Personal Injury

Bias In The So Called “Independent Medical Examination”

For over twenty years, we have handled personal injury claims and workers compensation claims of all types. Anyone who has done the same has witnessed the perversion of our system of justice by medical doctors who are performing so called “independent medical exams” for insurance companies and their lawyers. It has always amazed us that medical doctors who spent years of hard work to be able to exercise their own independent judgment in diagnosing and treating injured or sick people are so ready, willing and
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Preparing and Delivering Closing Arguments in Serious Injury Cases

We thought it would be interesting for our readers to understand how experienced attorneys prepare and deliver effective Closing Arguments to juries in serious injury cases. What we have decided to do is to blog about this very interesting subject in a series of brief articles over the next several days. What follows, in fact, is a portion of a presentation delivered by one of our attorneys at a continuuing legal education seminar for the Georgia Bar.
We begin as follows:

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Georgia Firefighter With Heart Attack Awarded Workers Compensation Benefits

Recently, we successfully represented a Georgia firefighter in a workers compensation claim against the county for which he worked. The injury he sustained was a heart attack. Needless to say, the employer denied his claim and took the position that his job had nothing whatsoever to do with the injury to his heart. In researching this injury, we learned that forty percent of on-duty firefighter deaths in the last decade were due to heart attack, according to a recent U.S. Fire Administration report. This is
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Workers Compensation Claims/Uninsured Georgia Employers And The Problems They Cause For Claimants

There is an ever increasing problem for many Georgia workers who become injured and disabled as a result of work injuries. The problem is uninsured employers. We recently got a call about a new workers compensation claim from a worker who was seriously injured as a result of a fall. In fact, this worker had been in the trauma unit of a hospital for several months at the time of this call. He had multiple orthopedic injuries, including leg and arm fractures requiring many surgeries.
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Atlanta Bus Accident Tragedy Takes 6 Lives

We heard today on a radio broadcast that struck very close to home that four young men from a college in Bluffton, Ohio had been killed, in addition to a bus driver and his wife. Nine others were seriously injured when a charter bus crashed off of an exit ramp off interstate highway I-75 (inside the city limits of Atlanta) back onto the highway. The facts and circumstances surrounding this tragedy are still being investigated, however, this is an all too familiar tragedy that we
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PRODUCTS LIABILITY

Products liability refers to the liability of any or all parties along the chain of manufacture of any product for damage caused by that product. This includes the manufacturer of component parts, the assembling manufacturer, the wholesaler, and the retail store owner. Products containing inherent defects that cause harm to a consumer of a product or someone to whom the product was loaned, given, etc. can be subjects of product liability suits.
Depending on the jurisdiction, product liability claims can be based on negligence, strict
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Another Atlanta Police Chase Case With Fatalities

Just a few weeks ago we blogged about the dangerous nature of police chase cases. See Blog entry entitled High Speed Police Chase Cases: An American Tragedy (2/15/07). Today we wake up with a headline in the Atlanta paper stating that “Two teens are dead and four others injured in a police chase case involving a juvenile that was driving a stolen vehicle.” According to the newspaper report of this incident, police in Clayton County, just outside of Atlanta, pulled over a joyriding juvenile who
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Traumatic Brain Injury

In our practice we frequently handle cases involving traumatic brain injuries. Traumatic brain injury can occur in a variety of ways. It can occur when there is a rapid acceleration and/or deceleration of the brain such as in an automobile collision whiplash scenario. Traumatic brain injury can also result when the head comes into contact with another object such as in a motorcycle accident, automobile accident, or a blow to the head. This type of injury is sometimes referred to as a “closed head injury.”
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Wrongful Death

A wrongful death occurs when a person’s death is caused by the wrongful act or negligence of another. A wrongful death is the basis of a lawsuit against the party or parties who cause a wrongful death. The action may be filed on behalf of certain members of the family of the deceased due to the wrongful death. The State of Georgia provides two causes of action in the event of a wrongful death. The first cause of action belongs to the survivors as determined
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Defective Tires

There are many news reports of one car collisions in which a vehicle goes out of control and strikes an object, such as a median barrier or a tree, killing the occupant. While it is only natural to assume that the driver of the vehicle was somehow at fault, this is not always the case. In our practice, we see cases in which it first appears that the driver was at fault, but further investigation reveals that a defective tire was the cause of the
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Skin Warning Issued about Alcoholism Therapy Drug

As Georgia injury lawyers we often see people who have been injured by dangerous prescription drugs. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is now warning doctors about severe skin reactions in alcoholism patients who use Vivitrol, an injectable treatment made and marked by Cephalon, Inc. Doctors and patients should watch for swelling, injection, and other complications where the drug is injected. The FDA emphasizes that the proper needle must be used when administering Vivitrol. Also, the drug should be injected into muscle, not fatty tissue.
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Insurance Industry Tricks

According to a report by the American Assocaition for Justice, the U.S. insurance industry has trillions of dollars in assets, enjoys average profits of over $30 billion a year, and pays its CEOs more than any other industry. But insurance companies still engage in dirty tricks and unethical behavior to boost their bottom line even further. The current economic turmoil affecting the insurance industry onWall Street has only made the outlook bleaker for consumers living on Main Street. Insurance companies are likely to demand huge
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Traumatic Brain Injury- Georgia Motorcycle Accidents

In November of 2000, while ballots were being counted in Florida, I stood in the trauma unit of the Orlando Regional Medical Center with my daughter who had been assaulted. Over the month she was there, one helicopter after another landed on the roof of the trauma unit delivering victims of automobile accidents and motorcycle accidents with severe injuries. Many of them died and many of them sustained severe brain injuries. Many of those traumatic brain injuries occurred because the person riding the motorcycle
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Serious Accidents -Traumatic Brain Injury

In our Georgia injury practice our lawyers have seen many serious accidents, including automobile accidents and truck accidents, which result in brain injury of varying degrees. Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI’s) contribute to a substantial number of deaths and cases of permanent disability annually. The Centers For Disease Control (CDC) estimates that at least 5.3 million Americans, about 2% of the U.S. population, currently have a long-term or lifelong need for help to perform activities of daily living as a result of a TBI.
The severity
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Feeling Unusually Fatigued after Brain Injury?

Over the years, we have noticed that client’s who have suffered a brain injury as a result of an automobile accident or truck accident often complain about feeling unusually fatigued or tired. An interesting study confirms that following a recovery from brain damage, patients may have to use more of there brains then they did before the brain trauma.
The study published in the September 9th issue of Neurology found that patients who sustained diffuse axonal injury and returned to pre-injury levels of functioning in
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Arbitration Clause Stricken By Court of Appeals

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a ruling which begins to chip away at the anti-consumer arbitration clauses used by many credit card companies to deny justice to consumers. The court held that plaintiffs could not be forced into arbitration because American Express was not a signatory to the MasterCard, Visa and Diners Club credit card agreements that
In the multidistrict currency conversion case, cardholders are claiming that card companies and major issuing banks have engaged in a Sherman Act conspiracy to
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Georgia Injury Lawyers Will Closely Watch A Dangerous Drugs Case

Georgia injury lawyers will closely watch an upcoming U.S. Supreme case having to do with dangerous drugs and the doctrine of pre-emption. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments today in a case that has major implications for consumers who have been harmed by prescription medications. Drugmaker Wyeth Pharmaceuticals and the Bush administration are challenging a $6.7 million verdict to a Vermont musician whose arm was amputated after medical staff improperly administered the Wyeth-produced drug Phenergan. Wyeth and the administration argue people who
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Georgia Nursing Home Abuse & Negligence Cases

For Georgia lawyers handling nursing home abuse and negligence cases, we are seeing new litigation hurdles to overcome. Nursing home owners are creating new corporate structures to disguise the actual ownership of the nursing homes. It is a “corporate shell game” where the actual owners set up holding corporations to avoid responsibility. If you look at the way the facility is established, there will be a contractual relationship between a management company and a nursing home, where the same human being is on both
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81% of Georgia Nursing Homes are Deficient in Quality of Care and Other Services

You don’t have to be an Atlanta injury attorney to know that nursing home abuse and negligence is alive and well in Georgia and across the country. For most elder people, their greatest fear is being put in the dreaded nursing home and for good reason. In our practice, we have noted that more often than not these homes are understaffed by unqualified employees.
The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services recently completed a study and issued

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Off Road Recreational Vehicles Probed

Our serious injury lawyers have investigated cases involving off-road recreational vehicles. Now, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC, is probing the design of these so-called recreational off- highway vehicles after reports of fatal accidents involving new products which are currently unregulated.
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The investigation involves several brands and more than 30 daeths. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the Yamaha Motor Rhino was a focus of the inquiry, with at least 30 deaths.
The investigation has brought attention to gaps in oversight of
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