Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

The final chapter in the sad story of the wrongful death of Jessica Lester has been written and the family’s lawyer has been suspended from the practice of law for 5 years and fined over $540,000 dollars for telling the widower to delete a Facebook page. Ridiculous. For a survey of the pleadings check out www.legaldocs.com

The story began in 2007 when a cement truck that was speeding on a curvy Piedmont road near Monticello outside of Charlottesville, Virginia took a curve too fast and tipped over killing the 23 year old Lester and injuring her husband as they drove to work. She lived for 8 days before dying of the skull fractures. The Allied driver was charged and plead guilty to Manslaughter. He was sentenced to two years and only served 30 days in jail.

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Trip and Fall and Slip and Fall Lawyers Explain the Law

I was asked this week to review three cases for two lawyers and they make good models for an attempt at highlighting some of the key differences between a slip and fall and a trip and fall case in Georgia.

You always begin at the beginning and to understand fall cases in Georgia, we are usually talking about the law of premises liability. Injury law is all about duties and failures to leave up to duties (breach). The logic behind legally blaming a landlord, store owner or the like is that they know their property better than you do and can warn, repair or clean up the problem if they are responsible. When they know about the problem, have the time to do something and fail to do it, you have the WHY of legal responsibility. Lawyers refer to this as Duty and Breach; the first two components of legal liability. Now, let’s get more specific.

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When Hit By a Drunk Driver in Atlanta, Understand the Value Implications

One of the frequent questions we get as Atlanta DUI accident lawyers is “how much is my case worth?” While we have explored that topic before, one variant involves people that get hit by drunk drivers in Atlanta and the effect that has on case value.

The answer is, good evidence that the driver was under the influence can substantially increase the value of the claim. Why? For two reasons:

1. Practical Reason: Evidence that a Driver was drunk understandably angers the jury. The jury is more likely to award an higher verdict to compensate the injured plaintiff. (the injury needs to be legit though, no B.S. claims)

2. Legal Reason: Georgia law allows a party injured by a drunk driver to seek punitive damages to punish the reckless behavior. If the jury finds in phase 1 of the trial that punitive damages are appropriate, after they award an amount to compensate for the injury and lost wages, there is a punitive phase to the trial where evidence of prior DUIs and lack of remorse come into the case.

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Local news media have been reporting that three people died in a high speed crash with a tractor trailer that happened in Gainesville at 1AM on Friday. Setting aside the human tragedy for a moment, this story reflects one of the biggest problems for the victims family in ever getting a balanced understanding of what happened that night. As any Atlanta tractor-trailer accident lawyer knows, the is a substantial danger of evidence and witnesses dissappearing by the time someone investigates on behalf of the family.Facts of the Tractor Trailer Accident
Satellite View of Intersection Prior to Traffic Light Install

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A Norcross 17 year passenger died when his friend lost control of their car while allegedly speeding. See WSBTV coverage of the crash. Unfortunately teenage driving is all too common of an element in fatal crashes in the Atlanta area. What is unusual here is the fact that the police have charged the parents for allowing the unlicensed 16 year old to drive the car.

While most parents stay up at night as it is worrying that their children might hurt someone else, there is also the deep seated fear of the family getting sued into the poorhouse for the actions of the teenager. So the question arises; can the parents of a teenager driver be legally liable when their child causes a crash that kills someone?

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This morning, I deposed Jeff Kidd with Collison Specialists out of Gainseville Georgia. Jeff was hired in a case where I represent the family of a woman who was thrown from her motorcycle when a driver who had been licensed for 10 months got a flat tire and decided to park his car in the middle of I-285. The motorcyle could not avoid the minivan that came to a sudden stop in front of him and the woman was thrown and died.
I talk with a lot of young lawyers who prepare to depose the insurance company’s lawyer and believe that they need to attack every conclusion. The fact is that a reasonable and well prepared expert is not going to be “broken” on cross examination. The key to taking a useful deposition is to listen carefully to their conclusions and decide which ones do no harm and which ones need to be attacked. Once you identify the opinions that are harmful, go at the factual underpinnings and assumptions. Normally it is the car accident Reconstructionist’s assumptions that are the most vulnerable. You can often open play in their opinion by getting them to admit that if other assumptions are true, their conclusions can be significantly off. Atlanta wrongful death attorneys practice this common sense approach that is respectful of the expert and the jury.

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For years car insurance companies have decried the “greed” and audacity of personal injury plaintiffs and their lawyers for bringing lawsuits over injuries in car accidents. Now, irony of ironies, these same insurance companies are launching a tidal wave of lawsuits as they go after the uninsured and underinsured.

Let me be clear; there is nothing wrong or immoral about an insurance company seeking subrogation. The concept is sound. What is disguising is their willingness to sue the uninsured into a lifetime of debt. It is a fact that trial lawyers do not personally sue uninsured individuals unless there are substantial assets. Why not? Not only is it unproductive because liquidating meager assets yields little cash but there is a fairness problem. No right minded lawyer wants to sue an average person into the poorhouse over a negligent act.

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A fellow lawyer won an important victory at the Court of Appeals last Spring (The Bethany Group LLC v. Grobman 315 Ga.App. 298 (2012) which resulted in a $1.2 million dollar settlement for the family of a taxi driver who was murdered at an apartment complex. What is noteworthy about the development is the difficult facts they had to work with. The victim was a cab driver summoned to the property by a disposable phone. No evidence of at request from a tenant and that is a tough case.

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In a rare and tragic instant Aila Masud was struck and killed by a flying tire while driving on I-85 in Atlanta. Eyewitness accounts agree that the wheel came from a passenger vehicle driving the opposite direction although there is mixed information about the driver trying to avoid something in the road.

My wife read the article and being married to a car accident lawyer, she naturally asked “who is legally responsible for the tire killing the woman?” The sad thing is that our law firm has been through this exact situation before. We recently settled a case in Maryland with co-counsel involving a man struck in the chest while driving by a runaway wheel from traffic going the other direction.

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I wrote over a year ago about the tragic death of a woman on the way to the Peach Bowl in 2011 at the hands of a habitually reckless Georgia State Patrol Officer. The AJC reports today that he has plead guilty to vehicular homicide and will serve 2 years in jail and 8 years on probation. There is some justice in the result but what really bothers me is the lack of punishment for his superiors and their decision making.

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