Personal Injury & Wrongful Death

Georgia injury lawyers know that any head-on collision between two vehicles is usually a serious matter. A head-on collision occurred today in Johns Creek on State Bridge Road which resulted in the death of one of the drivers and serious injuries to the two occupants of the other vehicle. Both individuals were airlifted to different metro Atlanta hospitals.
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An Atlanta television station,11Alive, reported the death of a 19 year old Oxford College at Emory student who was struck and killed by an automobile as she was crossing the street. The girl was a native of North Carolina. Apparently the victim was crossing the street near the intersection of Mason Mill Road and Houston Mill Road in Atlanta when she was hit. The serious injuries she sustained resulted in her death early Saturday morning.
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Dangerous nurses and healthcare providers may be practicing throughout Georgia. In 1987, Congress ordered federal health officials to create a database of state disciplinary actions against nurses and other health professionals. This database includes the names of those who, among other things, have been found to have committed physical, mental and sexual abuse of patients.

While each state is required to maintain a database, no nationally available database has ben created. When a hospital or temporary agency wants to hire a nurse, there’s no easy way to check whether the person has abused a patient or engaged in dangerous conduct elsewhere in the country.
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The serious injury lawyers at Finch McCranie LLP handle many automobile related cases. A significant number of these involve product defects. One such defect that has remained under publicized is the threat posed by power windows to children.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, estimates there are 1,995 injuries and six deaths a year related to power windows.
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A couple of years ago the Georgia Injury Lawyers at Finch McCranie LLP, represented the family of a young boy who fell from a civic center stage to the concrete floor below. Within moments the boy had slipped into a coma. With limited resources, the parents cared for their son in the living room of their home, 24-hours a day. As time went one and the boy ended up back in the hospital, officials there put more and more pressure upon the parents to remove the boy from life support. The parents refused to do so and the young boy eventually died as a result of his brain injury.

A few years ago, the Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP represented an elderly woman who had beeen knocked down and seriously injured by malfunctioning electric doors at an Atlanta grocery store. We sued the store and the door company responsible for maintaing the doors. Recently, an 80-year old woman settled a very similar case for $7 million with Target and a mechanical door company. She had been knocked down by a faulty door in 2007. The woman sustained brain injuries which left her with significant cognitive deficits and required her to move into a nursing home.

Recently, we represented a gymnastics instructor in a contested workers compensation claim. The client was expected to attend and supervise gymnastics meets around the city as a part of her job duties even though she was not paid to do so. One evening while on her way home from such an event, she was seriously injured in an automobile accident. The employer/insurer took the position that she was “off the clock” and not in the course and scope of her employment from the time she left the event. Fortunately, the State Board of Workers Compensation did not agree and she was awarded benefits. This case made us think about the changing employment landscape. In the past, employers whose employees clocked in and out at work could be assured that when the employees left the job site they would be free from any obligation to their employees until the start of the next work day. However, recent technological advances and the concept of “telecommuting” have expanded the workplace into the employee’s home and personal life. The development of PDA’s, cell phones and email allows employers to stay in contact with their employees after the work day is over. Accordingly, some employers now expect employees to perform work related tasks even when they are “off the clock”. Technology has effectively turned some employees into 24/7 workers. This could be potentially good evidence for Georgia injury lawyers to develop in future workers compensation cases with some workers.
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The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP are well aware that there are many dangerous products that come to market. This week Federal Safety Regulators have announced the recall of more than 2.1 million drop-side cribs made by a Canadian manufacturer. It appears that part of the mechanism that allows the rail to slide up and down can break which can allow a child to get wedged between the bed and the rail, resulting in the child’s suffocation and death.
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The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP are investigating injury claims associated with the popular birth control drugs Yaz, Yasmin, & Ocella. Last month, we received a call from a 21 year old former client who had undergone surgery to remove her gall bladder. As it turned out, she had been taking Yaz. Recent reports suggest that these prescription medications could be putting millions of young women at risk of serious side effects, including stroke, heart attack, blood clots, deep vein thrombosis,
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Medical malpractice is a serious problem in Georgia and the United States. While limits on recoveries for innocent victims is being pushed by large insurance companies, there are many issues that are being ignored. One is the lack of information available to the public about incompetent doctors and hospitals.

More than 20 years ago, Congress created a federal database to track incompetent and unprofessional health-care practitioners. The database, compiled by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, includes some 460,000 records of malpractice lawsuits whose judgments total $69.7 billion. It includes information on 23,788 patient deaths, 8,100 major permanent injuries and 3,896 cases that resulted in quadriplegics, brain damage or lifelong care.
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