Low back fracture injuries often arise from high-energy events such as car and truck crashes. We have seen hundreds of them in decades of personal injury law practice.

3d render human spine anatomy with pain symptoms – back view – Grayscale Image

A fracture of a vertebra in the low back (lumbar) region causes back pain, often severe, that is aggravated by movement. When low back fracture injuries involve teh spinal cord or nerves, there may also be bowel/bladder dysfunction, numbness, tingling, or weakness in the limbs.

When low back fractrue injuries are caused by

The femur (thigh bone), extending from the hip to the knee, is the strongest and longest
bone in the human body. Because it is so strong, in relatively young people it usually requires a great deal of kinetic force to break the femur shaft. That often happens in truck, car and motorcycle crashes. In older people with weaker bones, however, a fall may be sufficient to fracture of the femur, especially the neck of the femur where it joins the pelvis.

In our decades of representing badly injured Georgians, we have handled numerous femur fracture cases. In

COVID-19 has thrust us into a global crisis unprecedented in the century since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19. It is not merely disruptive in our daily routines. It involves life, death and enormous hardship in massive scale, probably for a prolonged time.  In this new reality, some of the routines dealing with individual injury cases may be eclipsed by a near term future we did not anticipate just a few weeks ago.

The “new normal” after the end of this pandemic is impossible to discern. Some pundits have emphasized hope that after the entire population passes this crucible of

Transformation of  lives of clients and their families is part of my calling in law practice. While money is the quantitative measure of success, whenever possible I also try to guide outcomes in a way that will redirect the trajectory of life for clients and their families. A recent case is a good example.

Recently we handled a case for a 30-year-old single mom from a less than privileged background. She had struggled to put herself through a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) program. When injured, she was working as a CNA and living paycheck-to-paycheck with her daughter in a modest

Image result for ethylene oxide
Ethylene oxide

Sterigenics plants in Smyrna and Covington, Georgia, have long used ethylene oxide in sterilization of medical equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency air assessment from last year found several census tracts around those plants had significantly increased cancer risks due to ethylene oxide. The EPA recently concluded that the gas is dangerous at lower levels than previously believed.

Ethylene oxide is an organic compound with the formula C2H4O. A colorless and flammable gas with a faintly sweet odor, it has many uses in industry but is not safe for household

Though common in litigation, confidential settlements can be controversial.

While confidentiality agreements had help expedite settlement, there are concerns that secret settlements can work against public safety by covering up health and safety hazards. As with much in life, the hardest choices are not between good and bad, but between good and good, and between bad and bad.

Under a confidential settlement agreement or order, some or all terms of a settlement are kept secret. Defense lawyers routinely include a confidentiality clause in a proposed release when there is a large settlement. Sometimes it is a throwaway item in a

Rear underride crash test

Death by decapitation due to trailer underride  can  result when tractor trailers park on the roadside.

The kneejerk response of most people seeing pictures of these incidents is to simply blame the dead person. But it’s not that simple. When an innocent passenger is killed or maimed, some portion of fault is normally apportioned to the driver who departed from the traffic lane for whatever reason. But it is necessary to also examine a trucking company’s decision to violate safety standards by parking a big rig on the side of the road.

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,

The Georgia Supreme Court ruled on 11/7/2016 that outgoing text messages found in a cell phone are admissible in evidence as admissions of the person who sent them. However, incoming text messages are inadmissible hearsay, though their admission in evidence was “harmless” under the circumstances of the case. Glispie v. State, decided November 7, 2016.

This ruling arose in the context of the criminal prosecution of an alleged drug dealer. That would have been a great interest in my past life as a prosecutor, though of course cell phones had not been invented when I was sending criminals to

emergency roomThis morning on her way to work, a paralegal in our office was injured when someone rear-ended her car on the way to work. When she was waiting for a CT scan in the hospital emergency department, she sent us a text reporting that she had already been called on her cell phone by two “runners” to solicit her for unidentified lawyers. Apparently someone in the police department, ambulance service or hospital had corruptly sold her personal information to someone who was willing to commit a crime and a disbarment offense to solicit her for a case. I asked if