Articles Posted in Brain Injury

In nearly a half-century as a Georgia lawyer, starting when we had spittoons in jury boxes, bailiffs called greenhorn lawyers “Colonel,” and computers were just huge mainframes in large institutions, I have seen a lot of change. I have tried serious injury cases for over forty years. Years ago, I saw terribly low verdicts for…

Syringomyelia and Chiari malformations are relatively rare, closely related, neurological conditions that may be congenital but also may be caused or severely aggravated by trauma in an accident such as head or neck injury an automobile collision. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computer tomography) scans are essential to the diagnosis of both. Physicians accustomed…

For decades, I have represented the victims of catastrophic car and truck crashes. The most seriously hurt among them, with brain and spinal cord injuries, owed their survival in the days and weeks after injury to treatment in trauma centers and Intensive Care Units (ICU). Only later were they even eligible to benefit from excellent…

For decades I have  represented people with so-called “mild” traumatic brain injuries. A “mild” traumatic brain injury  (TBI) may be defined as one affecting someone else’s family, not your own. These typically involve a concussion, with or without a loss of consciousness. Emergency medical personnel and emergency department physicians often focus primarily on more obvious…

You are a great lawyer in your area of practice. You are also smart enough to know when a big case may require prompt action outside your comfort zone. Just as a trial lawyer may not feel comfortable handling a complex real estate, divorce or estate planning matter, a great lawyer in those fields may not…

In catastrophic truck crashes that kill or catastrophically injury innocent people, the root cause of the tragedy is often not the momentary carelessness of a truck driver. Rather, the root cause is very often the systemic mismanagement by a company that puts behind the wheel of an 80,000 bomb a person who never should have…

When my father’s generation came home from World War II, many of them carried psychological scars about which they kept quiet. My parents married young, at 21 and 18, the week he returned from combat in 1945. My mother said that dad fought the air war over Europe every night in his sleep for at…

No matter how many years a lawyer has practiced, there is no end to the need for exposure to bright new ideas from the best lawyers around the United States. Over the past year, I had the opportunity to serve as chair of the Motor Vehicle Collision, Highway and Premises Liability Section of the American…

Only a monstrous parent would intentionally leave a child in a hot car for hours to suffer and die. While that is the allegation in a pending murder case in Georgia, even if proven true it would be aberrational. But every summer we hear of a rash of incidents in which a distracted, multitasking parents,…

Most of us today carry cell phones in our pockets with more processing power than the computers aboard the Apollo moon missions. Frequent news reports illustrate the dangers of thoughtless use of smartphones and social media. It has ensnared politicians and celebrities, sometimes crashing promising careers. This technology has created similar hazards for both plaintiffs and…