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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.

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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.

As an injury attorney, I unfortunately receive phone calls from prospective clients regarding violent assaults and rapes at Georgia apartment complexes. These cases are commonly referred to in Georgia as negligent security cases because the legal inquiry focuses on whether the complex took adequate security measures to protect tenants against assaults given a history of prior crime.The law in Georgia is that the owner must have been aware of sufficient prior crime on the property before the owner has a duty to take reasonable security measures. The test is truly when looking at the big picture of crime on the property if it was a situation where reasonable owners would have taken precautions. In the seminal Georgia Supreme Court case, Sturbridge Partners, Ltd. v. Walker, the tenant was brutally raped by an unknown criminal who forced his way into her apartment. There were only two prior burglaries involving petty theft from unoccupied apartments during the day. The apartment moved the Georgia Court to throw the case out claiming that the prior crimes were totally different from the subject rape. The Georgia Supreme Court disagreed and held that the “issue is not the forseeability of the rape itself, but whether Sturbridge had actual knowledge of the prior burglaries and, because of that knowledge, should have reasonably anticipated the risk of personal harm to a tenant which might occur in the burglary of an occupied apartment.” The legal question now is, is there enough crime such that a reasonable apartment owner would take precautions.

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In my practice clients frequently call me panicking about a notice of a Georgia medical lien they received after their car accident. For those clients with health insurance, I have written previously about whether your health insurance has to pay your bills after a car accident, and the answer is a resounding “yes.” I have added a new page on the site that describes your rights and duties when it comes to medical liens. If you have received notice of a Georgia medical lien as a result of a car accident or other injury, check with a lawyer in to make sure that you are handling your case correctly.

As a lawyer with twelve years in the business, I am pleased to report that my clients still call me years down the road with unrelated legal questions. A current client called today and he is changing jobs but his new health insurance won’t start for 60 days. His wife is on the plan and is undergoing medical care for a serious neck injury from a car accident. The client had just planned on holding off on getting medical care for 60 days. I advised the client that he needs to pay for COBRA continuing coverage with his old plan to make sure there is continuous health insurance coverage. Otherwise, the new plan will exclude medical care for her neck injury for 12-18 months as it is a pre-existing condition and there is no continuing health insurance. By having the COBRA coverage in place, there is continuing coverage and it won’t be a problem.

COBRA is just an acronym for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, a Federal law that requires that any employer with more than 20 employees extend health-care coverage to any eligible employee after they leave. Public Law 99-272 Title X and its subsequent amendments require employers to offer continuing coverage to employees and their dependents. It is available to insured employees when they:

1. Quit.

In a stunning reversal of course, the Georgia Court of Appeals reconsidered its February decision and the Court has ruled that when there are medical liens to be paid after a Georgia Car Accident, the amounts to be paid eat into the at fault party’s coverages, allowing access to reducing Georgia Uninsured Insurance limits. I know, I know, that is a mouthful.

Let’s teach by example. Assume you broke your leg in an Atlanta car accident and you don’t have health insurance so you have a $15,000.00 bill from Gwinnett Medical Center. Lets assume that the at fault driver has a Georgia minimum limits policy of $25,000.00 and you have a $25,000.00 Georgia Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist policy of the reduced coverage variety. (remember I told you to buy the added-on coverage in this post on Georgia uninsured motorist coverage.)

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Lawyers that handle wrongful death cases will tell you 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.

If you are hurt at work in Atlanta, an Atlanta Workers Compensation attorney will advise you that you are required to give notice and to bring the claim within certain strict deadlines. Under O.C.G.A. § 34-9-80, if you are injured on the job in Georgia, you must tell your employer with 30 days of the incident.

Then you must file the WC-14 with the Georgia State Board of Workers Compensation within one year from either the date of the injury or the last medical treatment. It is not enough that your boss knew of the situation, you must actually file the claim with the Board. When in doubt it is a good idea to contact an Atlanta workers compensation lawyer to get good advice.

Many of my clients come to me after serious car accidents and a common question is, “who will pay for surgery if I need it?” Frequently, the question has two aspects. Many are nervous and in the early stages of medical care for a disc herniation or broken bone. They want to know what happens if years from now they need surgery. Who will pick up the tab? Given that the Georgia statute of limitations for injuries is two years, what happens if the surgery is necessary in five years? Can the client recover for that possibility? Continue reading