Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

We heard the sirens as my wife and I walked to the Chik Fil A Bowl to watch Virginia get crushed by Auburn and it was not until the next day that we read about the tragic collision that took the life of the wife of an Atlanta Braves trainer. She was killed when her SUV was struck by a Georgia State Patrolman speeding to help another officer in a traffic stop. The patrolman was not in pursuit of anyone at the time and had his lights activated but witnesses disagree on whether his siren was active. It is undisputed that he entered the intersection on a red light.

Continue reading "Wrongful Death Liability for Georgia State Patrol for New Years Eve Crash" »

Atlanta Georgia wrongful death lawyers come across a wide variety of tragedies as an unavoidable consequence of the nature of their profession. As the firm finished a demand package this week involving a 20 story elevator fall in Atlanta, we thought we would blog this week about some of the unique characteristics of elevator injury and wrongful death law in Georgia.

Over 20,000 elevator accidents occur every year in the U.S. Elevators qualify as a common carrier of people and are therefore subject to strict rules regarding their operation and investigation of accidents. For example, after a fall “[a]ny elevator ... involved in an accident...shall be removed from service at the time of the accident. The equipment shall not be repaired, altered, or placed back in service until inspected by a certified inspector for the enforcement authority.” OCGA § 8-2-106(c)

When there is an accident or injury, the standard of care to be applied to the operator of the elevator is extraordinary care. The appellate courts in Georgia put it this way:

"(W)henever a carrier, through its agents or servants, knows or has opportunity to know of a threatened injury, or might have reasonably anticipated the happening of an injury, and fails or neglects to take the proper precautions or to use proper means to prevent or mitigate such injury, the carrier is liable. It is the common carrier's duty to use proper care and vigilance to protect passengers from injuries by such persons that might reasonably have been foreseen and anticipated. Knowledge of the passenger's danger, or of facts and circumstances from which that danger may reasonably be inferred, is necessary to fix the carrier's liability in this class of cases. The carrier is not regarded as an insurer of his passenger's safety against every possible source of danger; but he is bound to use all such reasonable precautions as human judgment and foresight are capable of, to make his passenger's journey safe and comfortable.

Continue reading "Elevator and Escalator Injuries and Accidents" »

Our firm represents the family of 5 year old Karla Campos, who was tragically killed last December by an elderly and infirm driver, Edith Anderson. Mrs. Anderson was charged after the death with vehicular manslaughter and on Monday, Judge Adele Grubbs sentenced her to 3 years in prison for her decisions.

Continue reading "Elderly Georgia Wronful Death Defendant is Sentenced to 3 Years to Serve in Cobb County: Driver's License Law Change Proposed" »

Georgia wrongful death laws are very specific about which family member controls the statutory death claim. I received a call from a daughter in Alaska asking about the death of her mother in a car accident and wondering whether the step-father controlled the case or whether she and her brother took priority on the claim. Given that we only practice in the South, I advised her to contact a wrongful death lawyer in Alaska but the question is an important one. This article will address which family member controls the wrongful death claim in Georgia.

Continue reading "Which Family Member Controls the Wrongful Death Claim in Georgia?" »

The Bluffton University bus crash that killed seven here in Atlanta has been litigated heavily in Georgia and in Ohio. The injury lawyers here in Georgia representing the families knew immediately that liability and damages would not be the areas where good lawyering would be needed; it was in the area of insurance coverage litigation.

Continue reading "Bluffton University Bus Crash Wrongful Death Cases Illustrate How Critical Locating Insurance Policies Can Be" »

Over the last two months, our firm has filed two wrongful death lawsuits and tractor trailer companies in Georgia and is preparing to file another in California with co-counsel. The idea of going into litigation and facing a jury is daunting for many prospective clients but you must understand that when significant dollar amounts are at stake, no insurance company is going to make a settlement offer that is even close to full value unless they are forced to.

Continue reading "Wrongful Death Cases are Almost Always Litigated in Georgia; Why?" »

When you read the CNN coverage on the head on crash between a tractor trailer and a Mennonite Church van in Kentucky that took 11 lives, the divergence between the effect of God's law and man's law is illustrated. Friday morning a tractor trailer driver crossed the center line in Kentucky and took the lives of 11 people headed to a Mennonite wedding. Although our thoughts and prayers are with these unfortunate souls, I cannot abide the perspective of the church member mentioned in the article because to follow that path is to encourage this to happen again to other people.

Continue reading "Kentucky Tractor Trailer Crash and Questions of Faith and Law" »

There is a very unusual Georgia wrongful death decision out of the State Court in Bibb County that was recently upheld by the Court of Appeals. It has the potential to drastically affect wrongful death cases involving Georgia uninsured motorist insurance coverage. Smarr v. Richardson et al. involved the death of a young man in a car crash caused by a driver with $100,000.00 in liability insurance through Allstate. As we have discussed previously, a Georgia wrongful death case has two components, the statutory claim for the value of the life and the claim by the Estate of the deceased for pain and suffering, medical expenses, fear of imminent death and funeral expenses. In Smarr, Counsel for the family of the young man chose to allocate $99,900.00 of the Allstate money to the statutory claim and $100.00 to the Estate claim.

Continue reading "Atlanta Wrongful Death Lawyers Explain Unusual Macon Decision" »

The firm is working on the tragic wrongful death case of a child run over by an elderly driver in Cobb County. As all Georgia wrongful death lawyers know, there often is not enough insurance to assist the family in recovering from the devastating loss. In this case, the driver that killed the little girl only had a $25,000/$50,000.00 policy. That means that the most the policy will pay is $25,000 per person injured or $50,000.00 total per wreck. Here, the mother of the child was standing 2 feet from the little girl as she stepped from the school bus into a blocked off cul de sac. The defendant driver swerved around 2 cars stopped behind the bus, ran onto the curb and past the cars, past the bus and ran the girl down 2 feet from her mother. Her mother was not touched physically by the car but experienced the horror of seeing her daughter sustain a mortal wound.

Continue reading "Georgia Wrongful Death Lawyers Use Odd Caveat in the Law to Help Family Recover" »

Senior Partner at the Simon Law Firm, Christopher Simon, spoke to the media today at the Cobb County Schools to address allegations made on the Neal Boortz show. The popular radio show aired commentary to the effect that the Cobb County Schools Foundation was retaining control of the $30,000,00 in charity donations made by the public to help the impoverished Campos family in the wake of the wrongful death of their daughter.

In fact, the donations will go directly to the family after the funerary and other family utilities are caught up.

The firm will continue to support the Campos family in their quest to raise awareness of the danger that can be posed by elderly drivers and to push for legislation requiring more frequent driving tests for the elderly. The woman that ran Karla down was 82 years old and claimed she hit the wrong pedal before she traveled 80 feet, half on the curb, past 3 stopped cars, to run the child down in front of her mother. This tragedy could have been prevented if the state had testing legislation in place.

As a Georgia wrongful death lawyer, I am preparing to file suit in a case involving a complex analysis of the proper parties to bring the case. Georgia has a complicated set of statutes that lay out the family's rights after a wrongful death. There are two claims under Georgia wrongful death law; the claims by the remaining family members for the value of the life lost and the claim by estate of the victim. These are two completely separate claims although the claim for the value of the life lost tends to be the one focused on the most by juries.

Typically the right to file the suit for the wrongful death follows a strict statutory order:

1) If there is only a spouse, they hold the claim. see O.C.G.A. §51-4-2
2) If there is a spouse and children, then the spouse brings the claim but shares the proceeds equally with the children.
3) If there is no spouse, it is held equally by any children.
4) If none of the above, then the claim is held by the parents of the victim. O.C.G.A. §19-7-1
5) If there is none of the above, it gets complicated.

Continue reading "Georgia Wrongful Death Lawyer Outlines Proper Party to Bring Suit" »

As a Georgia wrongful death lawyer, I see unusual and tragic facts patterns quite often and recently we analyzed an unusual potential case for a client. The mother of a Georgia woman contacted us to see whether we could bring a claim on behalf of her deceased daughter against the daughter's deceased husband. The husband negligently crashed the car the unlucky couple was riding in and killed them both. The short answer is "yes", although there are some practical limitations on what can be done with such a case.

Normally in Georgia, a spouse may not sue a spouse for personal injury because there is spousal immunity. This rule exists to protect the sanctity of marriage. However, when one spouse dies, the public interest in preserving the marriage no longer has the same power. In the case of Jones v. Jones 259 Ga. 49, 376 S.E.2d 674 (1989), the daughter brought a wrongful death suit against the wife who had killed the father. The father's insurance lawyers argued that spousal immunity barred the suit but the Court ruled that when the spouse is dead, the spousal immunity prohibition has no real purpose and violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Although no one wants to see a family fracture in a hailstorm of litigation, where there is negligence and separate family interests in the two estates, a Georgia wrongful death attorney can bring the claim.

I am handling a wrongful death case for a Georgia family where the death occurred in California and it is stunning how much less favorable California law is for the family of the deceased. I represent the children of a deceased 35 year old who was run down by a tractor trailer as he walked down a lonely stretch of highway late at night. From the police investigation and photographs, we determined that the trucker hit the young man from behind and that the truck had swerved several feet over the fog line when it struck him.

As a Georgia wrongful death lawyer handling an out-of-state wrongful death case, we always associate excellent local counsel. On this particular case, the firm of Howarth and Smith has been handling the California wrongful death legal issues while our firm develops the value of the life components and the engineering aspects.

Continue reading "Georgia Wrongful Death Laws are far more Progressive and Liberal than California's" »

Georgia Wrongful Death lawyers know that in the old days, there was no case to be brought when a person died through the wrongdoing of another. The Georgia legislature passed the Georgia Wrongful Death laws to impose "... a penalty upon the person who causes the death of another by negligence, the penalty to go to the person injured.’ ” Brock v. Wedincamp, 253 Ga.App. 275, 281, 558 S.E.2d 836 (2002).

Each case is different though and a colleague recently called to ask whether the divorced mother of a child could sue the father of the child for causing the child's death on a four wheeler. The answer is yes. I thought I would include the research here so that others can benefit.

Normally, when a person dies, their spouse has the right to bring the wrongful death claim for the value of the life, although children will be entitled to a portion if they exist. If the person is a child, then the right vests in the parents. If there is no spouse and the person has no children, then the right reverts upstream to the deceased person's parents.

In the Georgia wrongful death situation we are addressing though, the question is complicated. Normally, the right of recovery for the death of the child would vest in the mother and father. Here though, the father is the at fault party and you cannot sue yourself.
In the case of Belluso v. Tant, 258 Ga. App. 453, 574 S.E.2d 595 (2002), the Court made it clear that the Superior Court has the equity power to strip claims from the wrongdoer and to preserve the right of recovery at the same time. In Belluso, the Court held that it was within the equity powers of the Court to allow the parent of the deceased to sue the negligent spouse for the death of the child, in effect allowing the Georgia wrongful death claim to leap over the wrongdoer.

Based on the logic of that decision, it would appear that the divorced mother of the child can sue the father. Keep in mind that if they were still married, spousal immunity might bar the claim. Remember that serious injury cases are complicated and an Atlanta Injury Attorney with real experience makes all the difference in the outcome.

Georgia Wrongful death lawyers know that claims for the statutory claimants and the claim for the Estate of the deceased are separate and distinct claims and that suit must be filed within two years of the death, in most cases. There are a few exceptions and one of them is that where the Estate of the Deceased is not established (they died without a will and no one filed to appoint an administrator) then the statute of limitations will be tolled for up to 5 years. That means if you missed the two year statute of limitations for the Georgia Wrongful Death claim, if the person suffered before death, had substantial medical bills or had a punitive damages claim, then there may still be a suit that can be brought on behalf of the unrepresented Estate because it has been tolled by O.C.G.A. Sec. 9-3-32.

OCGA § 9-3-92 provides that "[t]he time between the death of a person and the commencement of representation upon his estate ... shall not be counted against his estate in calculating any limitation applicable to the bringing of an action ...."