Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

As a big part of my practice as an Atlanta personal injury lawyer in north Georgia, I handle many cases involving neck and back injuries. Many of these injuries are caused by motor vehicle accidents - involving cars, motor cycles and tractor trailers. Oftentimes surgery is required to treat these injuries. Unfortunately, insurance companies insuring the at-fault parties causing the accidents argue that such surgeries are not necessary to treat accident related injuries, but are needed to treat pre-existing conditions. The insurance companies do this to avoid paying the full value of a claim.

Typically, after an accident, my clients will feel pain and discomfort in their necks and/or backs and seek conservative treatment to treat these conditions. If conservative treatment is unsuccessful in resolving the problems, they will often have epidural steroid injections directly into the effected part of the spine. If these shots provide no relief, surgery becomes the last option.

The surgical procedures performed in these situations can include a diskectomy and fusion of the cervical (neck) or lumbar (back) spine; a decompression lamenectomy of the cervical or lumbar spine; a facetectomy of the cervical or lumbar spine, or some combination all of these procedures. These procedures are complicated, painful and proper recovery takes a lot of time.

The insurance companies, in an effort to justify not compensating for these procedures, will claim there is pre-existing arthritis and degenerative disc disease, including, spinal stenosis, osteophites, disc desication, spondilosis, and spondiolythesis, that are the cause of the surgery. The truth is, it is likely these conditions are present in the spine and do pre-exist the accident. That fact, however, does not mean the surgery was not required because of the accident and that the at-fault party/insurance company is not responsible for the related medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

An experienced Atlanta car and trucking accident attorney will know the complicated medicine related to spinal injuries and how to convince insurance companies - or the juries, if need be - that the surgery was required by the injuries caused in the collision and needs to be compensated. Arthritis and degenerative disc disease are often asymptomatic (they do not cause any pain, discomfort, numbness, tingling, etc.), and the trauma to the body in even low impact collisions can cause the otherwise painless conditions to become very painful and life changing. Don't let an insurance company determine whether your injuries and surgery are the result on their insured negligent actions. Please contact our firm if you or a loved one has suffered spinal injuries in a car or trucking accident to ensure this does not happen.

As an Atlanta car accident attorney, I was saddened to read in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on line that a 45 year old man was killed when he was thrown from the back of a pickup truck on I-285. The pickup truck rolled over after colliding with another vehicle and there was nothing the man in the back of the truck could do to protect himself. The driver and two passengers inside the truck suffered minor or no injuries.

In Georgia, it is illegal to carry passengers in the bed of a pickup truck on the interstate. Although no charges have yet been filed, on the facts set out in the newspaper article, it appears the driver of the pickup truck was violating Georgia law which contributed to the man's death. Even if no charges are filed, the driver may very well be liable to the family of the deceased man for his wrongful death.

Generally speaking, the estate and survivors of a deceased wrongfully killed in Georgia may recover damages for the medical bills, funeral expenses, conscious pain and suffering, and full economic and non-economic value of the life of the deceased. Wrongful death claims in Georgia can have signnificant value, oftentimes in the millons of dollars. Because of the significant values, insurance companies often fight hard to find ways to deny liability and pay little or nothing when these claims are made.

Accordingly, these cases need to be handled by experienced car accident lawyers familiar with the complicated issues involved in litigating wrongful death cases in Georgia. Hopefully, the family of the deceased in the article will be fortunate to have such competent counsel.

As an Atlanta personal injury lawyer practicing in north Georgia, I have written on this blog more than once about the dangers of texting while driving both cars and trucks. It seems that such behavior is condemned by many, and on Monday of this week, Oprah Winfrey discussed the dangers of texting and driving and the catastrophic consequences of such behavior.

It now appears that the Georgia General Assembly is seeking to pass a bill banning testing while driving and imposing stiff fines as punishment for such behavior. According to a recent article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on line, two members of the Georgia House of Representatives have introduced bills that would ban the practice. Under what will most likely be a bill merged out of the two original bills, "anyone found guilty of writing, sending or reading a text message while driving" would be subject to a fine most likely between $100 and $300 and have points added to their license.

The authors of the bills believe the legislation will save lives. The article gives the example of the grandson of a constituent of one of the bill's authors who recently died in a head-on collision. After the tragedy, the police investigation revealed that the young driver had sent six texts from the time he got in the car and the accident. It is likely that the last of those texts distracted the driver causing the vehicle to drift into the head-on collision. Texting and driving is becoming a very big problem with not only young people, but also adults. It distracts drivers and is a leading cause of accidents causing serous injury and deaths.

According to the newspaper article, a ban on testing and driving is the AAA's top legislative priority. If a bill passes in Georgia, our state will join 19 other states in banning the practice. If the bill passes in Georgia, it may also raise the stakes of civil penalties when suits are brought for damages for causing serious injuries and death while texting and driving. Punitive damages will now most certainly be available to punish and deter this behavior. It will be difficult for an offender to argue that they did not know how dangerous texting and driving is once it is banned.