Recently I wrote about the truck driver who in a deposition referred to the trucking company’s safety director as the “safety moron.” Well, yesterday I went to the frozen north to take the deposition of that safety director. He admitted they had no idea when the trucker left the shipper, or when or if he…
Continue reading ›A year ago the Georgia legislature passed and the Governor signed a sweeping tort reform bill, motivated in part by intimations — if not outright promises — that the result would be lower malpractice insurance premiums for doctors and hospitals. Now, according to the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, five medical malpractice insurance companies filed…
Continue reading ›2/13/06. Today the Georgia Supreme Court struck down one venue provision of last year’s tort reform legislation, but upheld another one. The Court unanimously affirmed Judge J. Antonio DelCampo of DeKalb County State Court, who in March ruled unconstitutional the section of last year’s tort reform legislation requiring judges to transfer a case to a…
Continue reading ›Georgia has slowly begun erecting highway signs memorializing people killed by drunk drivers. To be eligible, a person must have been killed by a drunken driver since May 13, 2004, the date the law was signed. Georgia had 450 drunken-driving fatalities that year. The death also must have occurred on a state or federal highway…
Continue reading ›A study of truck crashes conducted by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board found that 31% of fatal-to-the-driver commercial truck crashes were caused by driver fatigue. That problem is worldwide. New studies in Canada, Australia and South Africa report a significant percentage of long-haul truck drivers average 4 hours sleep our of 24. (13% in…
Continue reading ›The Fireman’s Rule in Georgia provides that a public safety officer may not recover for the negligence that caused the situation to which he responded. It is based on a public policy of the State of Georgia that a public safety employee cannot recover for injuries caused by the very negligence that initially required his…
Continue reading ›Washington, DC, 2/9/06. The National Transportation Safety Board adopted a final report of a runaway truck accident in Pennsylvania that has shown the consequences of improper maintenance on automatic slack adjusters for air brake systems. The board issued 11 safety recommendations aimed at improving training for drivers and mechanics that work with air brakes. These…
Continue reading ›A team led by Dr. Geoffrey Raisman at the Institute of Neurology in London plans to begin within a year human clinical trials with patients’ own olfactory nerve stem cells to treat nerve and spinal cord injury. Use of the stem cells from the patient’s own nose avoids the ethical concerns about use of embryonic…
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