Kenneth Shigley

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Top 100 Personal Injury Lawyers
Top 100 Personal Injury Lawyers

Kenneth L. Shigley, Sr., of Atlanta, Georgia, has been named one of America’s Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys ® for 2020.

Selection to America’s Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys® is by invitation only and is reserved to identity the nation’s most exceptional litigators for high-value personal injury, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, product liability, and medical malpractice matters.
To be considered for selection, an attorney must focus more than 50% of their active legal practice on personal injury, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, product liability, and/or medical malpractice matters. These minimum…

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.

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…

georgia-county-map
Georgia’s 159 counties

When people call us about a potential lawsuit for wrongful death or catastrophic injury in Georgia, one of the topics they sometimes find confusing is the decision about where to file a suit.

The choice of court in which to file suit involves the interaction of subject matter jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, and venue. In general, subject matter jurisdiction dictates which courts have the authority to hear cases regarding a generalized subject matter. Personal jurisdiction refers to the authority of a specific court to enforce its judgment as to a particular defendant. Venue rules…

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…

georgia highway mapAbout once a month I get a call from an attorney in another state asking about the procedure for making injury and death claims against Georgia state government. Too often they are disappointed to learn that their letters to and correspondence with a claims adjuster for the state was not adequate notice of the claim. If a year has passed without sending notice of claim in proper form, their clients are out of luck. More than once,  I  have gently suggested that a lawyer notify his   legal malpractice insurance carrier.

Once again, on May 17, 2016, the Georgia Court of…

During a 1964 speech on re-apportionment, Rep. Denmark Groover (D-Macon) nearly fell over the state House railing trying to adjust the hands of the clock to keep it from reaching the mandatory hour of adjournment. The clock ended up falling. MANDATORY CREDIT: Joe McTyre / The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stopping the clock in Georgia.  In 1964, Rep. Denmark Groover (D-Macon) hung over the gallery rail to stop the clock from reaching midnight on the last day of the legislative session. (AJC file photo by Joe McTyre)

When an injury or death claim arises from a crime, in Georgia the clock stops on the statute of limitation up to six years when a criminal prosecution is not complete. That extension of the limitation period now applies to other defendants in the civil case, even if the criminal is never caught and prosecuted.

In July 2016,…

A lawyer's calling
A lawyer’s calling

Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow.

– Isaiah 1:17

It was a Sunday in December 1971, at my grandparents’ home in Mentone, Alabama, halfway down the hundred-mile-long plateau from Chattanooga to Gadsden that is Lookout Mountain. Within a mile radius were the simple homes, church, school and country graveyard intimately entwined with several generations of our family.

At the “children’s table” off the kitchen with my cousins, I could faintly hear the conversation of our elders at…

route-guidance-system-navigation-satnav-gpsGPS technology is one of the great conveniences of life in the 21st century. When it works right it enables us to find our way through unfamiliar areas with ease.

Other times it can lead us terribly astray.

But at all times we should follow the device directions by entering destination information while safely parked and use the “human override” of common sense is following the driving directions.

Today in Atlanta, we have a tragic example of the importance of keeping those principles in mind.

Police report that King Fareed from North Carolina was focused on his phone’s GPS…