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Granted I do only review Georgia car insurance policies for people when things have gone wrong but isn’t that the way you should approach your insurance purchasing? The most common thing I hear from people after they have been in a terrible accident is “I have full coverage.” What does that mean?

In the insurance industry, it can mean very little. Many insurance agents will tell you that you have “full coverage” and what that really means is you have liability insurance, collision coverage and comprehensive coverage. It has nothing to do with the amount of the these coverages. I have to break this news to people all too frequently.

So… First step is to get out your policy information. Every six months or so you should receive a declarations page. If you cannot find it, pull up your insurance account. Almost everyone has their policy documents available online these days.

When a car is damaged and repaired in a Georgia car accident, it is not “as good as new” when fixed. Diminution in value or diminished value generally applies only to cars that have not been in a wreck before. The idea is that in this day and age of Carfax and vehicle background checks everyone will know if the car was in a wreck when you try to sell it. No one will pay the same price for a used car when choosing between a previously repaired car and an undamaged one.

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Well the legislature struck out on the important changes they were trying to implement but at least they did some good for the State. These bills will now go on to the Governor for signature and hopefully they will make it through.

ID Theft Protection: Georgia Credit Freeze Law.

Link to Legislation, Votes and Status: http://www.legis.ga.gov/legis/2007_08/sum/hb130.htm

What should you do when your car was damaged in a car accident in Georgia and it was the other driver’s fault? Let’s assume that the officer cited the other driver and your car is driveable. What should you do? Everyone knows that you exchange information at the scene. What next?

You should contact the other driver’s company that day and you should contact your own insurance company and provide them with notice of the accident. If the other insurance carrier is not a fly by night operation, they will schedule an appointment for either an adjuster to come out of a location for you to take your vehicle to for a damage appraisal. You should take photos of the damage before you leave your vehicle with anyone. When I am hired as an Atlanta personal injury lawyer, I take great pains to lock down the photographic evidence from the police officer’s dashboard camera, satellite photos and other evidence to assist with arguing liability. However, unless you take pictures of your own vehicle, you will be at a serious disadvantage if you try to handle the property damage on your own.

If you took it to a shop, you will get an estimate on cost and time to repair from the shop. The other carrier should provide you with a rental car for the duration of the rental. If the other insurance carrier is being a jerk about these things and you have collision coverage, you have the option of turning it over to your own company.

One of the things many of my clients want to know is how to get your car fixed after a crash in Georgia go about getting their car fixed after it has been in a crash in Georgia. If the accident report came out against you and in favor of the other driver just understand that you are facing an uphill battle. Police Officers frequently get the blame issue wrong. It’s not because they are mean, it’s because they are not in the business of deciding liability. Some do a more thorough job that others, but many times they will simply write out the ticket that they feel seems most obvious. We frequently spend half of our time tracking down eyewitnesses and developing evidence to prove liability.

If the accident report assigns blame to you under the “contributing factors” section on page one or you got the citation, you better have collision coverage on your own policy. The other car’s insurer will not pay for your property damage and rental car unless it looks like they are to blame. Under these facts, submit the claim to your own insurer. If you have no collision coverage, then you are in a pickle. I will bundle the property damage claim with the bodily injury claim when clients hire me but that decision is made on a case by case basis.

If there is no injury claim and you have a sound reason why the other side is to blame; do the following:

I received my credit card statement today and noticed a $39.00 late fee in it because the payment posted 4 days late. Let me put it this way. If your account is pretty current, everything on credit cards are negotiable. I called and politely but firmly reminded them that payments have always been current and the balance was low. They looked at the account and immediately removed the charge. As a lawyer, I long ago gave up litigating consumer cases, but there are some lawyers that will still take these.

Scrutinize your credit card bills. Banks will try to sneak things past you. Also, watch out for the interest rates creeping up when you were not looking. Every year or so it does not hurt to call them and see if you can negotiate a lower rate by pointing out other credit card offers you have received. Give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

Generally speaking, the criminal defendant is indicted for the crime, usually by a grand jury. They decide whether there is enough evidence to warrant going through with a prosecution. You may hear on TV that “the grand jury met.” Although there are significant differences between states and the federal government, the basic premise is that the group of citizens is empaneled for a period of time to act as the first gatekeeper of criminal justice. They receive a very one sided presentation of the case from the lawyer employed by the governmental entity prosecuting the case. Practicing as an injury lawyer now, I look back in disgust at the how unbalanced the playing field is in favor of the prosecution. The only thing the defendant has is the presumption of innocence and if there are any priors, then the jury ignores the standard.

The group of citizens then decides if there is enough evidence for them to issue the indictment. If no, that is usually the end of the case. If they decide to go forward, then the defendant is indicted and the prosecuting attorney (a District Attorney in Superior Court in Georgia, a Solicitor in State and most Municipalities, sometimes a City Solicitor) takes the case from there.

From there, cases diverge wildly. Some complex cases involve numerous motions to supress (keep evidence away from the jury) notices of introducing evidence of prior crimes and so forth. Each case is different and I will not be providing an exhaustive treatment of the subject here. Suffice it to say that in most criminal cases in Georgia, there is very limited discovery and no such thing as depositions except in unusual circumstances.

I am writing this blog to explain civil litigation in Georgia as best I can. As time goes on there will be more and more complex articles that may be of great use to other attorneys, but in the beginning we will cover the essentials that will allow ordinary people to feel more comfortable in handling their civil cases on their own.

The most important distinction in the law lies between criminal law and civil law. Think of them as two distant branches of the same family. They have some similar features in that they involve trials, many shared rules of evidence, the thrill of cross examination and defense lawyers. Otherwise though they are systems of justice administering to totally different components of our society. Georgia workers compensation attorneys work in a specific subset of law governed by Georgia workers compensation law. There is an administrative law board instead of jury trials and the case law and rules of evidence for workers comp are completely different.

Criminal Law is a body of law designed to delineate between criminal and non-criminal actions. It covers everything from speeding tickets all the way through death penalty murder trials. The party bring the case is always a government entity and the whole purpose of the case is to determine guilt or innocence and the appropriate punishment. Think of it this way; criminal law is only about crime and punishment.

This blog will be an attempt to lay out what I have learned over the last ten years in an attempt to help people untangle what can be a very confusing legal system. I look forward to the adventure.