Personal Injury & Wrongful Death

Under the FTCA, a plaintiff must first submit an administrative claim to the responsible federal agency prior to the initiation of a lawsuit. The courts have held that the filing of such a claim is a jurisdictional requirement meaning that before the United States government can be sued, a written claim must first be made to the responsible federal agency which the claimant contends is liable for their damages. Many federal agencies have their own regulations governing the filing of such claims but in most cases they are identical to regulations issued by the United States Department of Justice. The usual standard Form 95 Claim Form is that which should be used. It can be located via a Google search and sets forth what information should be provided to the government when a claim is filed.
(more…)

Many Georgia drivers can expect to receive recall notices for vehicles manufactured by General Motors Corp., due to a dangerous defect which can cause the vehicle to catch on fire. In one of the largest recalls of the year, General Motors announced Tuesday that it was recalling almost 1.5 million vehicles because it cannot fix a defect in the system that squirts heated cleaning fluid on the windshield.
(more…)

Atlanta, and other metropolitan areas in the state of Georgia have seen a rapid expansion in the numbers of same-day surgery centers. Yesterday, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article suggesting that lack of infection practices are common in the nations more than 5000 outpatient surgery centers.

The study was prompted by a hepatitis C outbreak in Las Vegas. This outbreak was caused by unsafe injection practices at two outpatient surgery centers.
(more…)

When it comes to torts committed by the government and/or its employees, the beginning and ending place for any analysis is the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). See 28 U.S.C. § 1346. The Federal Tort Claims Act provides a limited waiver of sovereign immunity and allows for money damages against the government for damages, loss of property, personal injury or death. In order to recover under the FTCA, one must show that the damages claimed resulted from a wrongful or negligent act of a government employee acting within the scope of his employment under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the injured person in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.
(more…)

Under Georgia law, a sheriff and only a sheriff is vicariously liable for the negligent acts of his or her deputies. A county sheriff employs the deputy and the deputy reports to the sheriff. Thus, if a deputy sheriff is negligent, the sheriff is liable not the County. Notwithstanding this legal liability, however, there is a confusing element of Georgia law when it comes to perfecting claims against sheriffs and their deputies.
(more…)

In a case involving serious injuries which threaten to impair or impede altogether one’s ability to be gainfully employed, a Functional Capacity Evaluation can be critical in helping to establish the extent of the disability. Functional Capacity Evaluations are performed according to objective criteria which have been proven to be reliable in determining the extent of job related restrictions and limitations. If a client submits to a Functional Capacity Evaluation and is proven by such objective criteria to have limited abilities, such evidence can be critical in helping to convince a jury of the legitimacy of the claim. This can be extremely important in cases where someone complains of neck or back pain, for example. It is often difficult for a jury to understand the degree to which someone is suffering from neck or back pain. Such claims can be embellished or magnified, but a Functional Capacity Evaluation performed by a competent practitioner can weed out claims of embellishment and malingering because the test as designed can detect such claims as opposed to legitimate claims.
(more…)

There are several popular medications used by those who suffer from asthma which have an increased market share presence. These include Serevent, Advair and Foradel. All these medications use inhalation powders containing long acting beta agonists, commonly known as “LABA.” Beginning as early as November of 2005, the Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory concerning these three drugs informing doctors and patients that the use of these products could increase one’s risk of developing severe asthma and/or possibly having a fatal reaction.
(more…)

A very common issue is a serious injury case is whether there exists any vicarious liability of a third party. If a truck driver runs into a motorist stopped at a stop sign and seriously injures them the question is whether the truck driver alone can be sued and/or their employer. Under longstanding legal principles, an employer is vicariously liable for the acts of the employee. As long as the employee was acting within the scope of his employment at the time of the incident and injures the innocent third party, the employer will be vicariously liable for the damages caused by such negligent acts even if the employer did not approve of the acts and/or had company policies prohibiting such negligent behavior. The reason is because an employer is by definition responsible for the acts of employees acting within the scope of their employment.
(more…)

In a personal injury lawsuit, it is always difficult for the trial lawyer representing the injured victim to talk about money in the context of pain and suffering. How does one fairly compensate an individual who is suffering as a result of the acts of a third party? Someone who is sitting still at a stop sign and who is rear-ended by a commercial truck, for example, and who sustains a broken neck or back is going to be faced with a lifetime of pain and suffering. How does one fairly compensate such an individual with money? This is a difficult determination which juries must wrestle with and which trial lawyers must address in their presentations on behalf of their innocent clients.
(more…)

As our firm handles police chases for innocent victims tragically caught up in these dangerous pursuits through no fault of their own, and as we have witnessed many different tragedies in this context, we obviously pay close attention to other similar cases throughout the country. Just this past week we read three different articles about three different pursuits in three different states in which innocent bystanders were killed during these dangerous pursuits. In none of the pursuits that we read about were any of the fleeing suspects being pursued for a felony. One suspect fled from a routine traffic stop, another female suspect was fleeing for reasons unknown to the police in which her baby was killed and a third was fleeing for traffic violations. In all of these cases, the death penalty was imposed upon an innocent third party who had committed no violation of the law and was hit by the fleeing suspect. Had the suspect been safely apprehended, it is likely they would have been given a fine and let go by the court system based on the minor offenses committed. This is an all too familiar pattern.
(more…)