Articles Posted in Uncategorized

I speak with many clients that have been injured in Georgia car accidents and the clients that assumed in the early going that the insurance company for the driver that hit them will pay for their medical care, only to be rudely surprised when the time came for the bills to be paid. A year or two back, Anderson Cooper did a very nice investigative piece on dealing with Allstate insurance that teaches good lessons on how to deal with a Georgia insurance company after a car accident. Here is the first portion.

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

I am attending a legal marketing conference outside of Washington D.C. this week, and I am sitting with two Maryland Injury attorneys that specialize in mass transit collisions. They have tackled the Washington D.C. Metro system on numerous occasions, and we got to talking about how preventable this tragedy was. I grew up in Alexandria Virginia riding the Metro and was deeply disturbed by how unnecessary this Metro train crash was.

Although the the National Transportation Safety Board is only in the early phases of the investigation, several points are becoming clear:

1) The Metro Fail-Safe system is likely responsible for the crash. This is mind boggling given that triple redundancy is supposed to be built into these systems.

Many of my clients initially contact me for expert advice on how much their Georgia car accident case is worth. A common question is “how much is my broken leg case worth in Georgia?” The answer to that question is that you are approaching this from the wrong direction. Injury cases are not interchangeable commodities and each person injured in a car accident in Georgia is different. I field this question all time and my clients want to know; why?

First understand that there is nothing inherently wrong with asking the question. My clients are conservative and responsible people. They are fathers and mothers, grandparents and children and they all live together in the community. There is no reason to be embarrassed about asking this question. My clients are not looking for handouts; they are turning to the justice system the founding fathers put into place to balance the scales. Carelessness has consequences and for over 225 years, our courts and the tort system have balanced out the harms caused by carelessness. Serious car accident injuries and wrongful death cases do not receive large jury verdicts because someone fooled them. Verdicts come from the wisdom of our community.To help clients that have questions about the fair value of their cases, I drafted a new page that gets into some of the details of particular upper and lower leg injuries on my site. There you will find answers to the question “how much is my broken leg worth in Georgia.” For more general questions about how much a car accident case is worth be sure to read that page in the practice areas as well.

I share space with a private equity banker here in Atlanta, Georgia and like many folks, he thinks all lawyers practice all types of law. Despite me having told him several times that I am a tractor trailer accident lawyer, he nevertheless asked me how to get an arrest expunged from his Georgia record.

It seems that when he was a younger man, he jokingly picked up a painting at the Braves clubhouse in Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia, walked three feet and set it down. He and his friend had a good laugh and promptly forgot about it. Two hours later, a police officer pointed him out in the clubhouse and said “he tried to steal a painting!” Needless to say, the matter was dropped but it still hangs around on his GCIC report. Every time he prepares to close a private equity deal and they check his background, he has to explain the entire faisco. So, how do you remove it? Even the best lawyer in Atlanta would be hard pressed to get this right so I did a little research for my readers.

I drafted a new page on my website to lay out step by step instructions on how to get an arrest expunged from your criminal record in Georgia so please feel free to check it out. Remember as an injury attorney, this is not my area of expertise, but the statutes are clear cut. We should know the outcome of my friend’s appeal shortly.

As a lawyer who specializes in tractor-trailer crashes, I receive telephone calls from across the country from families that have been the victims of tractor-trailer crashes and the most common request is for information on how the crash happened. In cases involving high speed collisions, the wreckage can be inscrutable to the common eye and the family’s grief is compounded by their inability to understand how the crash could have occurred.

I recently updated the Georgia tractor-trailer crash library page to include more specific information about what kind of information can be downloaded from the ECM (electronic control module) Commonly known as a “black box”, these electronic components help law enforcement and private attorneys to accurately reconstruct how fatal trucking collisions occur.

The amount of information available after an Atlanta trucking crash varies with year make and model. I want you to have the most information possible so that when you interview counsel you go in as an educated consumer. The best lawyers in Atlanta will all tell you that an educated, well prepare client is the best client.

With the new Georgia Uninsured Underinsured Motorist Insurance statute allowing Uninsured Motorist Coverages to be stacked, there has been some confusion in the legal community as to what Georgia Uninsured Motorist coverages are available for collisions occurring after January 1, 2009. Under the statute, the insurance companies are obligated to send out renewal notices 45 days prior to renewal offering the “added on” type coverage that stacks.

Therefore, unless your policy has renewed in 2009, it is unlikely that you have the “added on” type of Georgia Uninsured Motorist coverage that will allow you to stack your Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist coverage that will stack on top of the at fault party’s coverage. In a recent case for a client injured in a car accident in Atlanta, they had already renewed their policy and we were able to stack the at fault driver’s $25,000.00 coverage with our client’s $25,000.00 in Underinsured Motorist coverage to generate a $50,000.00 recovery. If you have serious injury that has a value above the at fault driver’s Georgia insurance limits, be sure to call a knowledgeable lawyer. O.C.G.A. 33-7-11

I spent the week in New Orleans with several other 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

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.

On my website I have completed a new page that explains how to read a Georgia Car accident police 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 attorney.