Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

In a recent car accident where my client was hit by a drunk driver, we are facing one of the more complex coverage scenarios that illustrates two points. First, it is essential that you carry no less than $100,000.00 in insurance coverage and make sure that your uninsured motorist limits match that amount. Second, this matter illustrates how complex and precarious coverage analysis can be. With any case that will involve uninsured motorist coverage hiring an injury lawyer is essential.

Here we have a drunk driver in Atlanta, Georgia that is carrying a low end Infinity insurance policy. He has what we call a 25/50 policy meaning there are two buckets of $25,000.00 in coverage available to protect all five claimants. However, several of them have Georgia Uninsured Motorist Coverage and there is the issue of the Uninsured Motorist Coverage on the Vehicle they are traveling in. The real question in the case is how to maximize the recoveries to bring the fairest result for all of the clients. Three of the injuries are very serious including skull fractures, a broken collarbone, cracked ribs and the other two injuries are more sprains and strains.

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I have had many clients that have been seriously injured in Atlanta in car crashes and treated at Grady Hospital. The clients come to me without health insurance and with staggering medical bills and they wonder how they will pay for the medical care, especially if the policy limits for the at fault driver are low and there is not enough Georgia Uninsured Motorist insurance coverage.Grady is the largest trauma hospital in Georgia and they have recently made the news for their financial troubles, but, their financial aid programs remain largely in effect. If you were involved in a car accident and received emergency care at Grady and have no other insurance options, you can visit the financial aid office and look into getting a Grady Card. The Grady Card entitles the client to 50% off of their medical care. Understand that this is only available to persons with serious emergency care that have no medical payments insurance and no health insurance. In situations where there is no tortfeasor to recover from or the wrongdoer has no insurance Grady will also work out long term extended payment plans.

With so many people going without health insurance these days, access to quality medical care is a constant challenge. If the injuries occur due to the negligence or recklessness of other though, there are options.

In cases where there are substantial medical bills to be repaid that were incurred before your loved on died, you should retain a wrongful death attorney to coordinate the settlement and structure it so that the hospital gets some repayment but does not take a disproportionate share. This can be accomplished by structuring the payments so that the estate of deceased does not receive the majority of the settlement funds and they instead go to the Georgia wrongful death statutory claimants.

Many clients come to me and want to know how long it takes an injury lawyer to handle a case. The answer is that it depends on the case. I generally classify cases into three categories For Class I cases involving catastrophic injuries and wrongful death cases, the time line is not predictable. Class II injuries involve a car accident that results in fractures, ligament tears, surgeries and other major injuries. Class III cases are injuries that involve strains and sprains or other soft tissue injuries that the client is able to make a full recovery from.For Class II and III injuries much will depend on how long the medical care continues but the following is a general outline of what to expect.

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Here is a recent presentation I gave to a paralegal continuing education group and I thought my readers might find the material interesting.

Investigating and Evaluating a Personal Injury Claim

By Christopher M. Simon, Esq.

Personal injury cases come in all sizes, but I generally classify them into three categories:

Class III is a garden-ariety soft tissue auto accident case.
Class II involves a more significant injury including fractures, ACL tears, Meniscal surgeries and Scaring cases.
Class I is a complex or catastrophic case. I could go on for hours about these. For today, we will focus primarily on Class I and II.

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I have represented a number of families in Columbus Georgia, Albany Georgia and Atlanta Georgia over the last few years where the heating systems malfunction and release carbon monoxide gas into the living area, poisoning the residents. Carbon monoxide is so dangerous because it is colorless and odorless, giving no warning. As a lawyer, I get calls from all over the state and the reports are consistent. It strikes so quickly that it can overwhelm the victim and render them unconscious in a short period of time.

Attacking the central nervous system, in low concentrations the gas makes you tired and gives you severe headaches, almost like the flu.

At higher concentrations it will knock you out in minutes. The severity of the effects are determined by the concentration and duration of the exposure. Below is an idea of what concentrations will have what effects.

Many clients involved in car accidents in Atlanta have come to me explaining that even though the officer ticketed them, the crash was the other driver’s fault and they wonder what they should do with the traffic ticket from the City of Atlanta. If the injury is serious, I will take a hard look at the evidence to determine if the officer just got it wrong, and sometimes they do.

For people that have been injured in a car crash and the probability of a subsequent lawsuit, the outcome of the traffic ticket can be critical. People that sustain serious injuries in Atlanta should be careful with how they handle the citation they are given.

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The Georgia Supreme Court issued a major decision last week in Moreland v. Austin which effects Georgia car accident victims by holding that HIPAA, the Federal law protecting the privacy of your medical records, preempts the Georgia State law saying that your doctors can talk to the defense attorney without your knowledge. That means that insurance defense lawyers in Georgia can no longer meet with your doctors privately and spin the truth to damage your case. As a car accident lawyer who frequently has to guard his clients against these kind of aggressive defense tactics, I was thrilled with this decision.

Moreland is a medical malpractice case wherein the insurance defense lawyer had met with the injured person’s Atlanta doctor in an effort to hurt the Plaintiff”s case. The Supreme Court overturned the Appellate Court decision and held that unless a Plaintiff specifically grants permission, the Defense may not speak with the Plaintiff’s treating doctors. The Court even went to far as to hold that “(w)e will not presume a plaintiff consented to such communications simply because the plaintiff did not object when defendant sought plaintiff’s medical records pursuant to a subpoena or request for production of documents.”

When I was a defense lawyer and before HIPAA came into effect, I would try to set an appointment with the Plaintiff’s treating and family doctors and establish rapport. I would never fabricate things but I would certainly bring the accident photos in lower impact collisions to try to win the doctor over to my side of the argument. I have had to be careful in modifying the HIPAA releases that defense lawyers send to my clients. Many insurance companies will try to get the injured person to sign a HIPAA release in the early days following the crash so that they insurance company can get access to records and documents but this is a huge mistake.

What are some of the pitfalls of representing yourself and not hiring an injury attorney after you have been injured in a car accident in Georgia? One of the major challenges is how to coordinate Georgia injury medical care benefits.Many people are hesitant to hire an injury attorney, worrying that they would have done better in their quest for just compensation without paying the lawyer one third of the recovery. It is a good analysis to go through. I have written extensively on the subject of when you need and attorney and when you don’t after a collision injury and you can see that article here. This entry will get into a real world example of the value a lawyer can bring.

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The Georgia legislature in Atlanta passed a sweeping change to Georgia Uninsured Motorist Insurance coverage law this past session and the law goes into effect on January 1, 2009. Most Georgia drivers should expect to see a mailing asking them to make their new selections this winter.

The change is significant and it can be confusing. Under the old scheme, you either chose to have Georgia uninsured motorist insurance coverage or you chose to waive it. If you did have it and you were injured in a car accident in Georgia, the first inquiry was “how much insurance does the other driver have?” Let’s assume the bad driver had the minimum limits of $25,000.00 and that you had $50,000.00 in Uninsured coverage. You would be entitled to seek the bad guys $25,000.00 and then another $25,000.00 from your own policy. (there are certain exceptions under which you could recover more but they involve situations where the insured had to repay certain Federal programs)

Under the new scheme as laid out in O.C.G.A. §33-7-11(b), the consumer can now make three basic choices. First you can chose to waive the coverage entirely. (bad idea) Second you can get Add-On type Uninsured Motorist Insurance Coverage. This is the best choice. Going back to the example above, if the bad guy has $25,000.00 and you have $50,000.00 of Add-On type Uninsured Motorist coverage then you can recover up to $75,000.00 for a serious injury.

Over the last six months, my law practice has received a staggering number of calls from clients that have been burned through the negligence of others. I have represented a Decatur, Georgia woman burned at a Stone Mountain spa by hot stone therapy that resulted in second degree burns and permanent scarring; a Gainesville Georgia toddler that received skin grafts after having hot grits spilled on her hands at day care; an Atlanta Georgia woman that was burned when the drive through attendant spilled coffee on her resulting in second degree burns and permanent scarring and just this past week I spoke with a woman whose 22 month old had to receive skin grafts after the gravy at Dairy Queen spilled on them.Put simply, these companies are actively ignoring the acute danger that scalding foods and liquids pose.Let’s talk about burns for a moment. First, it is important to know that adult skin is more that 4 times as thick as a child’s and therefore, a child will sustain a full thickness burn much more quickly than an adult. According to the National Burn Victim Foundation, it would take a liquid at 140 degrees 5 seconds on adult skin to cause a 3rd degree burn. On a child it would only take 1 second.

A First Degree burn is painful but only involves the out layer of the skin, the epidermis.

A Second Degree burn will show blistering and can get into the reticular layer of the dermis. They can result in scarring and can require grafts when they are partial thickness burns instead of superficial only.