Atlanta Injury Lawyers Blog

It’s always painful to Atlanta car accident lawyers to come across law enforcement personnel who are killed in accidents on the job. A 45-year-old Highway Emergency Response Operator (HERO) unit operator was killed on Monday, after his HERO unit was hit by a truck. The victim was attending to a stranded motorist on Interstate 85 south of Atlanta, when a truck pulling a trailer with heavy equipment crashed into his HERO unit. The truck hit the victim, and also struck the stranded pickup truck.
The HERO unit operator was killed, while the driver of the stranded pickup truck managed to escape the truck as it approached. According to the Georgia Department of Transportation, this was the first death of a Highway Emergency Response Operator while on duty, since the program's inception in 1995. According to the Georgia State Patrol, charges are likely to be filed against the driver of the truck.
Investigations into the accident are going on. These are likely to look at the speed of the truck driver in this accident

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The driver of the Cobb County Transit bus involved in a pedestrian accident last week has been charged with failure to yield and failure to exercise due care.

57-year-old Jean Lewis has been formally charged in the Atlanta-area accident, which occurred eight days earlier. On the day of the crash, the victim, a 57-year-old woman was walking on the crosswalk at the Hamilton E. Holmes Dr. and ML King Junior Dr. Intersection. The driver had a green arrow to turn left. As he was turning, the victim stepped on the curb and into the crosswalk. According to witnesses, the victim saw the bus making a turn, and tried to hurry up across to the other side, but was struck by the rear of the bus. She sustained serious injuries, including a severed leg and a broken ankle.

A new report by the Governor’s Highway Safety Association reveals that pedestrian accident fatalities across the US actually increased by .4% in the first six months of 2010. It may seem like a small increase, but it comes after years of great progress reducing pedestrian accident fatalities. Although Georgia's pedestrian accident fatality numbers declined during the first six months of 2010, there's more that we could be doing to keep pedestrians safer.

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Going into a court building can be like walking into an alternate universe. Everyone has seen TV courtrooms. They show lots of wood paneling, grumpy judges and savvy lawyers. What popular media is less likely to show you is the behind-the-scenes administration where the bulk of the legal work gets done before anybody puts on a suit or stands in front of a jury.

If you walk into the Dekalb County Court building, you immediately realize there is more to it than a courtroom. Once you get through security, a maze of signs and arrows point you to different clerks and different courts. Some of them make sense. “Juvenile Court” is self-explanatory. Other terms that attorneys throw around are less obvious.

Continue reading " Disentangling the Georgia Courts " »

As an Atlanta car accident attorney, I can safely say that rollover accidents are some of the deadliest that I see in my practice. In the year 2009, more than 8,000 people were killed in rollover accidents in the US. According to the Department of Transportation, more than 50% of these involved a passenger being ejected from the vehicle during the rollover. It's not as if a seat belt can completely protect you against ejection. As an injury attorney in Atlanta, I have come across instances of occupants being flung out of cars completely or partially, even after wearing seatbelts.

A new rule announced last week by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration seeks to put an end to this. The rule will require that automakers ensure that occupants of a vehicle are unable to move 4 inches beyond an open window during a rollover. These rules will go into effect in 2013. By the year 2018, the agency expects all vehicles to be equipped with systems that prevent ejection during a rollover accident.

Automakers are likely to use side airbag systems to prevent injections. According to the Department of Transportation, having safety devices like these will save an average of 373 lives. These devices will also prevent 476 injuries every year.

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Atlanta car accident attorneys have been bombarded with explanations for the decline in drunk driving accident numbers in Atlanta over the past couple of years. One widely held theory has been that law enforcement agencies have been getting tougher about cracking down on intoxicated motorists. However, this increased crackdown by law enforcement on drunk drivers could actually be courtesy the recession.

The Augusta Chronicle recently published a report on how cash-strapped law enforcement agencies are now forced to conduct stationery checkpoints instead of the usual highway patrols. Law-enforcement budgets across the state have been slashed, and Atlanta has been no exception. These agencies have been informed that they have to conserve fuel to cut costs. One of the ways they have done this is by having more stationary roadblocks.

Stationary roadblocks may be a slower and more primitive way to pull drunk offenders over, but it has actually led to an increase in the number of DUI arrests. According to the report, the number of citations issued by the Georgia State Patrol for DUI increased by 37% in the four years since the recession kicked in. The Georgia State Patrol also increased the number of citations issued for seatbelt and child restraint infractions significantly. Tickets issued for motorists driving without insurance increased by 29%.

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The mouth is an important part of our ability to function as humans in society. We use it to eat, drink, and communicate with each other. We take the mouth largely for granted, until there is a problem. We then trust a dentist or an orthodontist to fix that problem. But sometimes dental professionals fail to perform adequately. In that case, the patient should look into their legal options.

Continue reading " Closure Leaves Dental Patients with Little Recourse " »

Georgia trial lawyers on both sides of the fence have been pushing to modernize the Georgia code of evidence. The current version was enacted during the Civil War era and the changes would bring the laws of evidence in Georgia state courts in line with those used in federal court. Many states have done this over time, and it is generally viewed as a positive development.

Proposed legislation could be passed this year that would bring Georgia's code of evidence more in line with the federal rules of evidence, eliminate Georgia's arcane hearsay rules (and some questionable exceptions to hearsay) and modernize trial procedure that would make more sense in introducing medical records into evidence at trial.

As an Atlanta Injury Lawyer, I support the proposed changes and hope they become law.

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