Atlanta Injury Law Blog

As of today, the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is no more.  The new name of the organization is the American Association for Justice.  After a vigorous debate, it was determined that rebranding the organization would help to reframe the debate about the role of the civil justice system by taking the focus off…

 Of 953 truckers faulted in fatal crashes from 2000 through 2005, a  Dallas Morning News investigative report found, at least one in four had been convicted of a criminal offense or received deferred adjudication before the crash.  Over 14 percent had committed drug or alcohol offenses prior to their accidents, and more than one in…

For several years in Georgia and across the country, there has been a quiet debate about whether trial courts should allow or encourage jurors to submit questions to be asked of witnesses.  A 2003 article in Kent Law Review summarizes the issues on both sides of the debate. Maybe I’m a “control freak” (as a…

Yesterday in Margate, Florida, a woman sitting on a bench at a bus stop was when an 18-wheeler crashed into the bus stop and trapped her dead body under tons of twisted metal and a maze of downed power lines. According to police and media reports, a flatbed tow truck was heading east on U.S.…

Today’s Washington Post includes an article about a case arising from  the death of a college freshman under the care of poorly supervised, overworked and highly fatigued young doctors. The resulting malpractice litigation set in motion a series of reforms, most notably a series of work hour limitations instituted by the Accreditation Council on Graduate…

Las Vegas, NV, 11/17/06.   A tractor trailer hauling paper products may have been going 60 mph when it slammed into a stop-and-go line of cars proceeding in two lanes through a construction zone on I-15.  Four people were killed, five people were hospitalized.  The truck driver, identified as Milson Sabino Oliveira Filho, 51, was examined…

Georgia juries are capable of surpassing expectations.  An example occurred this week in Marion County, population 7,144 according to the 2000 census.  It is the prototype of the conservative, predominantly white rural Georgia county.  I have been told that the highest jury verdict in the history of the county prior to this week was $10,000.…

I have nothing against anyone with an impairment of vision or hearing.  I couldn’t live in my house if I did.  But sometimes safety trumps equal opportunity. One of those circumstances is in the operation of 80,000 pound tractor trailers at 70 mph on public highways.  Recently we encountered a situation in which a truck…

The MCS-90 is an endorsement on a trucking company’s liability insurance policy, required by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations, which serves the function of a surety for safety of the public. Even if the the trucking company is not entitled to liability coverage due to some exception or exclusion in the insurance policy, an…

Occasionally, a motor carrier or freight broker may be held liable for negligent hiring of an incompetent independent contractor if it should have known, or might by the exercise of reasonable care could have found out, that the contractor was not competent.  A competent contractor is defined as “a contractor who possesses the knowledge, skill,…