Atlanta Injury Law Blog

Today, after 25 years of labor by countless volunteers on a succession of hard-working bar committees, the new Georgia Evidence Code was passed.  Unless I’m in court somewhere, I expect to be present when it is signed into law by Governor Nathan Deal. Appropriately enough, he sponsored an earlier version of the bill in the…

Over the years in my Atlanta personal injury practice, I have worked on cases involving catastrophic tire failure. It has certainly made me more alert to issues when tire issues arise with vehicles in our family.  And it helped to increase my patience with the replacement process when I recently ran over some sort of…

Should all convicted drunk drivers be required to use an ignition interlock device at their expense as a condition of probation? Ignition interlocks, or in-car breathalyzers, are devices that can be installed in vehicles to prevent people who have consumed alcohol from driving. They are most often installed after a driver has been convicted of…

Large burn injuries today are treated with split thickness skin grafts. A dermatome, a tool comparable to a cheese slicer, is used to harvest thin slices of epidermis from donor sites on an uninjured part of the body. The harvested skin may then be meshed in order to cover a larger area  by making lengthwise…

Driver fatigue is one of the more common causes of large truck crashes. There is no test for fatigue, but when we dig back into the driver’s itinerary it can be deduced. Every few months we see another technological approach to dealing with driver fatigue. The latest is an app for Apple iPhones and iPads.…

Year in and year out, most lawyers handling back injury cases see a lot of herniated discs and fractured vertebra.  A less common and for many lawyers poorly understood back injury is syringomyelia. Syringomyelia is a condition in which a cyst or cavity forms within the spinal cord. While it may be congenital or caused…

For many years some lawyers have asked clients to take home videos to help in preparation for depositions. At first they were on VHS format, and later DVD. Now several such videos are available free online, such as the one here.     Ken Shigley is an Atlanta, Georgia, trial attorney. He has been designated…

The impact of economics on trucking safety is insidious. One thing that turns up with truckers who are witnesses in our cases is the economic squeeze on independent owner operators who try to operate safely in compliance with the rules. Of immediate concern is the fact that shippers pay fuel surcharges to brokers, but the…

For the first time in Georgia, a trial judge has allowed web video conference trial testimony from an out of state witness via Skype. Douglas County Superior Court Judge David Emerson allowed Skype testimony of a defense witness in the criminal prosecution of a tractor trailer driver from Texas who was caught in Douglas County…

The infant child of a young couple from Douglasville, my hometown, has died of injuries sustained when a tractor trailer ran over their car from the rear on I-75 near Windy Hill Road last Saturday night. The truck driver, Henry Lipps, 59, from Indiana, has been charged with following too closely and second degree homicide…