Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

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

As a trucking lawyer, I am often faced with complex insurance coverage scenarios and today we will be discussing the difference between trucking and non-trucking coverage. In the industry, especially among smaller carriers, after dropping off a trailer, a driver will often have to head back to the depot without a trailer attached or he may use the bobtail tractor as personal transportation when not under dispatch. In the industry this is known as “bobtailing.” The situation can arise in a accident caused by a truck where the victim is struck by a tractor trailer running bobtail and in many situations a coverage fight can ensue.

If a truck accident in Georgia occurs because a bobtail truck strikes another vehicle, the trucking company will first want to analyze whose coverage is primary; the trucking or the non-trucking coverage. This is an important issue because in many cases the personality of the insurance company and the amounts of insurance coverage can differ. It is critical to resolve the coverage issue before the litigation goes too far because otherwise the insurance carriers will use the legal uncertainty as their reason for not paying full value on the case.

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Before I began practicing almost exclusively as an injury lawyer, I litigated business and contract cases throughout Georgia and represented Cobb County’s Department of Transportation in eminent domain cases. Many of my former Georgia clients call me with contract law problems years after their Atlanta injury cases are over and so I thought I would put down some contract law basics here as a resource.

Contracts are the fundamental basis of civilized society. It does not matter if two people make an agreement and shake hands in front of a peanut field or 50 people sign a 700 page contract in an overpriced law firm high above the streets of Atlanta; they are both contracts. Contracts can be oral in many circumstances but I tell all of my clients, if it’s not in writing, good luck proving it except through course of dealing. Here are some basic rules to follow:

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As an injury lawyer, I get numerous calls from people that have been in severe car accidents. Although their main focus is their medical condition, they inevitably want to know how to prevent the insurance company from cheating them on the value of their cars when they are totaled out in the car accident.The approach I suggest is as follows:

1) Make contact soon after the crash to accelerate the process. Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver’s company though.

2) Calculate the real market value of your car by pulling a value up on NADA’s Black Book value guide. Kelly Blue Book is not used as much in the insurance industry and NADA will give you a realistic idea of what to expect. Aim for the private party sales price, retail is harder to get.

Some inexperienced injury lawyers fail to thoroughly identify all of the Georgia Uninsured Motorist insurance coverage available to their client after a serious car accident. I have previously written here about the added on coverage that everyone should select as it stacks on top of the at fault driver’s coverage, but stacking is another issue that an injury lawyer should deal with as well.

If you have more than one insurance policy( as opposed to more than one car on the same policy) you can generally stack those Georgia Uninsured Motorist Insurance coverages together. Horace Mann Ins. Corp. v. Mercer, 257 Ga. App. 278, 570 S.E. 2d 589 (2002) For example, I have a client with different four State Farm policies and he is able to stack each of the $250,000.00 policies to provide a total of $1,000,000.00 in coverage for his wife’s permanent injury. That would not be true if the four cars were all insured on the same policy. You can also stack motor home policies, motorcycle policies and umbrella uninsured motorist policies.

The most common situation where this arises is with State Farm policies. State Farm issues a separate insurance policy for each car insured. The result is that if you have UM coverage, the policies can all stack, creating greater coverage.

A new client retained me today as their lawyer and we will be able to make a substantial and just recovery for them in their case against a tractor trailer company driver who turned across four lanes of traffic in Riverdale, Georgia, causing serious injuries. What shocked me was the recording on her cell phone from Georgia Medical and Legal services and two other lawyer services soliciting her business in the days after the crash. It is illegal for a lawyer to solicit your business with a cold call after a car wreck and only low end attorneys participate in this practice. Here is a good video that an acquaintance made documenting the background on these people.

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As a lawyer who handles car accident cases, I get this question a lot, so I will write a brief post on this here. Yes, your health insurance will pay for medical care incurred as a result of a car accident so long as 1) the non emergency care is in network, 2) you provide confirmation to your health insurer that you did not have Georgia medical payments insurance or it was exhausted, 3) you actually give the medical providers your health insurance information in a timely fashion. The bottom line is submit the bills to the health insurer and make sure you give the hospital your health insurance information up front or in the days following.

Will you have to reimburse your health insurance company in Georgia? Probably. The loopholes are getting smaller and smaller but it basically boils down to whether you are still insured with them and whether they are a self funded plan or not and whether the health insurance plan contains the correct wording for reimbursement.

There are three types of health insurance where we know that the client will usually be shielded by Georgia’s “made whole” law.