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Ken Shigley of Shigley Law LLC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, recently earned his third national board certification, in Truck Accident Law, from the National Board of Trial Advocacy. Certification is based upon exhaustive testing, documentation of extensive experience in the field of trucking accident litigation, writing samples, and professional recommendations from lawyers and attorneys familiar with the applicant’s work.

The National Board of Trial Advocacy operates under authority of the American Bar Association.   “There is no dispute about the bona fides and the relevance of NBTA certification…. Disclosure of information . . .  both serves the public interest…

In catastrophic truck crashes that kill or catastrophically injury innocent people, the root cause of the tragedy is often not the momentary carelessness of a truck driver. Rather, the root cause is very often the systemic mismanagement by a company that puts behind the wheel of an 80,000 bomb a person who never should have been driving it. The driver may be a good guy who because inadequate training or experience, bad driving record, or physical incapacity was not well-fitted for the job. That can result in a claim for negligent entrustment.

In 2015, the Supreme Court of Georgia…

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…

In today’s  Atlanta Journal-Constitution includes there appears a tragically true story by Steve Owings, whose son was killed by a speeding tractor trailer on cruise control six years ago. In the wake of his son’s death, Steve and his wife founded Road Safe America

Knowing Steve’s motivation to make the roads safer for everyone, I’m taking the liberty of copying his full article here in order to give it wider distribution.

Big rig killed our son; drive safely on busiest traffic day

By Stephen C. Owings

For the Journal-Constitution

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

My rearview mirror has turned into a time

…

As a trucking accident trial attorney in Atlanta, I find myself speaking at continuing legal education seminars around the country pretty often. This year I’ve spoken on various aspects of trucking litigation at CLE programs in Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans, and have been asked to speak at upcoming seminars in California and Pennsylvania. That’s doesn’t mean I’m all that good, just that I never learned to say no and do better than average Power Point.

Today I got word of appointment to the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Continuing Legal Education in Georgia. My thoughts trailed back 15 years to the first ICLE program I chaired, "Insurance Law for the General Practitioner," in the fall of 1993.

It is impossible to overstate the vital importance of continuing legal education to maintain the competence of any member of the legal profession in any practice area.  The minimum required CLE for all Georgia lawyers is pretty basic.  I never cease to be amazed at the lawyers who resent and resist attending continuing legal education programs and wind up getting their hours in a video replay on some topic irrelevant to their practice the week before the final deadline for the year.

A Florida truck driver admitted that he was on his cell phone yesterday when he slammed into a school bus, killing a 13-year-old student. According to a report by Austin Miller of the Ocala Star-Banner, the school bus, which had stopped to let children off , had its warning lights on and stop signs out. The truck driver said he never saw the bus. He  failed to stop for it and rammed the school bus forward 294 feet. The bus was fully engulfed in flames. 

See our recent posts on cell phone distractions and the absence of seat belts on busses.