personal injury

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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…

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…

When a family member is killed or seriously injured in a crash with a tractor trailer, a normal human instinct is to wait a decent interval before consulting an attorney. Then one may be inclined to take one’s time talking with a hometown lawyer who handles an occasional car wreck case along with divorces, criminal cases and real estate closings.  Meanwhile, trucking companies and their insurance companies are busy burying incriminating evidence.

A recent case in our office illustrates the importance of striking hard and fast to preserve evidence. While a truck crash victim was in ICU at the…

negligent hiring warning signOften in a catastrophic truck crash, the trucking company admits that the truck driver was negligent and was in the course and scope of employment. That is a smart tactic to attempt to focus all blame on two seconds of driver negligence rather than months or years of corporate conduct including negligent hiring of the driver. They may get by with it because of a Court of Appeals decision that bars claims for the company’s corporate negligence that are “merely duplicative” of respondeat superior agency liability for negligence of an employee. Hospital Authority of Valdosta/Lowndes County v. Fender, 342…

facebook-iphoneMost of us today carry cell phones in our pockets with more processing power than the computers aboard the Apollo moon missions. Frequent news reports illustrate the dangers of thoughtless use of smartphones and social media. It has ensnared politicians and celebrities, sometimes crashing promising careers. This technology has created similar hazards for both plaintiffs and defendants in litigation who are careless about online social media privacy. While we are quick to look for the other side’s vulnerabilities, we must also play defense in protecting our clients from their own electronic blunders.

Many people today, especially younger ones, think…

Georgia State FlagOur home state of Georgia has been ranked #1 in business climate, according to Site Selection magazine’s annual ranking of states’ attractiveness to corporate facility investors. The selection criteria included a survey of corporate site selectors, the states’ competitiveness, qualified projects so far in 2013 on a per capita basis and state tax burdens on new and mature firms.

Georgia  is now more economically competitive than states such as Texas that have enacted draconian measures to block access of injured people to their court systems.   Georgia has also become more attractive to businesses than North Carolina  and Tennessee…

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:

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The terrorist attack at the finish line of the Boston Marathon this week was similar to a lot of IED (improvised explosive device) explosions in the Iraq War in that it produced catastrophic leg injuries requiring emergency amputations. To most of us, that is one of the most horrifying injuries we can imagine.

But in my personal injury trial law practice in Atlanta, I am continually inspired and encouraged by people with amputation injuries who not merely survive but overcome and thrive.

  • The Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Carol Hunstein, lost a leg to cancer by the

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Many prospective clients in serious personal injury and wrongful death claims ask questions about legal fees and litigation expenses in handling their cases. As an Atlanta personal injury trial attorney handling serious injury and death cases across Georgia, and as an individual who remembers very well what it is like to be flat broke and in debt, I am very sensitive to those questions.

The short answer is that in handling personal injury and wrongful death cases for individuals and families, I do not require any money up front from clients whose cases I accept. I evaluate the merits of…

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…