Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

When a car accident case in Atlanta gets close to the trial date, your lawyers will be preparing a number of motions to limit the amount of surprises. A Motion is a document that lawyers file asking the Judge to take some particular action. In Georgia, Motions in Limine can be filed as late as the morning of trial and they are aimed at preventing the other side from using improper arguments or introducing irrelevant evidence during the trial.

For a car accident case, these motions often focus on other injuries, family problems or irrelevant criminal issues. Be sure to read the blog post on what criminal records are admissible at trial for a better explanation of what kind of crimes will impeach you in Georgia.

Without further ado, here is a lengthy Motion in Limine from a case we tried in December.

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High impact car accidents can cause a variety of traumatic injuries from compound leg fractures to simple concussions. Our injury lawyers spend a great deal of time discussing symptoms with our clients but one of the frustrating issues is that in order for a particular injury or disorder to be presented to a jury, a doctor must be willing to testify that to within a reasonable degree of medical probability, the injury or disorder was caused by the crash. You can have a serious injury after a car accident in Georgia, but if the treating doctors will not testify that it is medically probable that the crash caused the injury, then your case can be worth substantially less.

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There is a common misconception in the public that if you are injured in a car accident in Georgia, your claim for pain and suffering is worth two times the medical bills or three times the medical bills. This is simply not true. It may be been in the early 1980s but those days are long gone.

We have many anxious car accident victims who call trying to earnestly and honestly find some objective way to compute what a “fair settlement” is. The short answer is that each case is different; each injury is different.

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Atlanta Bicycle Accident Legal Issues

You are riding your bike down the street when suddenly your wheel goes into the slats of a sewer grate that is aligned parallel to the flow of traffic, you fly over your handlebars and crash face first in the street.This is every rider’s nightmare as they ride through the streets of Atlanta and it was the phone call the our Atlanta injury law firm got last week after the victim got out of facial surgery.

The question is, given the sovereign immunity that the City of Atlanta enjoys, is there anyway to hold the City responsible for not aligning the grate perpendicular to the wheels? The answer is fortunately, “yes.”

Under OCGA 36-60-5, every time the City installs a new grate on the streets, it is supposed to be oriented perpendicular to traffic for bike safety. Furthermore, sovereign immunity is not a bar because
“[a] municipality is bound to use ordinary care to keep its public streets and sidewalks… in a safe condition for travel…and in case of failure to exercise such care, the city is liable for damages resulting therefrom.” City Council of Augusta v. Tharpe, 113 Ga. 152 (1901)

This issue has not only been litigated in the past, but our appellate courts have actually issued some beneficial rulings on the subject and the City cannot have the case thrown out of court on summary judgment. Please find the most relevant case ruling below:

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Georgia Limited Liability Releases and General Releases

As a general rule, when you are injured in a car accident in Georgia, the other driver’s insurance company will only pay for their client’s negligence when they are closing the case out. When the insurance company makes an offer to settle the claim, they will require you to sign a “release.”

A release is nothing more than a contract where you as the injured party agree to give up certain legal claims in exchange for payment of money. When it comes to dealing with car accident injuries in Atlanta, Georgia, you will typically find that there are two types of releases; a “general release” and a “limited liability release.”

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The firm tried the case of Hazel v. Shapoori to a jury in Gwinnett County State Court and the jury returned a verdict for twice what Allstate had offered. This was a smaller case that the firm took on to help out a nice lady who had $6,200 in medical bills, $1,300 in lost wages and an Allstate adjuster who refused to pay more than $4,000.00. Once our firm got involved, she was offered $6,000, which we politely declined.

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Reviewing the tragic LA Times story of thefatal New York City bus crash and the evidence that a 18 wheeler may have cut the bus off and caused the accident, I am reminded of the article we wrote a year ago about accessibility of Georgia Highway Traffic cameras.

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The firm’s Atlanta tractor trailer accident lawyers in cooperation with our good friend, Michael Goldberg, recently finished up depositions of the tractor trailer company’s driver. In the attached video, you will see what often happens when an undertrained and nervous driver attempts to make up a story to get out of responsibility. This video was made as a backdrop to a live mediation presentation our firm gave last week.

In this case, our client was operating a dump truck while towing a light pickup truck, shortly after midnight on I-85. The semi tractor trailer crashed into the rear of our client and, according to the police report, rear ended the dump truck and knocked it off the highway. Our client speaks only Spanish and the investigating officer decided that the crash was our client’s fault because he felt the tow lights on the pickup were inadequate.

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In Georgia, it is well established that if you are hit by a drunk driver, you can seek punitive (punishment) damages. One issue that has been hotly debated though is whether you can introduce evidence that the other driver was drunk where the case is proceeding to trial with only the Uninsured Motorist carrier remaining as a viable defendant. Georgia Appellate Courts seems to have finally clarified their answer with a resounding “yes.”

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After Georgia changed its UM (uninsured and underinsured motorist insurance) laws in 2009, the changes left people with “added on” type coverage and UE (uninsured excess) or reducing type coverage. The good kind ads itself to the policy of the person who caused the car accident. For example if the at fault driver had $25,000.00 in coverage and you had $50,000.00 in UM added on coverage, then if your injury was severe enough, you could recover $75,000.00.

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