Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

I read an AJC on line article today about a 7 year old boy who drowned at a pool at a Suwannee apartment complex. As a father of two children, I cannot imagine the pain the family must be feeling. As a personal injury lawyer representing clients in Atlanta and north Georgia, I am curious about how such a tragedy occurred. According to the article, the young boy was pulled out of the water when discovered floating face down. It is unclear how long the boy was underwater before he was pulled out. A later written AJC on line article indicated that the boy was at the pool with his mom and other members of their church.

Although there is nothing to bring this young boy back to life, the parents of the child may have a claim to recover wrongful death damages for his death. For this to happen, the circumstances surrounding the death need to show that someone other than a family member was negligent in allowing the boy to drown. For instance, if the apartment provided a life guard service, there may be a question as to whether the life guards on duty failed to provide adequate protection for the swimmers. Issues can also arise regarding the slope of the pool and whether a safety line is in place. The facts could also support that another swimmer was responsible. There are many possibilities.

These types of cases are difficult to pursue successfully. Because the circumstances surrounding a drowning are so important to proving liability, the sooner a lawyer is involved, the sooner he or she can investigate the facts surrounding the incident to preserve evidence, including witness statements. Memories fade quickly and can be influenced and physical evidence tends to be lost and destroyed very quickly if they are helpful to prove a person or an entity was at fault causing the drowning. Hiring an attorney quickly ensures a proper investigation memorializing witness interviews and discovering and safekeeping physical evidence.

Experienced attorneys are also required to pursue drowning cases because expert testimony is often required to properly prove both liability and damages issues. For instance, expert testimony is required to determine whether a slope of a pool is appropriate. Also, wrongful death damages are measured as the full value of the life of the deceased individual, and evidence of this often includes complicated expert testimony about what a person might earn during a normal life.

It is very sad the little boy somehow drowned last weekend. Hopefully, if the parents are interested in pursuing a possible claim for their son's death, they consult with competent legal counsel as soon as they are up to it.

I was saddened ast week when I read an article in the AJC online about a Douglasville construction worker who was crushed to death when equipment he was operating malfunctioned on the job site. Unfortunately, I see these types of catastrophic accidents far too often in my practice as an Atlanta personal injury lawyer who practices throughout north Georgia.

When workplace injuries occur, the injured person often has a workers' compensation claim for medical and lost wage (indemnity) benefits. These claims do not include, however, compensation for non-economic damages like physical and emotional pain and suffering. To recover compensation for such items, a claim must be successfully made against a third party who is not an employer or fellow employee of the injured individual.

An example of this is where the driver of a vehicle negligently collides his or her vehicle into the vehicle of the employee while the employee is on the job. In these types of situations, the injured employee can make a workers' compensation claim, as well as bring a personal injury claim/lawsuit against the non-employer/employee driver of the at fault vehicle.

Another example could be the situation described in the article discussed above where the worker is injured by malfunctioning equipment he or she uses while at work. Here, the worker will again have a claim for workers' compensation, and he or she may have a claim against the equipment manufacturer, distributer, wholesaler and/or retailer. These types of claims are called products liability claims and are often very complicated and difficult to prove. If successfully prosecuted, however, the claimant can again recover non-economic damages including physical and emotional pain and suffering.

If you or a loved one has been injured or killed in a workplace injury, it is important that you speak to experienced personal injury and workers' compensation lawyers. Often times both types of claims can be made and both economic and non-economic damages can be recovered. The attorneys in our firm have the experience and know how to successfully handle these claims and optimize your recovery. Please do not hesitate to contact me to discuss your situation. It would be my pleasure.

As an Atlanta wrongful death lawyer who practices in north Georgia, I recently represented the divorced parents of an adult child killed in a trucking accident. The deceased was unmarried and had no children. One of the big issues was how the divorced parents would share the wrongful death proceeds from the settlement or the jury award. The following is a little of what I learned on the issue.

If the deceased child does not leave a surviving spouse or child, the parents have the right of recovery. The parents have the right jointly if they are married and living together. If either parent is deceased, the surviving parent will have the right of recovery. If both the parents are living, but are divorced, separated, or living apart, both parents continue to have the right, but that right is affected by the following:

If one parent refuses to proceed or cannot be located to proceed to recover for the wrongful death of a child, the other parent has the right to hire a lawyer on behalf of both parents and the results are binding on both parents. In this situation, except as discussed below, the ultimate recovery is to be shared equally by both parents. Where the absent parent cannot be found, their share will be held for two years. After two years, the parent who initiated the recovery can petition the court for the absent parent's funds.

Alternatively, either parent may file a motion prior to trial requesting the judge apportion any judgment awarded in the case. The judge will then have a hearing where each parent will have the opportunity to produce evidence of their relationship with the deceased child. After the hearing, the judge determines the percentage of the judgment to be awarded to each parent based on the parent's relationship with the child, including permanent custody, control, and support, as well as other factors the judge considers pertinent.

An example of how a judge might apportion damages is found in the Georgia case Hall v. Bailey. In this case, the deceased child was a 20 year old unmarried man. His mother petitioned the court to determine how to apportion the wrongful death proceeds between her and the father. After hearing, the judge awarded the mother 95% of the proceeds and the father 5% of the proceeds. The decision was based on evidence showing the father had really no relationship with the son. The parents were divorced when the son was 3 years old. The mother had custody of the son, provided for his day-to-day care during his minority, and maintained a close relationship him until he died. The father paid court ordered child support, but had little contact with him after the divorce. The son never spent the night with his father after the divorce, and the father did not exercise his visitation rights with the son.

These are some of the Georgia rules regarding how divorced parents share the proceeds from a settlement or a jury award stemming from the wrongful death on a child. I imagine there is no greater grief than that experienced by the surviving parents of a deceased child. If you are in a place where you would like to discuss how these rules might apply to you, please do not hesitate to call me directly at 404-488-4492.

As an Atlanta car accident lawyer, I have written several times in the last 3 months about the dangers of texting and driving. In each blog, I have talked about the injuries or deaths caused at the hands of drivers operating motor vehicles while texting. I have also talked about the citations issued to the drivers of the vehicles, and in one blog, I wrote about the legislation introduced in the Georgia state house to make texting and driving illegal.

Now, even before any legislation has been passed, according to an article in the AJC on line, the Gwinnett county police department has charged a 48 year old woman with vehicular homicide arising from the death of a pedestrian the woman ran over while allegedly texting and driving on a rainy night on October 30, 2009. Along with a charge of vehicular homicide, the woman was also charged with reckless driving, failure to exercise due care and engaging in actions which distract from the safe operation of a motor vehicle.

Although the article made clear that the charge is going to be fought hard by the woman and her lawyer, what is important is that this appears to be the first time in Gwinnett County a vehicular homicide charge has been levied against a driver when someone is killed while the driver is texting and operating a motor vehicle. I believe this will become common place in all Georgia counties, especially once the General assembly passes legislation making texting and driving illegal.

Driving and texting is clearly a deadly combination. Now, a driver who negligently kills another motorist or pedestrian can expect to be charged with vehicular homicide and may spend many years in jail. If you are texting and driving, please think of these consequences before you do it again. It is clearly not worth it.

As a personal injury lawyer who practices in Atanta and north Georgia, I have handled numerous cases where my clients are injured while riding in golf carts. Atlanta and north Georgia have scores of golf courses and injuries occur when golf cart drivers act carelessly causing accidents. Like any motorized vehicle, golf carts can be extremely dangerous, even deadly. Depending on the make and model, golf carts generally weigh between 500 and 750 pounds empty. Add the weight of two grown men and two sets of clubs, and the combined weight can easily exceed 1000 pounds.

There are typically two types of golf cart accidents that cause injuries. The first is where one cart rear ends another cart. Like similar car accidents, these types of incidents can cause spinal whip lash type injuries requiring both conservative treatment and spinal surgery. The second type of accident is where the driver loses control of the cart, typically while turning on an uneven surface, and the vehicle flips over. This type of incident almost always causes very serious crush injuries, including death.

The drivers of the carts causing these accidents can be liable to those injured if they acted carelessly or recklessly in causing the accidents. All things being equal, rear end collisions and carts flipping over are almost always caused by careless or reckless behavior. This becomes a certainty when you consider that alcohol is involved in most golf cart accidents.

When alcohol is involved, not only are the drivers liable for general damages, including, medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering, but they may also be subject to punitive damages, meant to punish and deter this type of behavior. It is important to thoroughly investigate whether the driver may have been drinking because punitive damages can have a significant impact on the value of the claims made.

Because the police rarely investigate golf cart collisions, it is important that an injured individual or the family of someone killed hire competent attorneys as quickly as possible after the incident to thoroughly investigate these issues. The chance of identifying and interviewing helpful witnesses and discovering helpful physical evidence diminishes greatly as time passes after the incident.

If you have been injured or have lost a family member killed in a golf cart accident, please contact our offices to discuss your rights and possible claims. The attorneys and staff in our offices welcome the opportunity to talk with you about these issues, and we have the knowledge and resources to quickly and thoroughly investigate the incident to secure all the needed evidence to properly pursue your claims if you decide to retain us.

Three people were killed in two separate highway car accidents last week in Atlanta and north Georgia after they exited their vehicles after minor car accidents. In the first incident, 2 young women, one the mother of an eleven month old daughter, were killed Saturday January 30 when struck by a tow truck coming to the scene of a minor accident on I-20 near I-75. I have attached a CBS Atlanta video about the incident.

According to an AJC on line article, the second incident occurred on the evening of Friday February 5 on I-575 in Cherokee county. In the second incident, the driver of a vehicle involved in an earlier car accident had exited his vehicle and was standing in the median when a tractor trailer that veered to avoid the first collision struck and killed him.

As an Atlanta car accident and tractor trailer attorney, it saddens me because these types of tragic deaths can be avoided in most situations. Indeed, the family of the young mother in the Friday night incident stated in an interview on cbsatlanta.com that they believe that had she and her friend stayed in the vehicle, they would be alive today. That may very well be true.

If you are involved in an accident on a highway, you should follow some basic safety rules:

1. If possible, safely move the vehicles as far as possible off the roadway.
2. If you are capable, and as soon as you are out of harms way, call 911.
3. Stay in your vehicle until emergency personnel make the scene safe and tell you to exit your vehicle (even if your vehicle is off the roadway).
4. If you feel you must exit your vehicle, be extremely careful doing so and move as far away from your vehicle, traffic and danger as possible.

Following these simple rules can save your life. We cannot second guess if the 3 victims last week would not have been killed had they stayed in their vehicles. But nothing I read about the incidents indicated to me that the vehicles they exited were in any way further damaged after the original collisions.

Regardless, the families of the victims need to know their legal rights. This will be especially true for family of the young mother who left behind an eleven month old daughter. The fact that the drivers and passenger exited their vehicles does not mean that the drivers of the vehicles that ran them down are not liable for the deaths. If the drivers were in anyway negligent for the killings, the families of the deceased may be entitled to wrongful death damages.

In Georgia, good wrongful death attorneys know the survivors of a person wrongfully killed are entitled to recover the medical bills, funeral bills, pain and suffering and the full value of the life of the deceased. The value of these damages can be significant, often exceeding a million dollars. Hopefully, once they are able to begin to move on and heal from the deaths of their loved ones, the families of these deceased will talk to competent accident injury lawyers to discuss their rights.

I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but texting and driving kills. I just read another article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on line where a Douglasville driver ran a red light in Alabama killing the driver of the other vehicle. It is not certain that the driver was texting, and I hope that is not the case. Unfortunately, it is likely the driver was texting and that is why he ran the light.

As an Atlanta personal injury lawyer who practices all over north Georgia, I am seeing more serious injury and deaths caused by texting drivers causing violent collisions. The article I read about the Alabama fatality, also mentioned a collision where a Lilburn man six days ago crashed his car into a tree while texting a friend. Thankfully, in that crash, the driver had only minor injuries and was treated and released from the hospital.

Charges have not yet been filed in the Alabama case. The State Patrol is still investigating, and although they feel texting was involved, they cannot yet prove it. The next step will be to subpoena the Douglasville driver's phone records. If the records confirm he was texting, charges will be filed, most likely for vehicular homicide. The Lilburn driver was charged with improper use of a cell phone by a driver.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the Georgia General Assembly is working on two bills that would make the act of texting and driving illegal in Georgia. Both bills would require a fine between $100 and $300, and one of the bills would put two points on the offender's license. As far as I am concerned, the legislation can not be passed fast enough. Ever day I get another call or read another article about the perils of texting and driving. You would think that the perils of texting and driving are now absolutely obvious (both intuitively and because of all the press on the topic), and that legislation would not be needed. But like drinking and driving, we human beings will put others at serious risk of injury unless it is illegal to do so.

And even when it is illegal, we human beings will continue at some level to ignore the law and cause great harm. Even if the legislation is passed to make texting and driving illegal, I expect it will still be a problem for that very reason. And I worry many more drivers will continue to text and drive than now drink and drive. For the family of the driver killed in Alabama and all others killed and seriously injured by texting drivers, I hope I am wrong.

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.

I have recently been retained by two clients to pursue premises liability claims for injuries resulting from two separate criminal assaults in south Atlanta. As an Atlanta personal injury lawyer, I regularly get calls from victims of crimes or their family members where an individual is criminally attacked and assaulted. The assaults may include beatings, muggings, car jackings, shootings, stabbings, robbery and rape and often times result in catastrophic psychological and physical injuries and death.

Inadequate security at hotels and motels, apartment complexes, gas stations, convenient stores, shopping malls, parking lots, movie theaters, bank ATM's, as well as other retail businesses, is the reason many of these attacks occur. An owner or operator of a business must exercise ordinary care in keeping their premises safe. This duty includes protecting patrons and business guests from injury and death caused by foreseeable criminal acts of third parties.

Whether damages can be recovered against the land or business owner or operator depends on whether the crime was "foreseeable" and the security was inadequate. There is a huge body of case law on what makes a crime foreseeable. In making this determination, the courts look at previous similar criminal activity in the area. Generally, the prior criminal activity must be substantially similar, but does not have to be identical.

Substantially similar means the prior crimes should have put an ordinary prudent person on notice that the patron or guest was facing an increased risk of attack. It is a comparison of the nature of the crimes that determine similarity - was it a crime against a person or against property alone - and not a comparison of the details of the crime or even the degree of force used. Making an appropriated showing of substantial similarity and the foreseeabilty of the crime is critical to the success to recovering damages in these types of cases.

If you can convince the court and jury that the crime is foreseeable, you then next need to show that the security measures were inadequate and that adequate security would have prevented the attack. This can also be difficult, but is often much easier to prove than whether the crime was foreseeable because many businesses are concerned about costs, and things like putting up fences, installing and monitoring security cameras, providing adequate lighting and hiring security guards all cost money, but don't make money. Also, juries can understand that these types of security measures do prevent crime.

The two new cases I have are going to take a lot of time and energy and legal skill to properly handle. These are not simple fender bender claims and cannot be handled by just any lawyer. If you or a family member has been a victim to a crime and think you may have a claim against the owner or operator of the land or business where the attack occurred, please make sure the lawyer you talk to can handle this type of case.

This morning I was saddened to read in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on line about a bicyclist killed in a collision in Woodstock, Georgia. As a personal injury lawyer who represents clients throughout north Georgia and as an avid cyclist, I am well aware of the risks of cycling on the roads in metro Atlanta and the surrounding communities. The article had very little information about what happened, but did say that the driver of a Van pulled out from a bank parking lot and the cyclist was killed when he rode his bike into the side of the Van. What a tragedy.

It is impossible for me to say at this time who was at fault for causing the collision, but my guess is that the driver of the Van failed to yield to the bike pulling into the road thinking the road was clear when it wasn't. As a cyclist, I have had many close calls when cars, vans, trucks, etc., have done the same thing to me. As a personal injury lawyer, I have represented other cyclists who have been badly injured when this has happened to them. This time, someone was killed.

Road biking is a wonderful sport and is especially enjoyable this time of year when the leaves are turning and the weather is perfect. Unfortunately, it is a very dangerous activity with the amount of traffic on our Georgia roads. I am hopeful that motorist will be reminded by this tragic accident to be more diligent to look out for both bicyclist and motorcyclist as they travel out roads.

My thoughts and prayers are with the family of the deceased.