On a warm October afternoon two years ago, wearing one of the yarmulkes that Jewish funeral directors provide for non-Jewish attendees, I helped shovel red Georgia dirt into the open grave of an old client and friend. As I did so, I pondered the unanswered question whether long-term side effects of her food poisoning a quarter century earlier had contributed to her death after years of internal organ illnesses.

A recent decision of the Georgia Supreme Court on what is required to get a food poisoning case to a jury brought that grim saga back to mind.

In Patterson v.

georgia-county-map
Georgia’s 159 counties

When people call us about a potential lawsuit for wrongful death or catastrophic injury in Georgia, one of the topics they sometimes find confusing is the decision about where to file a suit.

The choice of court in which to file suit involves the interaction of subject matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, and venue. In general, subject matter jurisdiction dictates which courts have the authority to hear cases regarding a generalized subject matter. Personal jurisdiction refers to the authority of a specific court to enforce its judgment as to a particular defendant. Venue rules

Georgia_State_Patrol_patchThe leadership of the Georgia State Patrol deserves credit for openness in promptly taking disciplinary action and publicly disclosing that a State Trooper’s reckless conduct caused the deaths of two west Georgia  teenagers and injuries to two others last week.

State Trooper Anthony J. Scott, 26, was fired Friday after investigators determined he was driving 91 mph five seconds before a crash that killed Kylie Hope Lindsey, 17, and Isabella Alise Chinchilla, 16, both of whom were back seat passengers and students at South Paulding High School. Front seat occupants Dillon Lewis Wall, 18, and Benjamin Alan Finken, 17, both

life values

In Georgia wrongful death law, the measure of damages is the “full value of life,” which includes both economic and noneconomic value of the decedent’s life to him or her. Unlike some states, Georgia does not provide for recovery of losses suffered by those left behind, who are deprived of the companionship, advice, counsel, or consortium of the deceased. But unlike other states, in respecting the sanctity of all human life, Georgia does not impose any rigid formula or cap on the value of life.

The economic component of the full value of life include the present value of

hold hands

The “laying on of hands” can resonate powerfully. In my background, it has spiritual and theological implications as a ritual of blessing or of healing. Can this and other senses beyond sight and hearing also be part of legitimate trial advocacy in conveying truth to jurors?

The Georgia Court of Appeals recently said yes in the context of a case where two experts disagreed on whether there was a difference in temperature of the hands of a plaintiff who had a diagnosis of complex regional pain syndrome (also known as reflex sympathetic dystrophy), due to medical malpractice.

Georgia State FlagOur home state of Georgia has been ranked #1 in business climate, according to Site Selection magazine’s annual ranking of states’ attractiveness to corporate facility investors. The selection criteria included a survey of corporate site selectors, the states’ competitiveness, qualified projects so far in 2013 on a per capita basis and state tax burdens on new and mature firms.

Georgia  is now more economically competitive than states such as Texas that have enacted draconian measures to block access of injured people to their court systems.   Georgia has also become more attractive to businesses than North Carolina  and Tennessee

Ken Shigley has been named a trustee of the Institute for Continuing Judicial Education in Georgia for 2013-14.

The ICJE is a resource consortium of the Georgia Judicial Branch, the State Bar of Georgia, and the ABA accredited law schools of the State (Emory, Georgia State, Mercer, Atlanta’s John Marshall Law School, and the University of Georgia). It bears primary responsibility for basic training and continuing education of elected officials, court support personnel and volunteer agents of the State’s judicial branch. Conferences and seminars signify the products traditionally identified with the ICJE by its constituents. During a typical program year,

“You snooze, you lose.” The time limit to file a lawsuit in court for personal injury or wrongful death in Georgia is two years. But the time to present a notice of claim to a city government when one is hurt or killed by a municipal government’s negligence or public nuisance — whether due to negligent operation of a city vehicle, dangerous conditions on city property, failure to replace a missing traffic sign or whatever —  is only six months.

O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5 requires that notice be provided to a municipality within 6 months of the  claim. We lawyers

Most bright middle school students probably have a working knowledge of the concept of hearsay, simply as gossip.  “He said she said” does not mean the statement is true.

Hearsay as a legal rather than merely social concept is part of the law of evidence. The Georgia rule on hearsay will change on January 1st, when the new Evidence Code becomes law.

The new Georgia Evidence Code, based more or less on the Federal Rules of Evidence, will go into effect on January 1, 2013. The new Evidence Code was a long-time project of the State Bar. Sponsored

Often in trials involving catastrophic brain injury that renders the plaintiff so incompetent as to be unable to assist her lawyers at trial, the defense moves first to bifurcate the trial between liability and damages phases, and then to exclude the plaintiff from the courtroom during the liability phase.

The idea is to prevent the jury from mixing sympathy for the plaintiff with determination of fault.

Over the years I have had mixed results in dealing with that issue, with both sides arguing on the basis of court decisions in other jurisdictions, as there has been no definitive Georgia law