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.
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. 
Few people recall that my undergraduate alma mater, Furman University in South Carolina, once had a law school. In the depths of the Great Depression, 
No words can ever be adequate when a young 
Much of our Atlanta-based litigation law practice is based upon 
Property 
a month, we receive a solicitation to purchase some made-up “honor” with a certificate suitable for framing designating the “best” or “top” lawyers in my practice area. Almost all are phony vanity distinctions for sale to anyone willing to pay the inflated price, but signifying nothing. I either toss them in the “round file” or post on the office refrigerator with sarcastic annotations.
Very often, in wrongful death lawsuits I represent families who after traumatic loss of a family member struggle with grief. Mourning the death of a loved one is a universal experience that sooner or later befalls all of humanity. But despite the common themes, everyone has a different experience of grief and loss.