Atlanta

Subscribe to Atlanta via RSS

Much of our Atlanta-based litigation law practice is based upon referrals from other attorneys around Georgia and North America for catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases in Georgia. Most of these are not simple, slam-dunk cases. Often we have to contend with a rat’s nest of convoluted, multi-layered liability defenses. Among those is often the “independent contractor” defense. The company that is the prime mover in an activity may cloak itself behind an “independent contractor” shell game, capturing most of the profits while trying to outsource all the risks of harm to others.

Here is a paper I presented on…

Amputees in the 21st century have come a long way from the image of the peg leg pirate and the dull, heavy prosthetic leg of even a few years ago.  Increasingly, technological advances in prosthetic replacements for amputated arms, legs, feet and hands promise to exceed the Bionic Woman and Six Million Dollar Man TV fantasies a generation ago.My job as an Atlanta trial attorney handling serious injury cases in Georgia is to help clients with amputation injuries secure the funds to take advantage of these new advances.

Much of the funding for research and development has come from…

In the summer we all want to spend more time outdoors. One of my favorite outdoor activities is bicycle riding. As an Atlanta personal injury and wrongful death lawyer and occasional cyclist, I can’t help viewing the risks of injury along with the benefits of exercise.

Maybe that is why most of my biking is on the Silver Comet Trail and other designated bike paths.

When we do ride on busy Atlanta streets, there are some practical bike safety tips we should keep in mind:

  1. Protect yourself from head injuries.  One study reported that 97% of people killed

…

As we ramp up capacity to handle more and larger cases of wrongful death and catastropic personal injury, and prepare to move into new office space in the Buckhead area of Atlanta later in the summer, I am pleased to welcome two new staff members:

…

Cruise ships are like floating cities with thousands of passengers on board. Usually a lot more fun than the typical workaday city, but probably no less likely to involve accidents and injuries.

Cruise ship lines cannot guarantee that no one will get hurt aboard, but they do have a responsibility to prevent dangerous conditions on board that can cause serious injury to its passengers. When a cruise ship accident occurs because of poor maintenance, incompetent or  improperly trained employees, inadequate safety equipment or emergency precautions, the cruise  line can be held accountable.

Cruise ship tickets typically have a provision that…

This month’s issue of the Georgia Bar Journal includes my swan song (“End of Year Report”) which I delivered June 1, 2012, at the plenary session of the State Bar annual meeting in Savannah. For those who need somnolent bedtime reading, here is the text as edited and published

End of Year Report
Kenneth L. Shigley

The bylaws of the State Bar of Georgia specify the duties of the president. One of the responsibilities is to “deliver a report at the Annual Meeting of the members of the activities of the State Bar during his or her term in office…

Advocates of tort reform often call for “loser pays” legislation. Georgia already has five different “loser pays” rules. In earlier posts I have discussed OCGA § 9-11-68, enacted as part of tort reform legislation in 2005, which includes both the offer of judgment / offer of settlement rule and the frivolous claims and defenses rule.

O.C.G.A. § 9-15-14, enacted in 1986, provides for a motion for award of fees and expenses against a party that had asserted a claim or defense “that lacked substantial justification or that the action, or any part thereof, was interposed for delay or harassment, or…

ABCO Transportation, Inc., a refrigerated freight haulder based in Dade City, Florida, has had for several years an unsatisfactory record of unsafe driving violations with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. When a trucking company has a record as bad as ABCO, often there are issues of management turning a blind eye to safety, in my experience as a trucking trial attorney.

ABCO’s poor safety record culminated July 2012 when an ABCO truck driver ran a red light on Thornton Road in Douglas County, Georgia, causing a tragic crash that took the lives of two AutoTrader.com employees and injured…

Today, after 25 years of labor by countless volunteers on a succession of hard-working bar committees, the new Georgia Evidence Code was passed.  Unless I’m in court somewhere, I expect to be present when it is signed into law by Governor Nathan Deal. Appropriately enough, he sponsored an earlier version of the bill in the State Senate in 1990.

The new Evidence Code replaces a hodgepodge of case law largely derived from the Code of 1863. It is based upon the Federal Rules of Evidence which were enacted in 1975 and have been adopted in some form in 42 states including all states contiguous to Georgia.

The politics of this has been fascinating and totally inappropriate for me to detail in a blog post.

Kudos to House Judiciary Committee Chair Wendell Willard and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Bill Hamrick, a heavy majority in both houses of the legislature, and current State Bar President Lester Tate, who carried the ball over the goal line despite a pair of last minute "poison pill" amendments. Georgia State Law School professor Paul Milich, who has served many years as Reporter of the Evidence Study Committee, has done much of the heavy lifting and deserves credit. I would be remiss to overlook the roles played by Ray Persons and Tom Byrne as chairs of the Evidence Study Committee and by nearly every State Bar president since the late 1980s.

Of course there are those of us who are happy to practice law with or without the new evidence code, and some who late in their careers don’t want to learn anything new. However, it is based upon the Federal Rules of Evidence which nearly all lawyers under 60 studied in law school. With its incorporation of several features unique to Georgia law, I think it is an improvement upon both the hodgepodge of Georgia evidence law and the Federal Rules of Evidence. All in all, it is a net gain for the justice system in Georgia.

Click here for Professor Milich’s summary of the new Evidence Code.

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.