Atlanta Injury Law Blog

In “The Constitutional Status of Tort Law: Due Process and the Right to a Law for the Redress of Wrongs,” published last month in Yale Law Journal, Vanderbilt Law Professor John C.P. Goldberg wrote that a law for the redress of private wrongs forms part of the basic structure of our government. Although the Constitution…

Three headline-making fatal truck accidents occurred in a 15-hour period this week, killing 19 people. A truck wreck Jan. 25 killed seven children in Florida. A few hours later in Illinois, a wreck killed two adults and three children, plus the driver of the big rig. The next morning, a wreck killed six people in…

A truck driver who plowed into a stopped car on 1/25/06 and killed seven children from one family had been awake for 34 hours, except for a short nap. This dramatically emphasizes the widespread problem of truck driver fatigue that we see time and time again. Seven children from one family in Lake Butler, Florida…

The past couple of weeks I’ve been going around the country taking truck drivers’ depositions and racking up Skymiles. If nothing else, some have provided comic relief. — A truck driver whose CB handle is “Alabama Outlaw” swore that no state or federal motor carrier rules apply to him, even though he was driving a…

Lawrenceville, GA, 1/25/06. A tanker truck carrying liquid latex overturned on I-85 South near Ga. Highway 20 shortly after 4 AM Tuesday morning, causing the closing of all southbound lanes for 12 hours. While no injuries were reporting, it was a traffic nightmare for many thousands of commuters as Georgia DOT workers struggled to clean…

A leading industry in Northwest Georgia is the manufacture of tufted carpet. A vital element of the local economy of Dalton, Calhoun and surrounding communities, the carpet industry provides a good living for a substantial portion of the local population as well as thousands of hard-working immigrants. Unfortunately, however, we have seen that the companies…

The Georgia State Tort Claims Act includes a minefield of procedural requirements for presuit notice of claim and service of claims and suits upon various officials. However, a recent decision written by Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Sears avoids draconian literalism in at least one of those procedural requirements. It is so technical, and the…

The current issue of Atlanta Business Chronicle includes a article by Kelly B. Thrasher, M.D.,, an Atlanta internal medicine specialist, pointing out that tort reform legislation has produced windfall profits for the insurance industry rather than savings for the physicians who were exploited in the political drive to get the legislation passed. The Medical Association…

All states allow a lawyer licensed in another state to be temporarily admitted to represent a client in a specific case, generally with the involvement of a local attorney in that state. The Latin term for this is admission “pro hac vice.” I had been admitted pro hac vice for cases in other states from…