A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

I just got word last night of a $9 million jury verdict in Chambers County, Alabama, in a case involving a maintenance man raping a 60 year old woman. My friend Pete Law won that one. Along with our $2.3 million verdict on a fractured femur truck wreck case in Gordon County, Georgia, these cases illustrate that, despite all the tort reform rhetoric, deeply conservative white rural jurors are fully capable of rendering adequate verdicts.

When I look at the $41 million verdict my friend Robert Eglet won last week in Las Vegas on a horrific burn case, and the $23 million my friend Tommy Malone won in San Francisco earlier in the spring on a bad brain injury case, I realize that if those cases were tried in places like Gordon County, Georgia, and Chambers County, Alabama, the same verdicts might be reached.

When good folks get on juries, they want to do the right thing, no matter where in the US they might live.  If the defendant offends their sense of right and wrong, and a plaintiff they see as reasonably deserving is badly hurt, they will swing the sword of justice.  But if they see the plaintiff as greedy, overreaching, undeserving, etc., the same sword will swing the other way.

The Shigley Law Firm  represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a “SuperLawyer” in Atlanta Magazine and one of the “Legal Elite” in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, Chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck wrecks and accidents (tractor trailers truck wrecks, semi truck wrecks,18 wheeler truck wrecks, big rig truck wrecks, log truck wrecks, dump truck wrecks.