The Firm is proud to announce that Mr. Simon was selected by his peers to Georgia Trend Magazine's Legal Elite list in the December 2009 issue. This annual list consists of leading Georgia lawyers as selected by their peers in 11 practice areas.
Mr. Simon was selected to the list for his work in the field of Personal Injury law. Congratulations Chris on this recognition of your hard work.
In a move that stunned Atlanta car accident lawyers, the Georgia Supreme Court in Beneke v. Parker held today that for injury cases stemming from the commission of a crime including traffic violations, the statute of limitations is tolled from the date of the accident until the traffic citation is resolved.
Typically, a victim only has two years from the date of the car accident to file suit. The Georgia statute of limitations on injury claims is extremely strict, with only rare exceptions. This ruling is a drastic deviation.
This case stemmed from a car accident where the lawyers filed the suit more than two years after the Georgia statute of limitations on injury cases. The trial judge threw the case out but now the Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that the two years is extended by the same amount of time as passed between the commission of the crime and the resolution of the ticket.
They reviewed OCGA 9-3-99, which provides in part that:
"[t]he running of the period of limitations with respect to any cause of action in tort that may be brought by the victim of an alleged crime which arises out of the facts and circumstances relating to the commission of such alleged crime committed in this state shall be tolled from the date of the commission of the alleged crime or the act giving rise to such action in tort until the prosecution of such crime or act has become final or otherwise terminated, provided that such time does not exceed six years."
I am sure the legislature will take away this victory this coming year, but for now, this is a huge victory for the consumer. Click below to read the text of the decision.
Continue reading "Georgia Statute of Limitations Extended for Car Accident Cases by Supreme Court" »
When I worked for insurance companies, I was the lawyer that the insurance carrier would hire to defend the policy holder who had been sued and even though I practice exclusively as a Georgia wrongful death lawyer now, I still field phone calls from panicked consumers. If you have been contacted by a person claiming injury in a car accident in Georgia or if you have been sued, you should follow these five guidelines.
1) Always contact your car insurance company immediately if there was any damage at all. You do not want to give them an excuse not to defend and indemnify you.
2) All car insurance policies, even a minimum limits $25,000.00 policy, will provide you with a free lawyer in the event you are sued .
3) The insurance carrier will indemnify you up to the policy limits amount. Let's assume you caused a crash and the person broke their leg and you get sued over it. In the situation where you have minimum limits, the insurance company will provide a lawyer to you at no cost under the "duty to defend" and you will get indemnity up to the limits. If you have a $25,000.00 policy and the jury awards $35,000.00, then $10,000 of the judgment will be entered against you after your insurance company pays out. Not a good situation so.....
4) If there is a claim against you or you are sued, make sure you find out from your insurance company: a) what is the claimed injury, b) what are the gross medical bills and lost wages, c) what is the insurance company's assessment of the verdict d) how do they plan to protect you? If you do not have much coverage, then write your insurance company a letter making it clear that you expect them to pay the policy limits out if they have a chance to get you a release or a limited liability release.
5) Your homeowner's insurance does not play a role in debts you owe because of a car accident in Georgia.
If your insurance company refuses to pay the policy limits out to protect you after the injured person's lawyer demands the limits and there is a verdict for an amount over your limits (an excess verdict", in some instances you can sue your insurance company for failing to protect you.
I just completed posting a detailed timeline on the website answering the question "how long will it take for a lawyer to settle my Georgia case?" As I detailed in the article, not every case should be settled and more and more often, I am encouraging my client's to allow me to litigate their cases because Georgia insurance companies are low-balling significant injury cases. Remember that the timeline describes what you should expect for a straightforward Georgia car accident case. As any Atlanta car accident lawyer will tell you, each case is different, as is each Judge.
The hospital wants to bill the emergency room bill to the driver of the car that crashed into me; that sounds fair, right? WRONG. All Atlanta personal injury lawyers know that If you have health insurance and do not have Georgia Medical Payments insurance coverage, then the medical care should be billed to your health insurance after a crash, every single time. "Why" you may ask. "After all it is only fair that the other driver's insurance company should pay the emergency room bill if they caused the crash."
1. Your health insurer has a contract fee schedule for services so that a $1400.00 MRI will only be billed to your health insurer at around $500.00. So when time comes to reimburse the health insurer out of your settlement you are repaying less than $500.00 instead of $1400 to the hospital.
2. You may not want to hire a lawyer and bother with trying to make a financial recovery from the other driver. If the hospital fails to bill the driver, they may try to take out a Georgia Medical Lien against you and you end up on the hook.
What should I do with the hospital bill after a car accident in Georgia?
I recently finished a new video explaining how to logically approach getting the full fair market value for your car when the insurance company totals it out after a car accident in Georgia. As an Atlanta car accident attorney, I am asked these questions time and again, so I thought I would share this information with the web community so that folks can feel more comfortable when they deal with the insurance companies.
In a recent post, we discussed Georgia pedestrian rights as they pertained to a case involving my clients who got run over by a car in Atlanta.Today was the second time this month I was lucky enough to end up on their behalf in the City of Atlanta Traffic Court on Garnett Street.
Let me start by saying they did a nice job remodeling the place and the airport style arrival/departure screens are helpful to tell you which courtroom you are in. Come to think of it, now that they make you take off your belt and shoes at security it feels just like an airport. When I asked why the belts come off, the security guard replied "razors." Ahh, so that is what it has come to. Keep in mind this is a misdemeanor level City of Atlanta Court. If there are Gangstas here, it is because they got a speeding ticket. What are they going to shank you as you plea nolo to a speeding ticket?
Continue reading "Atlanta City Traffic Court Saga Continues for an Atlanta Lawyer" »
I spent the week in New Orleans with several other Atlanta injury lawyers taking depositions in a trucking case and discussing legal issues and a topic came up that deserves mention; are Georgia attorney's fees negotiable? The answer is, sometimes.
Injury lawyers in Georgia all work on a contingency fee basis meaning that if they settle or win your case, they are entitled to a percentage portion of the gross recovery. The contingency fee structure works well for clients as they come to an injury lawyer because they have sustained a serious injury and that usually results in a financial hardship. The last thing the client needs is a humongous legal bill from their injury lawyer. I do some hourly work at $250.00 an hour and the bills can add up quickly for hourly clients.
The question arises; can I negotiate the percentage of the contingency fee with the lawyer. Some lawyer do, some don't and the fees vary. The low end TV advertising firms in Atlanta charge the client 40% pre-suit and 45% in litigation and that is astounding. They will negotiate the fee if the client objects.
Continue reading "Atlanta Injury Lawyers Attorney's Fees Can Sometimes Be Negotiated" »
Over the last few weeks,several clients have come to me after being hit by a car in Atlanta, Georgia. I realized that we have not written extensively on the legal duties owed by pedestrians and cars in Georgia and this post and the new section on the firm website will address those issues. I am heading to traffic court today to defend a client that was run over from behind and sustained a brain injury in Buckhead. The client was crossing from the Whole Foods on Paces Ferry to the St. Regis hotel in broad daylight. That road only has a traffic signal at one end and a stop sign at the next intersection, so the client is not required to use the crosswalk. Silvers v. Kimbell 219 Ga.App. 482, 465 S.E.2d 530 (1995)The client crossed the first two lanes of traffic and was waiting for traffic coming from the left to clear when he was struck from behind by a driver turning out of Whole Foods. The victim was transported to the hospital with a brain injury and the officer had the audacity to ticket him for jaywalking. I will post an update after we try the case today.
Generally speaking, pedestrians have the right of way when they are crossing in the crosswalk. OCGA 40-6-91(a) says that the driver of a vehicle shall stop to allow a pedestrian to cross the road within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the same half of the road as the car or when the pedestrian is approaching and is within one lane of the half of the road on which the care is traveling. This applies regardless of the color of the light,.
The duty shifts drastically when the pedestrian chooses to cross somewhere other than the crosswalk. Under OCGA 40-6-92, the pedestrian must use the crosswalk if they are on a street with traffic lights at the intersections on either side of where they are crossing.
Under OCGA 40-6-92(a), pedestrians crossing a road outside of the crosswalk shall yield the right of way to all cars unless he has already, and under safe conditions, entered the roadway. Basically, if you looked both ways and walked across a street that did not have trafic signals at each end, you have the right of way if a car comes speeding up.
Keep in mind the fact that legal duties are wonderful, but they apply in the courtroom. Many Atlanta drivers don't care who has the right of way and if you are lying on the hood of the car with a broken leg, it will be little comfort to know that you had the right of way. If you have other questions, ask an Atlanta injury attorney who has represented people hit by a car in Atlanta and throughout the State of Georgia.
On my Georgia injury lawyer website I have completed a new page that explains how to read a Georgia Car accident report so that consumers can better understand the valuable information contained in them. Remember that it will take the police department approximately 3 days to prepare the report after the car accident. If you have a serious injury from a collision be sure to consult with an Atlanta injury attorney with over a decade of experience.
As an Atlanta injury lawyer, I get numerous calls from people that have been in severe car accidents. Although their main focus is their medical condition, they inevitably want to know how to prevent the insurance company from cheating them on the value of their cars when they are totaled out in the car accident.
The approach I suggest is as follows:
1) Make contact soon after the crash to accelerate the process. Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver's company though.
2) Calculate the real market value of your car by pulling a value up on NADA's Black Book value guide. Kelly Blue Book is not used as much in the insurance industry and NADA will give you a realistic idea of what to expect. Aim for the private party sales price, retail is harder to get.
3) You can expect to recover sales tax on top of the sales price.
4) Above all be logical and business-like in your approach. Use email to communicate if you are a hot head. Ask them politely to explain how they calculated their values for your car. Do understand that currently the resale market is soft and used car prices are down.
5) Remember that the at fault driver is not responsible for the difference between the value of the car and the amount you owe on your loan. If you are upside down on the loan and the crash just makes the negative equity due and payable, that is unfortunately your problem, not theirs. You can finance the amount into a new loan or set up a payment plan. This is why I strongly urge everyone to buy Gap Insurance when the finance a car.
I do help my clients that were injured in a Georgia car accident with their property damage claims.
A new client retained me today as their Atlanta injury lawyer and we will be able to make a substantial and just recovery for them in their case against a tractor trailer company driver who turned across four lanes of traffic in Riverdale, Georgia, causing serious injuries. What shocked me was the recording on her cell phone from Georgia Medical and Legal services and two other lawyer services soliciting her business in the days after the crash. It is illegal for a lawyer to solicit your business with a cold call after a car wreck and only low end attorneys participate in this practice. Here is a good video that an acquaintance made documenting the background on these people.
Continue reading "Do Not Hire Lawyers or Doctors that Call You after an Atlanta Car Accident" »
A very nice potential client called today looking for an Atlanta Injury Lawyer as he was not getting return phone calls from his injury lawyer. He described a collision in which the car sustained over $9,000.00 in damage and he said he had called a TV advertising firm to help with the case. 
The first problem is that the law firm charged him a 40% contingency fee for pre-suit work. The standard fee is 33.3% in Atlanta. Even worse, the firm also told this man to go to an Atlanta chiropractic clinic that they worked with often rather than to go to his own family doctor and to have it paid for by his health insurance. The client has health insurance and would have had access to cheaper and better health care but the lawyer diverted him to "their chiropractor." To compound the problem, the chiropractor then sent the man to a local neurologist who is well known in the insurance defense community for having little credibility. Now the man has over $9,000.00 in flimsy medical bills that are unpaid and will have to come out of his settlement.
The client has wasted two months getting overpriced chiropractic care, he is on the hook for the bills because those kind of doctors do not take health insurance and the chiropractor and neurologist are looking to the settlement to get paid. The worst part is that the client has continuing low back pain and the low end medical care suggested by the lawyer is worthless. The client is now going to an orthopedist in his health care plan, but much of the damage is done.
Continue reading "Low End Atlanta Injury Lawyers Charging Higher Rates and Giving Bad Advice" »
As an Atlanta injury attorney I see constant changes in the tactics used by hospitals and health insurers that are designed to put more money in the hospital and insurer's pocket from the injured victims settlement and I have written about some of them previously. Today we will be talking specifically about two new situations my clients have experienced.
Continue reading "Atlanta Injury Lawyer Faces Stubborn Hospital Billing Departments" »
In Georgia, there is a two year statute of limitations within which your Atlanta injury lawyer must file your lawsuit for injuries, with a few exceptions. Over the past few weeks a number of clients have called with the two anniversary fast approaching. Waiting until the last minute to file an injury claim is a very risky proposition. If your Atlanta injury attorney has not filed suit yet I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous this is.
Now it is true that there are many good reasons to be patient in the pursuit of your injury case. If your medical care is continuing for instance, it would be foolish to attempt to try or settle your case in the middle of the care. However, as the first anniversary of the car accident passes you should have a talk with your lawyer to decide what the strategy is. If your medical care is at an end, the only thing you should have to wait for is the medical records. Once they are in, your attorney should be able to draft the demand within one week and the insurance carrier will usually respond within 45 days. The negotiations will take another 2 weeks, but at that point, you will have a good idea of whether the carrier is going to make a fair offer or if you will need to litigate the case to obtain the fair value.
Georgians injured in a car crash have to be on their toes when it comes to hospital billing departments. Most hospitals code the intake so they know if the patient came in with a broken leg from a car accident or a broken arm from a trucking crash. Even where the patient has health insurance (which they are obligated to bill unless there is medpay insurance) the hospitals are trying to opt out and hiring a collections law firm to send out immediate lien notices. Why are they doing this to injured people in Georgia?
The answer is simple; if United Health insurance only allows $4,000.00 under their fee schedule for a set of procedures but the procedures are billed at $24,000.00, the hospital would rather get $24,000 instead of $4,000.00. By placing a medical lien on the file, they hope that they can tap into the injury settlement that the injured patient may be pursuing.
Continue reading "Atlanta Hospitals Aggressive on Reimbursement when Patient Injured In Car Crash" »
As an Atlanta Injury Lawyer, I have handled over 1,000 cases through the years and one of the more frustrating scenarios involves having to explain to a client with a major injury like a cervical or lumbar disc herniation that the at fault driver only has minimum limits. As I have explained in my discussion on Georgia Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Insurance, this is one of the major reasons why clients should carry $100,000 in UM insurance at a minimum. That said, many clients come to me after the crash and they only carried $25,000.00 in UM themselves. Herniated Disc cases in Georgia are worth more than $100,000.00 in most cases so the issue of available insurance coverages is a critical one for case evaluation.
For crashes that occurred prior to January 1, 2009 (when Georgia's Uninsured Motorist Law changed) or for people that buy non-stacking UM coverage, the challenge became getting past the at fault driver's $25,000.00 limits.
One argument that is gaining traction is the argument that if the client has to reimburse an outside party such as Medicare, Federal Workers Compensation Liens, Medical Liens etc., then to the extent that a check has to be written to those entities out of the recovery from the at fault driver, because those liens are not subject to the Georgia "made whole doctrine", that dollar amount may be recovered against the Uninsured Motorist Coverage above and beyond the at fault driver's limits. Toomer v. Allstate 292 Ga.App. 60 (2008) Toomer makes it clear that the argument is viable for Medicare liens and Federal Workers Comp claims, but it is still unclear if the Court of Appeals will apply the same logic to Medical Liens and Health Insurance Reimbursement Claims.
It will be interesting to see if Medical Liens and ERISA Self Funded Health Insurance Reimbursement claims will also qualify to allow older claims to dip into the uninsured motorist coverage that would otherwise be in the shadow of the torfeasor under the Bohannon decision. I will post updates as the issues are ruled on.
Two clients recently came to me with compression fractures in the vertebrae of their spine as a result of car accidents and they were both women. As an Atlanta injury lawyer, this got me wondering whether compression fractures from car accidents are more common in women after car accidents and indeed they are.
Women are more likely to have osteoporosis and as a result their spinal vertebrae can be weaker and more vulnerable to the compression forces that can occur in car crashes in Georgia. It turns out that forty percent of women will suffer a vertebral compression fracture by the time they are eighty. (Source: University of Maryland Medical School www.umm.edu/spinecenter )
As with all my cases I get deep into the medicine behind the injuries to maximize the recovery and I thought I would explain what happens in a compression fracture injury here. The normal human spine resembles the diagram below with the vertebrae being separated by the intervertebral discs which act as shock absorbers and allow flexibility.
Compression fractures in car accidents occur when too much force is exerted on the spinal column while it is being flexed in an unnatural way. Vertebral compression fractures usually occur at T11 and T12, which is the bottom of the thoracic region and at L1, the first vertebra of the lumbar region. This is due to the natural curve of the spine. See the image below:
As a Conyers, Georgia injury lawyer I had a client who was injured in a crash in Conyers, Georgia and hers was a lateral crash with the at fault driver striking her at a 45 degree angle from the front. In the Alpharetta, Georgia crash, the client was struck from the rear in a high speed crash.
Most compression fractures do not require aggressive treatment and although they are painful, with a brace and rest the client has a good chance of almost a full recovery. On a case by case basis and depending on age and severity, some clients do experience post-traumatic arthritis though and you should ask your doctor for a detailed prognosis before you decide to settle an injury case involving compression fractures. A compression fracture from a car crash is a serious injury and the case can have a significant value so be sure to speak with an experienced Conyers injury lawyer or an Atlanta injury lawyer before you decide what to do.
For further reading, please see the University of Maryland's website for an excellent discussion of the function of the spine.
Let's us assume that you have decided that your Atlanta injury case is small enough that it would not make sense for a lawyer to handle it. This assumes you have already read the article on whether you should hire an Atlanta lawyer or not. We will also assume that you are either in a situation where the insurance company is making a low offer or they are fighting you on the issue of whose fault the crash is. Assuming you have the backbone for the fight...what is next?
First understand that you will be suing the other driver, not their insurance company. You will need to locate the other driver by looking at the crash report. Know that sometimes the address is wrong or the person has moved away so never ever wait until just before the statute of limitations (two years for Georgia injury cases and four years for property damage cases) because you may file the suit and then get a notice back from the sheriff saying that they were unable to serve the defendant ( a "non est")
In Georgia, you must sue the defendant in their home county unless you are dealing with a non-resident of the state or you have a trucking company as a defendant. You can do this by mail, but I suggest going to the clerk's office and picking up the summons and the return of service and sending your complaint. Click on this Georgia personal injury lawsuit that I recently filed. You will have to pay around $125.00 to file the suit.
If the case is small enough not to require a lawyer, then you will be filing suit in small claims court, which in Georgia is called the Magistrate's Court. It has a maximum jurisdiction of $15,000.00 (that is the most that can be awarded in this Court) When you go to the clerk's office for the County where the Defendant lives, you will receive a form to fill out that will become the "Complaint." In this document you will lay out what you are complaining about. For example:
"Mr. Smith crashed into me damaging my car in the amount of xxx dollars and I sustained injuries. I have medical bills totaling $xxxxxx. I am also seeking human damages." In Magistrate Court, it really does not need to be any more complicated than that. The hard part is proving the case at trial but that comes later.
The clerk will give the lawsuit to the Sheriff and then then the Sheriff will make two tries to serve the defendant with the lawsuit. There are some exceptions but generally a person must have the documents handed to them for service to be valid. You can also serve an adult that lives with the defendant.
You will get a copy of the "return of service" which is the sheet the sheriff writes the results of his service attempts on. Keep an eye out for this document when around 30 days have elapsed since you gave it to the clerk. You may need to call the clerk of court to follow up. If the document says service was perfected, then you wait.
Then the Defendant has 30 days from that day to file their answer with the Court. In the case of Georgia car accident cases, the defendant will normally send the lawsuit to their insurance company and the insurance company will hire a lawyer or assign one of their in-house attorney's to defend the suit. It is very very difficult to outlawyer a lawyer so understand that if you cannot get your case resolved with the adjuster for the insurance company now that it is "in litigation" you need to decide if you can make it on your own or whether your need to hire a lawyer. Even if an Atlanta Injury Lawyer will not take the case on a contingency fee, some may agree to handle the case on an hourly basis. Assume that you will pay between $175.00 and $200.00 per hour for their services at trial and the time would include some prep time. That said, if you are fighting over repairing or replacing your car and you don't have collision coverage or if you have significant medical care, then it may be worth it.
If you have been injured by a drunk driver in Georgia, it almost always makes sense to hire an injury attorney because punitive damages are recoverable and they can multiply the value of an injury case ninefold. Although I have advised many prospective clients with minor injuries that they are capable of handling their claim on their own, when it comes to injuries from being hit by a drunk driver in Georgia, even modest injury cases can have significant value because punitive damages may be recovered.
As an Atlanta car accident lawyer, I receive numerous calls from clients that have had their cars totaled out in a crash only to learn that their car has depreciated tremendously since the time they purchased it. Most people are aware that if you buy a new or used car from a dealership, you are paying a premium price. With most new cars, 50% of the value you paid for is gone after three years. It is less true with used cars, but many of my clients that bought SUVs in the last 3 years cannot believe how much value has been lost. For most people though, the drop in value is on paper only as they don't plan to sell the car; what happens when it is in a crash and totaled out though?
When your car is totaled out in a car crash in Georgia, the at fault party(and their insurer) owes the current market value of the vehicle and that is it. If you are upside down on the loan, there is no way to recover that from the other guy's insurance company. Why not? The truth is you were upside down on the car 5 minutes before the car crash too and the crash only brought the situation into reality. Georgia Courts will not hold the other driver liable for anything beyond loss of use (rental) and the total current market value of the car if it is totaled.
Due to plunging resale values, the smartest thing you can do is buy gap insurance coverage when you purchase the vehicle. This coverage fills in the gap between the market value of the car and what you owe on the loan. In these tough times I cannot recommend this strongly enough.
Some of my Georgia clients call me after an Atlanta car wreck, already having signed up with a lawyer and they have already been advised to start their medical care with a chiropractor suggested by the lawyer. Usually the potential client's phone call to me starts this way "I am not comfortable with the situation..." That feeling that you have is well founded. Is there anything wrong with chiropractic care? No, it can work wonders, but the fact that the lawyer sent you to the doctor begs the question, what is their relationship? Whose interests are they looking out for?
Use common sense to guide you in your decision as to whether you should stay with that law firm. Remember that you can fire a lawyer at any time. Go through these steps:
1) Have you spoken with the actual lawyer, or just an assistant? If it's just the assistant, call back and insist on a discussion with the lawyer about whether it can hurt the case at trial that the lawyer made the referral after the Atlanta, Georgia car wreck;
2) Does the medical care seem professional? Ask the chiropractor to see the bill and ask what they will be charging you, because it all comes out of your settlement money at the end of the case.
3) Are you comfortable with the chiropractor and is the medical care helping?
If you are not getting a good feeling after answering these questions, you should fire your Georgia lawyer and find one that will tell you the real implications of lawyer directed health care. To fire a lawyer, just fax a letter to the firm stating that you no longer need their services. You will owe them for whatever actual time they put into your case, but in the first few weeks, that is usually nothing. If you are unsure of what to do, feel free to call me. As an Atlanta Injury lawyer, I place the client's best interests before anything else and that is the way it should be.
In a recent Atlanta, Georgia car accident where my client was hit by a drunk driver, we are facing one of the more complex coverage scenarios that illustrates two points. First, it is essential that you carry no less than $100,000.00 in insurance coverage and make sure that your uninsured motorist limits match that amount. Second, this matter illustrates how complex and precarious coverage analysis can be. With any case that will involve uninsured motorist coverage hiring an Atlanta injury lawyer is essential.
Here we have a drunk driver in Atlanta, Georgia that is carrying a low end Infinity insurance policy. He has what we call a 25/50 policy meaning there are two buckets of $25,000.00 in coverage available to protect all five claimants. However, several of them have Georgia Uninsured Motorist Coverage and there is the issue of the Uninsured Motorist Coverage on the Vehicle they are traveling in. The real question in the case is how to maximize the recoveries to bring the fairest result for all of the clients. Three of the injuries are very serious including skull fractures, a broken collarbone, cracked ribs and the other two injuries are more sprains and strains.
Many clients involved in car accidents in Atlanta, Georgia have come to me explaining that even though the officer ticketed them, the crash was the other driver's fault and they wonder what they should do with the traffic ticket from the City of Atlanta. 
If the injury is serious, I will take a hard look at the evidence to determine if the officer just got it wrong, and sometimes they do.
For people that have been injured in a Georgia car crash and the probability of a subsequent lawsuit, the outcome of the traffic ticket can be critical. People that sustain serious injuries in Atlanta should be careful with how they handle the citation they are given.
Continue reading "Should I pay My Traffic Ticket in Georgia?" »
As an Atlanta injury lawyer I am constantly litigating car accident cases where the insurance company disputes liability and tries to scare off the injured party. This often leads to the litigation of "swearing contest" cases where there are no eyewitnesses and the jury is left to judge the credibility of the parties without further aid. What is odd about this predicament is that there are increasing numbers of cameras and yet it is very difficult to get the police and DOT to produce the records.
As any Atlanta motorist knows, there are a series of video cameras covering not only all major highways, but increasingly we are seeing video and still cameras at major intersections. Through the years, I have sent Open Records Requests and Subpoenas and the response has been "we don't record that information." The lack of access to those videos leads to needless litigation by both sides to the dispute. There are situations where the trucking company was clearly in the wrong but litigated the case because of the chance that a jury would see it their way and when I was defending insurance companies, I handled many a case where the passenger car driver was clearly at fault and the video would have exonerated the tractor trailer driver. Georgia injury claims can be severely devalued where there is a solid liability dispute.
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