Articles Posted in Personal Injury

wrecked%20car.jpgFinally, scientific proof that car accident victims aren’t crazy, they really are in pain. If only their doctors would listen to them and take them seriously when they say, even a full year after the car wreck, they are still in pain. A recent study published on Monday in the medical journal Archives of Surgery showed a year after the injury, 63 percent of car wreck victims reported that they still experienced pain related to the injury, with most having pain in more than one region of the body. On average, the patients assessed their pain at 5.5 on a 10-point scale — a level at which they would be expected to have moderate to severe interference with daily activities. The overall conclusion of the study: physicians need to offer better treatment for their patients.

As a plaintiff’s personal injury attorney here in Atlanta, Georgia, whose practice consists largely of helping people who have been severely injured in car wrecks or trucking wrecks, I have heard this from my clients consistently over the last twenty years. Yet, they often can’t seem to get the right treatment from their doctors, or even appropriate referrals to other physicians who might be able to help with alternative treatments. I have always suspected the physicians, strapped for time due to health insurers’ controlling their practices, just aren’t listening to their patients’ complaints. This study seems to confirm exactly what I have thought, and validates the complaints of many of my clients. Doctors simply need to do a better job listening to their patients.

The physician who led the study admitted as much. “I was surprised that the pain was as common and as severe as they reported it to be,” said Dr. Frederick Rivara of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study. “The implications are that we need to do a much better job of identifying pain in these patients, treating it adequately and treating it early,” Rivara added in a telephone interview.

pumpkin_farm_1.jpgThe Georgia General Assembly remains in session today, and with every day, some other Georgia citizen’s rights are limited or even eliminated by that body. The latest example is the attempt by the Georgia Senate to extinguish a landowner’s liabilty when that landowner operates, for profit, a business that could loosely be described as agricultural in nature. This would include lucrative dove and quail hunting plantations, as well as the pick-your-own strawberry and pumpkin patches that many of our school age children go to on school sponsored field trips. The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association has consistently opposed giving immunity to the landowner in that scenario, especially where the landowner has advertised to get you to come onto their land and then has charged you a fee for being there. I think any normal Georgia citizen would believe and expect that landowner to make sure his premises were safe for his customers in that setting. But the current bill, passed by the Georgia Senate last week, would allow that landowner to get off scott free from any responsibility for injuries his property, if not kept in good repair, may cause a paying business visitor.

The editorial board of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution has published an opinion against the bill in today’s paper and I have copied it for you below. The bill now goes to the Georgia House to be voted on. Georgia citizens should call their respective State Representatives and ask they vote “no” on the so-called Agritourism Bill, Senate Bill 449. It is a cop-out for wealthy landowners and leaves ordinary Georgia citizens, like you and me, and our precious children, to hang out to dry. Whatever happened to taking responsibility for your actions? Under this bill, landowners could take your money and never worry about whether you’re safe on their property. Outrageous.

OUR OPINIONS: No immunity for agritourism

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Congratulations to Patsy Bates of Los Angeles, California, who just was awarded a $9 Million arbitration award by an arbitration panel against HealthNet, her health insurance carrier, for it’s illegal cancellation of her coverage at the beginning of her treatment for breast cancer. The award came a day after the Los Angeles city attorney sued Health Net, claiming it illegally canceled the coverage of about 1,600 patients. City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo also said the company illegally ran an incentive program in which it paid bonuses to an administrator for meeting targets of policy cancelations. Health Net acknowledged that such a program existed in 2002 and 2003 but was subsequently scrapped.

This is a clear example of the callousness, and sometimes outright illegality, of the way in which insurance carriers attempt to avoid payment of legitimate insurace claims. Only this time, HealthNet got caught. This was an unusual situation because, apparently, there was an arbitration clause in the health insurance policy that allowed for pain and suffering damages. Most issues regarding payment of claims by a health insurance carrier are preempted by ERISA, and the injured policyholder is unable to sue in court to assert his or her rights under the policy.

Can we presume insurance carriers right here in Georgia are doing the same thing, i.e., cancelling a policy to avoid paying out on a legitimate claim? Yes, probably, they are. The little guy who is injured must continue fight the denial decision, and often at a time in that person’s life when he or she needs to be focusing on another fight, like one against breast cancer, as Ms. Bates did. Fortunately, we have Georgia trial lawyers, like me, ready to take on that fight!

I am proud to be a Past President of Georgia Trial Lawyers Association. It is made up of true trial lawyers who love representing the underdog against enormous odds. Our members are some of the finest lawyers in the State of Georgia and professionalism in all aspects of the practice of law is our hallmark.

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution has reported that following the Savannah Sugar Refinery blast last week, a lawyer from Texas took out a full page advertisement in the Savannah paper soliciting victims of the blast. There have also been reports that lawyers from a silk stocking law firm here in Atlanta, with an office in Augusta, has been soliciting victims who are currently being treated in the burn clinic in Augusta. This silk stocking (meaning big and expensive) firm typically defends very big corporations rather than representing individuals who have been harmed by the negligence of big corporations.

To be absolutely clear, the leadership of Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (GTLA) condemns such solicitation. These victims and their families need to be focusing on healing, not on such high pressure tactics as direct solicitation of victims immediately after the tragedy. Below is a statement from the President of Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, Joe Watkins, on behalf of Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, condemning the practice and rightfully putting focus on the needs of the victims and their families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them during this difficult time.

Georgia citizens are being placed at risk by the Georgia Department of Transportation. Two Georgia DOT bridge inspectors have now admitted they lied when they certified 54 Georgia bridges as being safe. David Simmons, who worked in a team with Gerald Kelsey, admitted to filing reports for 54 bridges they hadn’t actually inspected, according to DOT. Steve Henry, director of operations at DOT, misses the point when he says “If we ever thought a bridge was unsafe we’d shut it down,” because without the actual inspections having been done, the purpose of which is to determine whether a bridge is safe for the traveling public, there is no way to know whether they are safe.

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Although these two Georgia DOT rogue employees were forced to resign (shouldn’t they have been fired?), who knows what else is going on at the Georgia DOT and who knows whether Georgia citizens are really safe traveling on the roads and bridges in Georgia? We can only hope and pray that the good people of Georgia don’t learn of any more shoddy work by the GDOT the hard way, the way Minnesota citizens found out this past summer when a major Minneapolis bridge collapsed, killing several citizens. Georgia citizens deserve better.

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You may recall the tragic Comair airplane crash in Lexington, Kentucky in 2006. The plane crashed after taking off from the wrong runway, killing 49 of the 50 people aboard. A federal judge Tuesday unexpectedly moved up by four months a trial to determine fault in the crash of Comair Flight 5191. In a hearing in federal court, U.S. District Judge Karl Forester set an Aug. 4 trial date for 29 families who have sued Comair over the August 2006 fatal crash at Blue Grass Airport.

There is plenty of blame to go around. The plane took off on a runway that was far too short for the aircraft. There was a construction project going on at the airport at the time and the maps the pilots had were not up to date. The National Transportation Safety Board found that the probable cause of the crash was pilot error. Comair, meanwhile, has sued the Federal Aviation Administration and Blue Grass Airport. It is appealing a ruling that the airport is immune from lawsuits because it is a government entity.

Kentucky law has been harsh to the families of the victims. The judge has ruled that those who lost loved ones in the 2006 crash of a Comair plane aren’t entitled under Kentucky law to sue the airline for loss of companionship. Kentucky is among four states that don’t allow jury awards for loss of companionship by surviving spouses. There also is no state provision for companionship damages for adult children or their parents, although the state does allow children younger than 18 to sue for damages when a parent is wrongfully killed.

It is happening in almost every personal injury case these days, a wealthy health insurance carrier grabbing a personal injury plaintiff’s settlement money under a roose called “subrogation.” It is robbery and every Georgia Citizen and every American citizen should be outraged. I recently saw an article that highlighted this tactic by health insurance carriers in the context of the Minnesota Bridge Collapse, which you will remember occurred earlier this year. The typical situation is you have a badly injured personal injury plaintiff who settles his or her lawsuit, and then his or her health insurance carrier steps in, having done absolutely NOTHING to procure the settlement, and recoups all of the money it has paid medical care providers for medical treatment for the plaintiff. What is even more repulsive is that the health insurace carrier has actually sold its account payable to a collection agency who then often fraudulently claims it is still the health insurance company acting. This is happening even though the Plaintiff has diligently paid his or her health insurance premiums all along.

It is a complicated analysis, but, fortunately, Georgia has the “made whole” doctrine, which says the plaintiff must first have been made whole before any third party, like the health insurance carrier, can just waltz in and take away the plaintiff’s settlement money unfairly. Fortunately, for Minnesota victims of the bridge collapse, Minnesota Lawmakers are trying to make up for bridge collapse survivors’ financial losses and out-of-pocket expenses and are brainstorming with attorneys about how they can keep health plans from recovering money meant for victims. I would urge the Georgia Lawmakers to do the same thing. Enough if enough.

standnseal.gif I want to issue a warning to Do-It-Yourselfers out there, who enjoy a Saturday trip to Home Depot here in Atlanta, Georgia to find the materials they need to fix up something at the their houses and take pride in having done the job themselves. Do not purchase or use Stand ‘n Seal, a sealant used to seal grout around tile. It has been proven to cause lung damage with just one use. At least 80 serious injuries, including 2 fatalities, have been linked to this dangerous product.

A tiny Georgia company, Innovative Chemical Technologies, made a chemical called Flexipel S-22WS, a dangerous ingredient in the sealant. There is evidence of a cover-up in that the manufacturer of Stand ‘n Seal knew well in advance of marketing and selling the spray that the chemical in it could cause lung damage to innocent users. In another example of Corporate America putting profits over people, after becoming aware of numerous complaints about the product, Richard F. Tripodi, the manufacturer’s chief executive, asked a staff member fielding calls at a 24-hour emergency number not to tell customers reporting illnesses that others had called with similar complaints, documents show. Truly reprehensible conduct.

Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission finally issued an official recall of the hazardous product, it remained on Home Depot shelves available for purchase by Home Depot customers well after the recall and well after the deadly side effect was known. It was not until March 2007, 18 months after the original recall, that Home Depot and Roanoke acknowledged the apparent source of the continuing problem.

I read in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution this weekend that the first lawsuit regarding the Bluffton, Ohio bus crash, that killed or injured the members of a Bluffton, Ohio baseball team, was filed in Atlanta, Georgia. The article may not have detailed all the counts alleged or all of the defendants named in the suit, but it concerned me that it did not mention the Georgia Department of Transportation as being named as a defendant. This is concerning to me given the fact that the Georgia DOT has, for all intents and purposes, admitted it maintained a defective exit where the bus went off the interstate, onto the poorly marked exit off to the left, and then over the overpass, crashing to the asphalt below. The lawyers who filed this lawsuit, regrettably, are not from Georgia, which is another concern. These families deserve justice, and it seems to me the best way for them to obtain that is a lawsuit here in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, against the Georgia Department of Transportation for negligent design and maintenance. The Georgia DOT has already made efforts to change the poorly designed exit, with bigger, more effective warning signs, that, in my opinion, should have been in place long ago. Many Atlanta citizens were probably already familiar with what a dangerous exit this was, as other wrecks had occurred here numerous times. Yet it was only after the Bluffton, Ohio crash did the Georgia DOT wake up and actually try to correct the situation.

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My heart and my prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones in this wreck. It should never have happened, and wouldn’t have happened had the Georgia DOT not been asleep at the wheel.

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Each year, 9,400 children are injured in lawn mower accidents, and 7 percent of those injuries involve amputations or torn nerves, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. One-fifth of childhood amputations are caused by lawn mowers. Recently, an Ila, Georgia child lost her left leg below the knee and her right foot July 18, when her father accidentally ran over the child with a riding lawn mower. Unfortunately, this type of accident is becoming more prevalent in Georgia. Children’s Healthcare System of Atlanta, which includes Egleston and Scottish Rite, is treating three children who lost limbs in lawn mower accidents, according to Colleen Coulter-O’Berry, who’s worked in the system’s amputee program for 25 years. Nationwide, the estimated number of children with lawnmower related injuries, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics is 560 injuries to children each year.

A tragedy, yes. But don’t blame the parent. If the lawnmower had been equipped with a safety feature called the “no-mow-in-reverse” feature, this accident and thousands of others never would have happened. Trial lawyers across the United States are pursuing personal injury claims against the lawnmower manufacturers in product liability or product safety cases in an effort to make manufacturers equip their mowers with these safety devices. There have been mixed results, but one of the greatest accomplishments that some personal injury litigation can sometimes have is to force a manufacturer to make its product safe before selling it to the public, and I hope these lawnmower lawsuits will, ultimately, effect a change in that regard.

An easy solution would be for lawnmower manufacturers to fix their riding lawnmowers by including the “no-mow-in-reverse” safety feature. Then hundreds of Georgia kids would be spared a devastating injury such as losing a leg or a foot and then having to go through life disabled. I and other trial lawyers will continue to pursue these cases until these manufacturers listen and, hopefully, we’ll save a few Georgia children in the process.

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