Atlanta Injury Law Blog

Not even Wal-Mart could sell the idea of a 16-hour work day for truck drivers. The sponsor, a congressman whose district includes the home offices of Wal-Mart and J. L. Hunt Transport, withdrew this proposed amendment to the transportation reauthorization bill on 3/10/05. The current HOS rules — which are being reworked by Federal Motor…

In “False Alarm: How the media helps the insurance industry and the GOP promote the myth of America’s “lawsuit crisis,” Stephanie Mencimer reveals the role of corporate media outlets in the propoganda campaign to strip citizens of rights through “tort reform.” She concludes: “The news coverage may be creating some unexpected consequences: Some academic researchers…

Each year truck crashes kill over 5,000 people and injure almost 150,000 more on our nation’s roads and highways. Nearly one in four passenger vehicle deaths in multiple-vehicle collisions involve a large truck. In 1998, 98% of the fatalities in two-vehicle crashes involving passenger vehicles and large trucks were occupants of the passenger vehicles. When…

In Marrale v. Gwinnett Place Ford, the Court of Appeals helped to clear up some earlier case law that had treated used car sales at dealerships as “private transactions” outside the scope of the Fair Business Practices Act FBPA). Consumers and their lawyers who seek to use the FBPA should carefully review this case, and…

Company A entered two intellectual property licensing agreements with Company B, but a year later was $3 million behind on payments and unable to pay the debt. Company B agreed to forgive the debt in exchange for software developed by Company A, with a provision that Company B would pay Company A net profits from…

Critics of Daubert see science as a contentious process, rather than a a set of universal facts deduced by logic, and argue that courts are now demanding more of individual scientists and engineers than is expected of them in their own research and practice. A synthesis of the two views of science can be achieved…

As Georgia lawyers and judges wander into the quagmire of the Daubert Trilogy, we must look behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz and begin to learn something of the epistomology of science. Insofar as the Daubert decision is based largely upon the Justice Brennan’s summary of the Karl Popper’s premise of theory-testing through…

For years Georgia lawyers practicing primarily in state rather than federal courts were able to avoid the budensome, expensive and sometimes absurd requirements of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993), and its progeny. Now, however, the dam has broken and all civil cases involving expert testimony…

Beginning with Chief Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Daubert, there has been concern about trying to turn trial judges into “amateur scientists” despite their lack of preparation for evaluating scientific theories, methodology, and the social and institutional context in which the work of science is performed. Clearly, trial lawyers and judges must learn enough about science…