Personal Injury

Catastrophic Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries – Where Is The Safety Net? – Time For Universal Health Care?

Today we had the father of a young man in his early twenties come in to the office. His son was involved in an automobile accident and sustained serious injuries to his spine. It appears that he will be paralyzed for life from the waist down. The young man’s medical bills far exceed the liability insurance coverage, the hospital has filed a lien which will consume all of the available liability coverage and, to make matters worse, the young man has no health insurance.
Last
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Insurers’ Profits Continue To Skyrocket

Insurance companies continue to profit at the expense of their policyholders and Georgia’s serious automobile and truck injury victims. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported today that property and casualty insurers’ profits are continuing to sky rocket. Allstate Insurance Company reported a record $5 billion profit for 2006. State Farm Insurance’s profit climbed 65% for the year. St. Paul/Travelers earnings rose six fold in the fourth quarter and American International Groups rose eight fold.
There are several reasons for these huge profits. First, insurers are shorting the
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Georgia Injury Victims May Benefit From Proposed Change In Uninsured Motorist Law

There may be some relief in sight for some injured Georgia automobile and truck accident victims who are involved in a motor vehicle collision with an uninsured or underinsured vehicle. Last week Senate Bill 276, the Uninsured Motorist Stacking bill, passed the Senate Insurance and Labor committee unanimously. Advocates working for it’s passage are pushing hard for it to come to a floor vote. If passed it will provide uninsured motorist insurance coverage previously unavailable under Georgia’s current law.
Example: Current Law
You have purchased
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Georgia Recognizes Roadside Drunk Driving Victim Memorials

Anyone who has driven the two-lane highway between Georgia and Panama City, Florida has seen the many crosses along the roadside, each representing a victim of a fatal automobile accident. Many of these fatal collisions involved college students and drunk drivers. These unofficial memorials or marker have usually been placed by family and friends.
A young victim killed in a drunk driving accident, seventeen year-old Donny Ray Harris Jr., will be the first drunken driving victim in the state of Georgia to be remembered with
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FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY EVALUATIONS OF INJURED WORKERS IN GEORGIA

In Georgia employees who become disabled, due to injury, and remain out of work for any significant period of time are likely to be sent for a functional capacity evaluation. An FCE is a systematic evaluation process to determine an individual’s tolerance for physical work activities. These evaluations take on many forms. The most common evaluations involve a series of standardized tasks with measured weights and distances, and a trained and presumably an experienced observer to administer the tests. Other methods involve the use of
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Closing Arguments: Trial Techniques for Serious Injury Cases

We continue here with our previous discussion about how experienced trial counsel prepares and delivers closing arguments before juries in serious injury cases. See prior entries of 3/13 and 3/15/07. We continue as follows:
You must close your summation with confidence and with an ending appropriate to the tone of the case that will have the desired impact. Once you have concluded, sit down with an air of confidence that you have clearly won your case.
In every winning summation there is both the logical
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Psychiatric/Psychological Privilege in Injury Cases in Georgia

Many times we represent clients’ who have been seriously injured in automobile, trucking or on-the-job accidents who have sought and received psychological or psychiatric counseling and treatment. During the course of litigation, insurance company lawyers often try to subpoena mental health records from mental health professionals. It is wise to be vigilant in monitoring these requests from insurance defense lawyers and to object to these requests.
Under Georgia law, “Parties may obtain discovery regarding any matter, not privileged, which is relevant to the subject matter
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Closing Arguments for Juries in Serious Injury Cases

.We continue in this artice our Previous blog and presentation on the delivery of effective Closing Arguments in jury trials.(See entry of 3/13/07). We continue as follows:
GIVE YOUR REMARKS A STRUCTURE
As discussed above, one should not rely upon the inspiration of the moment to deliver a closing argument. A winning summation is usually the result of meticulous, painstaking preparation done well in advance of the actual delivery of the remarks. In order to insure that such preparation is not wasted, obviously, it is
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Your Duties Under The Georgia Workers’ Compensation Act

We cannot tell people how many times unrepresented, injured workers sabotage their cases by failing to comply with their own obligations under the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Act. At a minimum an employee who sustains an on-the-job injury must do the following:
1. Report any on-the-job injury within 30 days of the date of the injury. Although the law provides that an employee should notify the employer within 30 days, any injury should be reported immediately. If you do not report your injury immediately, you may
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Basic Overview of Benefits Available Under the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Act

Many people are unaware of what benefits are available to an injured worker in Georgia. Accordingly we thought it might be helpful to clients or potential clients to have an overview of the basic benefits.
(A) TEMPORARY TOTAL DISABILITY WEEKLY INCOME BENEFITS:
If you are injured and begin losing time from work, you are entitled to receive 2/3 of your average weekly wage up to a maximum of $450.00 per week. The first seven days of compensation are not payable until or unless you have
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Medical Error Costs Quantified

Preventable medical errors add extremely high costs to the healthcare provided in Georgia and across the United States. The Society of Actuaries, the largest professional organization dedicated to supporting 21,000 members in the United States and Canada, recently commissioned a study to assign a cost to these medical errors.
The study defined measureable costs of medical errors to include increased medical costs, costs related to an increased mortality rate, and costs related to lost productivity after the occurrence of an error. Most other costs of
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Hit-and-Run Crash Results In Death Of Georgia Motorcyclist

Inattentive drivers are responsible for many Georgia motorcycle accidents every year. Sadly the negligence of these inattentive drivers often results in the serious injury or wrongful death of the motorcyclist. Such may have been the case yesterday in Macon, Georgia when a woman driving a 1999 Chevrolet Impala ran a stop sign at the intersection of Peeble Street and Second Avenue and struck a motorcycle. According to witnesses, the woman struck 59-year old James Collins of Danville and then left the scene of the accident. The victim was pronounced dead shortly after the crash.
Hopefully authorities will be able to apprehend the driver and prosecute her for her callous, criminal conduct and hopefully for the family of the victim, there will be insurance coverage to compensate them for their loss.

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Dog Bites and Dog Attacks Are Serious Business – Georgia’s Homeowners Should Beware!

Georgia injury lawyers know that dog bites can result in serious and disfiguring injuries and sometimes the wrongful death. Because of the population of Atlanta area, it is not uncommon to hear about these cases on a weekly basis. It is estimated that almost 5 million Americans each year are dog bite victims. About 800,000 of these are serious enough to seek medical treatment for their injuries. Sadly, about half the victims are children and most of them are between the ages of 5 and 9 years old.

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Reporting Reduces Medical Errors

Acts of medical malpractice are often hidden by the secrecy afforded hospitals and health care providers by various state laws which make these matters confidential and immune from discovery by the public.
In an effort to reduce these sometimes deadly errors, the state of Indiana initiated a method of publicly tracking preventable medical errors. In just the fourth year of reporting, Indiana hospitals and surgery centers reported more than a 10 percent decrease in errors between 2008 and 2009.
Indiana’s Medical Error Reporting System requires
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Depuy Orthopedics Hip Implant Product Recalled

On August 4, 2010, DePuy Orthopedics recalled its ASR XL Acetabular System (hip implant) and ASR Hip Resurfacing System. Recent data from the National Joint Registry of England and Wales indicated a higher than expected revision rate at five years. Specifically, the data showed that the five-year revision rate for ASR XL Acetabular System was approximately 12% and for ASR Hip Resurfacing System was approximately 13%.
The revision rate was highest with ASR head sizes below 50mm in diameter and among female patients.
DePuy is
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Road Debris Can Kill

Not a week goes by that we do not see a significant number of road debris items laying in the middle of Georgia highways. Whether it is an old mattress, furniture, tools, chain, truck tie-down straps or whatever, these items on the highway often result serious injury or death to innocent motorists who encounter and try to avoid them.
In October of 2008, a woman, trying to avoid road debris, died instantly in a single car crash. The accident happened at about 7:30 a.m.
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Traffic Fatalities Show Significant Decrease

Traffic fatalities in Georgia and across the United States have shown a significant decline between 2008 and 2009, according to a report released on Thursday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Georgia’s number of traffic fatalities in the period fell by 14 percent for a total of 1,495 in 2009. Florida led the nation with 422 fewer traffic fatalities in 2009, followed by Texas (405 fewer), California (353), Pennsylvania (212) and Georgia (211 fewer).
Increased seatbelt use and campaigns against drunk driving are being credited
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Products Liability Claims Based On Failure To Warn

All manufacturers have a duty to warn consumers of dangers associated with the use of their products. An example of this would be drug manufacturers who dispense and promote the sale of prescription medication with known side effects. Warnings of these side effects must be provided to consumers so that they can make informed choices before they use such products. However, many different products in the marketplace have risks attendant with their use and consequently it is incumbent upon the manufacturer to warn the public
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Suing Restaurants And Lounges For Serving Alcohol To Visibly Intoxicated Patrons

The Dram shop theory of liability is a legal doctrine which essentially holds that restaurants and lounges who serve noticeably intoxicated patrons with alcoholic beverages knowing that they are soon to drive can be held liable to third parties who are injured by such drunk drivers. Drunk driving is a major problem in this country and those vendors, including specifically restaurants and lounges, who serve visibly intoxicated patrons should be held legally liable for the damages inflicted by their customers. Responsible restaurant chains and lounges
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Tire Failures Cause Many Automobile and Truck Accidents

Tire failures have caused the death or serious injury of many motorists in Georgia and across the nation over the years. There are many causes of tire failure but the Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP know that one of the most common causes for tire failure is heat buildup. Heat buildup, especially in truck tires, usually results from under-inflation, overloading, high speed operation or a combination of these factors. A recent study by The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) demonstrated that the top two types of damage for tire debris fragments found on the roadside were: road hazard (39%) and excessive heat (30%). Sometimes, tire failures occur because the tires being sold and used on a particular vehicle are not suitable for that vehicle or application.

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