Syringomyelia and Chiari malformations are relatively rare, closely related, neurological conditions that may be congenital but also may be caused or severely aggravated by trauma in an accident such as head or neck injury an automobile collision. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computer tomography) scans are essential to the diagnosis of both.

Physicians accustomed to dealing with musculoskeletal injuries such as fractures, disc herniations, and whiplash, often completely miss the diagnosis of these extremely painful and debilitating injuries. They may even accuse the patients of exaggeration or malingering.

Chiari malformation is a little-understood condition in which the lowest

For decades, I have represented the victims of catastrophic car and truck crashes. The most seriously hurt among them, with brain and spinal cord injuries, owed their survival in the days and weeks after injury to treatment in trauma centers and Intensive Care Units (ICU). Only later were they even eligible to benefit from excellent rehabilitation programs such as those at Shepherd and Emory.

Now ICU capacity at Georgia hospitals is virtually exhausted due to treatment of Covid-19 patients, about 97% of whom are unvaccinated. Both the physical capacity of hospitals in terms of ICU

For decades I have  represented people with so-called “mild” traumatic brain injuries. A “mild” traumatic brain injury  (TBI) may be defined as one affecting someone else’s family, not your own.

These typically involve a concussion, with or without a loss of consciousness. Emergency medical personnel and emergency department physicians often focus primarily on more obvious physical injuries. If there are visible and immediately life threatening injuries, broken bones or internal bleeding, that is the focus.

Subtle but life altering brain injuries are easily overlooked. Unless there is a gross brain bleed readily visible on a CT scan of the brain,

You are a great lawyer in your area of practice. You are also smart enough to know when a big case may require prompt action outside your comfort zone.

Just as a trial lawyer may not feel comfortable handling a complex real estate, divorce or estate planning matter, a great lawyer in those fields may not want to risk a client’s rights by trying to figure out how to handle a catastrophic truck crash case.

When you get a call from a friend or client that a family member has been killed or seriously injured in a crash with a

In catastrophic truck crashes that kill or catastrophically injury innocent people, the root cause of the tragedy is often not the momentary carelessness of a truck driver. Rather, the root cause is very often the systemic mismanagement by a company that puts behind the wheel of an 80,000 bomb a person who never should have been driving it. The driver may be a good guy who because inadequate training or experience, bad driving record, or physical incapacity was not well-fitted for the job. That can result in a claim for negligent entrustment.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Georgia

When my father’s generation came home from World War II, many of them carried psychological scars about which they kept quiet. My parents married young, at 21 and 18, the week he returned from combat in 1945. My mother said that dad fought the air war over Europe every night in his sleep for at least a decade. The longer-term ramifications of that played out in many ways throughout his life. As he lay dying over six decades later, he began to tell me for the first time the war experiences that had haunted him most through his life.

Recently,

bright-ideaNo matter how many years a lawyer has practiced, there is no end to the need for exposure to bright new ideas from the best lawyers around the United States.

Over the past year, I had the opportunity to serve as chair of the Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway and Premises Liability Section of the American Association for Justice (AAJ). The largest section of AAJ, it encompasses the work of most “meat and potatoes” personal injury and wrongful death lawyers in America.

The section includes over 2,500 trial lawyers in all 50 states and specialized litigation groups on trucking litigation, bus

child carseatOnly a monstrous parent would intentionally leave a child in a hot car for hours to suffer and die. While that is the allegation in a pending murder case in Georgia, even if proven true it would be aberrational.

But every summer we hear of a rash of incidents in which a distracted, multitasking parents, usually functioning outside their normal routine, forgets a child sleeping in the back seat. The results are tragic — death or brain damage due to heat stroke. On average, 37 children die in this way in the US every year.

It can happen

facebook-iphoneMost of us today carry cell phones in our pockets with more processing power than the computers aboard the Apollo moon missions. Frequent news reports illustrate the dangers of thoughtless use of smartphones and social media. It has ensnared politicians and celebrities, sometimes crashing promising careers. This technology has created similar hazards for both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation who are careless about online social media privacy. While we are quick to look for the other side’s vulnerabilities, we must also play defense in protecting our clients from their own electronic blunders.

Many people today, especially younger ones, think

brain-injury-md

We have known for a long time that young survivors of even so-called “mild” traumatic brain injury (TBI) are more likely than others to develop problems with alcohol and drug abuse than people without TBI. They are also more likely to have problems with irritability or aggressiveness, including explosive outbursts, which can be set off by minimal provocation. This is consistent with research showing that 76% to 88% of prisoners have a history of traumatic brain injury.

That’s why many people define “mild” traumatic brain injury as an injury to anybody who is not in your family.

So