Atlanta Injury Law Blog

As an Atlanta lawyer focused on trucking litigation, I keep track of how the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel has implications rippling through the trucking industry and the economy.  The effect on trucking industry economics, the cost of shipping goods, and ultimatley the price of everything we buy, is pretty obvious. Clearly the cost of…

As a Georgia lawyer handling trucking accident cases, I continually encounter the correlation between mass, speed and stopping distances. Heavier trucks require more stopping distance.  Therefore, I am concerned about a proposal to permit larger trucks on the highways in several states, including Georgia.  Understandably, the proposal, is stirring controversy about safety, environmental and infrastructure…

In an illustration of legislative sausage making at its finest, the legislature passed and yesterday the Governor signed into law, a bill that gives the insurance industry and the trial lawyers pieces of what they wanted this year, over the opposition of the State Insurance Commissioner. Senate Bill 276 does two things. First, it relieves…

Today Governor Perdue vetoed raises for Superior Court judges and District Attorneys. In a statement released with the veto, the Governor said, “I have consistently expressed concern with raising judicial officers’ salaries without tackling the well above-market retirement benefits.” He also said that a study he commissioned showed that Georgia’s judges’ pay was competitive compared…

In my law practice in Georgia, I occasionally get calls about tractor trailers that hit someone and do not stop. Identifying and apprehending the hit and run trucker is always a big challenge. State laws in most states  require drivers to change lanes or slow down for emergency vehicles stopped on the side of the…

Last Friday,  an Atlanta jury returned a verdict of $54.4 million in a truck wreck case involving the death of a a Jamaican immigrant. It was a great verdict resulting from great trial advocacy. Of the $54.4 million in the verdict, $44.4 million was punitive damages. In my post about the verdict, I wondered how…

This morning I got a call from a man in ICU at one of our local hospitals. He said he has hit by a tractor trailer yesterday, and that he had two fractured femurs, a ruptured spleen, ruptured discs, crushed vertebra, etc., and asked if I could meet him at the hospital.  I agreed to…

At 12:45 AM this morning, the driver of the Somerset Food Service tractor-trailer was killed on I-75 in Kentucky when a Chevrolet van crossed the median into the northbound lanes and stopped. The tractor-trailer and a Ford pick-up truck were in northbound lanes and unable to avoid collision according to media reports. When representing truck…

As a Georgia attorney focused on representing folks hurt in trucking accidents, I hear a lot of stories about driver fatigue issues, and how the practices of dispatchers and shippers affect fatigue, from truckers from across the U.S. and Canada. That’s why I try to keep up with trucking industry news from all over North…

Ron Ellington, a professor at the University of Georgia Law School, recently spoke to the inductees of Phi Beta Kappa at UGA. His remarks deserve wider distribution.  He points out how the smartest and wisest leaders of a previous generation were dead wrong on one big issue, and suggests how to recognize when we are…