a full understanding of our client’s life and how severe pain steals more of it everyday. The Flomenhaft Law Firm grasps the distress that the pain victim suffers from, including skepticism of even friends and loved ones as the pain prolongs, and the loneliness arising from the isolation and limitations pain imposes on work, relationships and social life. We understand the destructive “vise-like” control it exerts on almost every moment of one’s life and the helplessness and desperation engulfing its victims.
We arrive at Court prepared to prove these losses, seeking the substantial monetary recoveries which justly measures their enormity.
Mr. Flomenhaft was a featured speaker at the 2011 Second Circuit Judicial Conference: The Legal Brain-Scape: NEUROSCIENCE & THE LAW. He discussed proving severe chronic pain by showing how the brain registers severe pain and how such pain damages the brain over time. Here is the paper Michael Flomenhaft delivered at the conference discussing demonstrable brain effects of severe chronic pain: The Emerging Imaging Science of Chronic Pain Objectifying the Subjective. Also, see his interviews on CUNY TV Science & U! Program: 11/3/15 and 6/26/12.
Michael Flomenhaft shares his perspectives on CRPS/RSD below: