Tractor Trailer Hits 2 Cars, Crosses Center Line, Kills Woman in Baldwin County

Monday morning on Highway 49 near Milledgeville, a tractor trailer came over a hill and struck two other cars, then went into the opposite lane where it struck an oncoming vehicle. Rita Rose, 31, of Warthen, Georgia, was killed when the 18 wheeler struck her head on.

Further details were not mentioned in early media reports. Often such incidents are not just simple collisions, but the roots of tragedy are found in a pattern of corporate conduct that forces truck drivers to meet impossible delivery schedules and press on when they are outside their legal hours of operation and impaired by fatigue.

Ken Shigley is a trucking safety trial attorney who has extensive experience representing parties in interstate trucking collision cases. He served as chair of the Southeastern Motor Carrier Litigation Institute in 2005 and is a national board member of the Interstate Trucking Litigation Group of the American Association for Justice. A Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, he has been listed as a “Super Lawyer” (Atlanta Magazine), among the “Legal Elite” (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers (Martindale). In addition to trucking litigation, he has broad experience in products liability, catastrophic personal injury, wrongful death, spinal cord injury, brain injury and burn injury cases. Mr Shigley is president-elect-designee of the 41,000 member State Bar of Georgia, of which he will serve as president in 2011-12.

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