Drunk Driver Liability

Ken Shigley first prosecuted a drunk driver in 1977 as an Assistant District Attorney. He successfully prosecuted cases of driving under the influence (DUI) and homicide by vehicle as well as major felonies such as murder, armed robbery, rape, burglary and arson. That was all before Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) was launched to raise public consciousness about drunk driving accidents.

After leaving the District Attorney’s office for private law practice in his Georgia hometown, he successfully defended DUI and vehicular homicide cases as he had learned to tie the state’s witnesses in knots on the science of blood alcohol. Later, during a decade in an insurance defense law firm in Atlanta he defended the civil damage suits arising from drunk driving accidents.

As an Atlanta personal injury lawyer representing the victims of many drunk driving accident cases, he uses all that experience to represent the victims of drunk driving accidents.

Drunk driving accidents someone every 31 minutes in the United States. Every two minutes a drunk driver injures someone, often catastrophically. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration^[1], about 40 percent traffic fatalities and seven percent of the total crashes involve alcohol. Alcohol intoxication was involved in 31 percent of all traffic fatalities in the United States in 2013^[2]. It is not surprising that 40 percent of all fatal DUI crashes occur on weekend evenings^[2]. About 79% of fatal drunk driving accidents involve drivers under 34 years old, about 73 percent of whom are male^[2].

When a driver chooses to drive under the influence of alcohol or drugs, and causes a crash with resulting in injuries or death, the victims of the car accident, truck accident, motorcycle accident, or pedestrian accident may sue for monetary damages for his or her injuries in a civil case. That is entirely separate from any criminal prosecution of the drunk driver.

In Georgia, attorneys may introduce evidence of prior incidents of drunk driving in the punitive damages of a trial after the jury has already decided liability and compensatory damages such as medical expense, income loss and physical and mental pain and suffering.

At Shigley Law LLC, we have provided aggressive, effective and empathetic legal representation to victims of drunk drivers throughout Georgia. We aggressively prosecute claims against drunk drivers who cause serious injury or wrongful death.

Effective representation of clients in drunk driving accident cases requires careful analysis of liability insurance, uninsured / underinsured motorist insurance and medical lien issues in order to efficiently obtain the optimal outcome for the client. With over three decades experience in insurance law, and as former chair of the Georgia Insurance Law Institute, Ken Shigley has the background to handle the insurance analysis as well as proof of liability and damages in drunk driving personal injury and wrongful death cases.

When a bar, taverns, liquor store, restaurant and other commercial establishment serves alcoholic beverages to a person who is visibly intoxicated, the victims may sue the seller for damages for personal injury or wrongful death. Dram shop liability refers to the body of law governing the legal responsibility of establishments selling alcohol to visibly intoxicated individuals or minors who then cause death or injury to others.

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[1] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/809767

[2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812102