Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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…

Kenneth L. Shigley, Sr., of Atlanta, Georgia, has been named one of America’s Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys ® for 2020. Selection to America’s Top 100 Personal Injury Attorneys® is by invitation only and is reserved to identity the nation’s most exceptional litigators for high-value personal injury, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, product liability, and medical…

Wrongful death claims in Georgia are necessarily emotional. When a family member is killed by someone else’s negligence, grieving survivors often have mixed feelings about filing a wrongful death lawsuit for that death. Certainly no amount of money can bring the departed loved one back. However, a monetary award is the only way that civil law…

Sterigenics plants in Smyrna and Covington, Georgia, have long used ethylene oxide in sterilization of medical equipment. The Environmental Protection Agency air assessment from last year found several census tracts around those plants had significantly increased cancer risks due to ethylene oxide. The EPA recently concluded that the gas is dangerous at lower levels than previously believed. Ethylene…

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…

Rear underride crash test Death by decapitation due to trailer underride  can  result when tractor trailers park on the roadside. The kneejerk response of most people seeing pictures of these incidents is to simply blame the dead person. But it’s not that simple. When an innocent passenger is killed or maimed, some portion of fault is…

In handling Georgia wrongful death cases in which the victim had very little conscious survival time, we often have to address the question whether to make a claim for pain and suffering before death. In Georgia, wrongful death cases may include two separate claims. First is the wrongful death claim for “full value of the…

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 children were riding a bus to elementary school every day, like most parents I trusted the school bus driver to deliver them safely to school and back to our neighborhood. Usually that is what happens as school buses are generally considered the safest means of transporting children to and from school. But occasionally…

On a warm October afternoon two years ago, wearing one of the yarmulkes that Jewish funeral directors provide for non-Jewish attendees, I helped shovel red Georgia dirt into the open grave of an old client and friend. As I did so, I pondered the unanswered question whether long-term side effects of her food poisoning a…