Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

Any sexual harassment lawyer will tell you that there can be a fine line between an uncomfortable office environment that can be cured by human resources and one that requires EEOC involvement. As sad as it may seem, we spend more waking hours with the people we work with than we do with our own families. Because we all want to earn money, take care of ourselves and our families, we put in as many hours as it takes to keep our jobs, and possibly even get promoted. Jobs have changed even in the last 10 years from simple 9-5 professional relationships to people working together day in and day out – – trying to earn some money, working hard to maybe advance within the company, and trying to form friendships and bonds in the process.

The other day, I heard from a friend that, within her company, there were many deeper-than-professional relationships amongst the employees, and even between employees and their supervisors. And her particular supervisor was a touchy-feely guy. A guy who gave hugs- and kisses on the cheek – gave lots of compliments on how she looked. He made comments on what she was wearing and asked questions about whom she was dating. She asked me, “what if my boss touches me, is the that sexual harassment?”

In Georgia, what is sexual harassment? The answer is that, in Georgia, as well as most other states, it depends. There is no clear cut answer. Some examples:

Federal law requires that Georgia employees get paid overtime when they work more than forty hours and yet many bosses lie to their employees about eligibility and whether salary covers the amount. As a overtime lawyer I tried a case in front of Judge O’Kelly in Northern District Court in April that illustrates the profound imbalance of power between bosses and employees and makes it clear why this law is so critical to protecting employees.

In our case, the employee was a welder on commercial construction sites and was a Katrina refugee. He worked 10-12 hour days and the employer rented him a mobile home. When the employee asked for his overtime pay the employer threatened to put him out on the street and to fire him. Because the Gainesville, Georgia man did not know his right to overtime pay was Federally protected, he felt powerless. He endured this for almost two years before he read an article explaining his rights. This post will go over some fundamental issues dealing with overtime law and situations to look out for.

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I was fortunate to have lunch today with two old law partners of mine who are now Marietta divorce lawyers, Mike Marsh and Jessica Frost. We got to talking about how frustrated their clients have become with the backlog of cases in Superior Court. As we have discussed before, when filing for divorce in Georgia, the Superior Court has exclusive jurisdiction. Conversely, an injury claim can be brought by anpersonal injury lawyer in the Magistrate, State Court, Superior Court, or Federal Court.

The common wisdom used to be that State Court judges are less likely to grant Motions for Summary Judgment but, with the backlog of low end personal injury cases in State Court, more attorneys are availing themselves of the Superior Courts. Given that Superior Court handles all felonies and family law matters and you have a recipe for disaster. We often tell clients that it can be over a year from the time a suit is filed before you will get to the actual jury trial and in some counties, even longer.

No matter what the practice area, litigation is a strenuous process filled with periods of intense activity followed by apparent stasis. We go to great lengths to explain this to our clients but feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

I spend my days battling with insurance carriers to get them to treat people like human beings, so there is no love lost there. However, even I am annoyed that the New York Times would write a piece attacking AIG for not paying claims for the travelers on Captain Sullenberger’s flight. Collision insurance, Georgia medical payments insurance, and a few other coverages are the only ones I know of that kick in without requiring liability. I am constantly explaining to people that when they fall and get injured in Georgia, the property owner does not automatically have to pay. All liability insurance is, wait for it….based on liability! This plane appears to have gone down due to bird strikes and last I heard Canadian geese were not insured and subject to socialist Canadian health care.

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Here is part two of the CNN piece on claims handling practices by the major insurance companies. In, I can tell you that the deny, delay defend mantra is the order of the day.
I handled a case for a father who broke his hand in a car accident in Riverdale, Georgia and missed out on five months of work as a schoolteacher. He had medical bills of $28,000.00 and lost income of over $23,000.00. The Allstate insured driver had only $100,000.00 in coverage and when we demanded the entire policy, they refused to even offer the full amount of his bills and wages. I filed suit and gave the in house lawyer with Allstate one more chance to do the right thing and after deposing my client and realizing that his case was legitimate, she overturned the adjuster’s decision. The point is that it should never have come to that. It dragged the matter out for three more months, forced me to put the case into the courts and increased my client’s costs and ruined his credit. Watch the conclusion of the investigative piece and make up your own mind.

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?

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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.