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Douglas County, Georgia, where I graduated from high school and returned for a few years as a young lawyer, is known as a very conservative venue. However, Douglas Countians do not lack the ability to do the right thing when the facts call for it.

Today’s news includes a report that the State Court of Douglas County awarded $700,000 damages against the owner of a pit bull that mauled an 8 year old neighbor child. Before that incident, the owner had been cited at least 10 times over a four-month period and seriously attacked another neighbor in her driveway.

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Large burn injuries today are treated with split thickness skin grafts. A dermatome, a tool comparable to a cheese slicer, is used to harvest thin slices of epidermis from donor sites on an uninjured part of the body. The harvested skin may then be meshed in order to cover a larger area  by making lengthwise rows of short, interrupted cuts,  offset by half a cut length like bricks in a wall. The effect reminds one of the top of an apple pie crust.

Graft donor sites are often even more painful than burn sites.  The pain is both burn and donor locations may be absolutely surreal, beyond the capacity of words to describe. Donor sites may take longer to return to something normal coloration. The grafted sites, however, may always appear somewhat scarred and discolored with traces of the graft mesh pattern.

Now, according to a report on CNN, researchers are developing a technique to use inkjet printer technology to "print" live skin cells on a burn injury. It may be five years from clinical use.

A skin "bio-printer" was developed by modifying a standard store-bought printer by adding a three-dimensional "elevator" that builds on damaged tissue with fresh layers of healthy skin.

Skin-printing involves several steps. First, a  piece of skin about half the size of a postage stamp is taken from the patient using a chemical solution.Those cells are then separated and replicated in large quantities in a specialized environment that catalyzes this cell development. Then the new cells are put in a printer cartridge, and printed on the patient. The printer is placed over the wound at a distance so that it doesn’t touch the burn victim. It is described as " like a flat-bed scanner that moves back and forth and put cells on" the patient. Once the new cells have been applied, they mature and form new skin.

The potential for improving burn treatment is transformational. No longer would burn victims suffer from excruciating pain on large donor sites. And the new skin evenly "printed" on the injured area should be able to grow without the kind of lattice scarring and discoloration common in skin grafts today.

Road design is a big factor in preventing auto and truck accidents, personal injury and wrongful deaths in Georgia and around the world. In my practice as a personal injury trial attorney in Atlanta, it is clear to me that prevention is the best approach.

According to an article by Ariel Hart in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Georgia Department of Transportation is considering three new intersection designs to relieve traffic congestion for minimal cost. The ideas are intriguing but I wonder how Georgia drivers will adjust to these unfamiliar designs.

With good lights and signage adequate to overcome the problems of unfamiliar and counter-intuitive design, perhaps these innovations can help reduce accidents and congestion. I just hope GDOT doesn’t skimp on signage!

In my home Douglas County  today, a motorcyclist was killed when a trailer carrying aluminum cans that had separated from the pickup truck that was pulling it.  According to the Georgia State Patrol, the crash happened around 1 p.m. near the intersection of Lee Road and Park Avenue in Douglas County. The pickup truck was going around a curve when the trailer behind separated, colliding with the motorcyclist. The driver of the pickup, Don Harold Yarbrough, 53, of Douglasville, was charged  with vehicular homicide, DUI, failing to maintain lane and failing to secure load. Police had not yet released the name of the victim.

This tragedy brings back to mind the death of my uncle, Abe Hartley in Douglasville, who was killed when someone pulled out in front of his Harley motorcycle as he crested a small hill near his home.

On April 22nd, a Henry County police officer was killed in a traffic accident in Butts County on his way to work.   Officer  James "Jimmy’ Franklin Carter Jr., was an 11-year veteran of the Henry County Police Department, worked in Uniform Patrol, as a detective in the Criminal Investigations Division, as a K-9 officer, and as a Field Training Officer.The incident is being investigated by the Georgia State Patrol.

This week a carpet mill worker at the Beaulieu plant in Murray County, Georgia, was injured falling into a tufting machine. He was airlifted to Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga.

Workers compensation provides the exclusive remedy of an injured worker against the employer in work accidents.

However, sometimes an injured worker can recover additional compensation for an injury from a third party, such as an equipment manufacturer. Since Georgia law was changed in 2005 to require apportionment of damages among both parties and non-parties to a lawsuit, that has been made more difficult as an equipment manufacturer can try to shift more blame to an employer’s negligent maintenance, training and supervision.

However, every case is different.  Over the years we have successfully represented workers injured by carpet mill machinery, poultry processing equipment, commercial bakery equipment, plastic extrusion machines, wood chippers,  forklift trucks, and a wide variety of other industrial and commercial equipment.

Manufacturers of industrial equipment may be liable to injured workers under legal doctrines including negligent design; failure to adequately test and inspect;failure to provide adequate instructions, warnings and labels; and failure to issue an adequate recall notice.

In one carpet mill case we handled, the manufacturer of a laminating machine had installed an emergency stop cord switch backwards — contrary to instructions from the switch manufacturer — and failed to install any safety stop cord on the side of the machine where a worker was most likely to fall in.

 

As a trucking and auto safety attorney in Atlanta, and as a former prosecutor, I have developed a strong appreciation for the competence and professionalism of the Georgia State Patrol.

Now the state’s budget crisis is impacting the GSP’s capacity to cover the rural areas of our state.

According to a report by Rhonda Cook in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, each patrolman will be furloughed two days per month for the rest of the year.  That will mean roughly a ten percent pay cut for troopers who are already underpaid. 

Some patrol posts have as few as eight troopers to provide 24 hour coverage for 15 to 24 counties. Twenty of the state’s 48 patrol posts close between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. and don’t reopen until 7 a.m., leaving only an operator to take emergency calls and to rouse an on-call trooper from bed to respond.

This is bad news for public safety in Georgia’s rural areas and interstate highways.