Injury Law

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TV advertising law firmsLawyers and paralegals who had previously worked at personal injury firms that advertise heavily on television, billboards and bus placards have told me many tales about the business model of those firms.

They have told me how lawyers may be responsible for 600 cases at a time, with 100 or more in litigation.

They have told me how young lawyers in some of those firms are paid only for work on cases they settle before suit, so they have an extreme vested interest in taking whatever an insurance adjuster is willing to offer at that early stage, selling the client’s…

child carseatEvery summer there are far too many instances of children dying when left in a hot vehicle. One such tragedy involving a child care center without adequate insurance led to a claim against a city government for negligent licensing of the child care center.

Many child care centers in Georgia have no liability insurance because child care centers in Georgia are not required to carry any specific amount of liability insurance. The regulations governing Family Child Care Learning Homes require only “notification of the absence of a liability insurance policy sufficient to protect its clients,” though the amount of…

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…

video iphoneWhen I started practicing law in 1977, hardly anyone but TV stations had video cameras, which at the time were heavy, tripod-mounted and extremely expensive. The idea of being able to play a video recording of an event in court would have seemed like science fiction if anyone had been so fanciful as to suggest  it.

But today investigation of any serious injury or wrongful death case involves a hunt for video recordings from a variety of sources. We hardly could not have imagined this in my early days as a prosecutor.

In 1983, the first consumer camcorders began to…

home-invasion-480x320Atlantans were shocked a couple of weeks ago by the story of a home invasion robbery attempt in which teenage males approached a young father on his front porch, forced their way into the house and shot the father twice. His wife fled out the back door with their six-month-old infant while the invaders fired shots at her, and called 911 while hiding from them.

The alleged shooter, 18-year-old Brandon Jerome Smith, was arrested several days ago. Now three younger teenagers — 15-year-old Trequan Sutton, 15-year-old Quindarius Slade, and 14-year-old Veshawn Smith — have turned themselves in. They are…

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Almost all personal injury and wrongful death cases in the United States are handled on a contingent fee basis. That means that the lawyer is paid only in proportion to the amount recovered for the client. If there is no recovery, the lawyer is not paid. If money is recovered from the other side, the lawyer is paid an agreed percentage of that recovery plus reimbursement of the lawyer’s out of pocket expenses.

Years ago, when I was handling business-to-business commercial collection cases for small businesses in my hometown, I always gave those business clients the option of paying…

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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.…

Ken Shigley of Atlanta, who was president of the State Bar of Georgia in 2011-12, is now chair of the largest practice area section in the American Association for Justice (AAJ), the national organization of plaintiffs’ trial attorneys. Shigley took the helm of the Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway & Premises Liability Section of AAJ and the organization’s annual convention in Montreal on July 14, 2015.

ken_shigley_coverWith over 2,500 members nationwide, the section includes specialized litigation practice groups on Trucking Litigation, Bus Litigation, Traumatic Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Motorcycle Litigation, Bicycle Litigation, Resort Torts Litigation and…

We have all seen drivers distracted by their electronic devices behind the wheel. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations now forbid interstate truck drivers from texting or talking on a hand held cell phone while driving. But recently we were hired in a multiple fatality crash on a Georgia interstate highway in which the truck driver admitted to police that he did not see the vehicles he hit because he was distracted by talking on his cell phone.

In January 2014, the National Transportation Safety Board released its 2014 Most Wanted List, the top 10 advocacy and awareness…

Keyless ignitions, introduced in the late 1990’s, were intended to offer drivers convenience. Instead, they have disrupted a well-established set of driver behaviors and expectations, and introduced rollaway and carbon monoxide poisoning hazards that have resulted in injuries and death. Since 2010, there have been eight publically acknowledged deaths and two serious injuries from carbon monoxide poisonings linked to keyless ignition.

Due to this growing problem, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened a compliance investigation into 34 recent model-year vehicle that defy the letter and intent of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 114. Vehicle conditions that allow…