Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

The Harsh Reality of Sovereign Immunity of Georgia Counties

February 3, 2020 | Robin Frazer Clark

There have been some stories on the news lately about a student who was burned during a chemistry experiment performed during class. Back in August of last year, a teacher in a DeKalb County School performed a demonstration of lighting a dollar bill on fire using ethanol and water. She apparently had performed the same demonstration using just alcohol with little success. When the teacher tried the demonstration using ethanol, the dollar bill, in a glass, caught on fire, broke the glass and traveled across a table onto the student, who had his head down on the table. It severely burned the student. The student hired counsel who has sued the teacher and the school. They are now reports in the news that the school system won’t pay for his reconstructive surgery.

This really is neither surprising or shocking. The DeKalb School system enjoys the benefit of “sovereign immunity,” which means it is immune from suit. County school systems, county agencies, county departments, really anything to do with counties, cannot be sued successfully for most causes of action. Sure, you can file suit against them, but 9.9 times out of 10 it will be dismissed on summary judgment based on sovereign immunity.

There are a few exceptions. One example would be a lawsuit for violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Title II of the ADA provides that “no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs or activities of a public entity, or be subject to discrimination by an such entity.” A disabled person who falls within the class of persons protected by the ADA may successfully sue a county for violation of the ADA, for things such as failure to maintain a sidewalk in the county that inhibits that person’s ability to move on the sidewalk. For example, if a person is confined to a wheelchair, she must be able to use the sidewalk as any capable-bodied person, so the sidewalk must have proper curb cuts to allow the wheelchair to gain access to the sidewalk and there must not be any holes in the sidewalk that would prevent the wheelchair from easily moving over the sidewalk. Sovereign immunity does not protect a county when it has violated the ADA and it grants the disabled citizen a private cause of action to enforce it. It is important for private citizens to be able to hold Georgia counties accountable for ADA violations as the number of people in the United States who are disabled in some form continues to rise. For example, it is estimated that one in 4 U.S. adults – 61 million Americans – have a disability that impacts major life activities, according to a report in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Of those disabled citizens, 13.7% have a mobility disability and an estimated 4.6% have a vision impairment. So you can why it is important that even counties not be immune for failure to comply with the ADA. Disability affects us all.

Not Surprisingly, Scooter Injuries Are On The Rise

January 10, 2020 | Robin Frazer Clark

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Does anyone else out there hate scooters? For those folks still in denial about the risk/cost benefit analysis in riding scooters, you should know that scooter injuries continue to climb. A new report by the University of California San Francisco revealed Electric scooter-related injuries resulting in hospitalization more than tripled over five years nationwide. The results showed nearly 40,000 injuries in the past five years, increasing from 6 per 100,000 people in 2014 to 19 per 100,000 in 2018. The number of hospital admissions — meaning injuries severe enough to require further medical attention — soared by 365% to nearly 3,300, the study found.

I’m not surprised. Are you?

Scooter injuries and even deaths have been in the news here in Atlanta nearly daily. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms even outlawed use of scooters at night in the city due to four scooter-related deaths. On any given day on my way to my office, which is in Downtown Atlanta, I see 2 or 3 near-catastrophic collisions with scooter-riders and cars or immovable objects. Surely, you have, too. Add a little alcohol consumed by tourists who think “it will be fun” to ride a scooter for the first time after having a few drinks, it is downright mayhem on our city streets. I have seen two or even three people riding one scooter at a time. I have seen a scooter rider texting while scooting. I have seen a scooter rider with a back-pack on, drink in one hand and cell phone in the other. Anything goes. It’s totally lawless! Part of the cause of many scooter-rider injuries must be due to lack of skill and practice riding a scooter. “E-scooters have a narrow platform, can travel up to 15 to 20 miles per hour and require a level of coordination and skill that is often not native to many users,” said Aiza Ashraf, M.D., diagnostic radiology resident at the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis. “Whereas physical effort is required to get a bicycle up to speed, e-scooters are self-powering.”

What’s Wrong with Having a 13th Juror? Anything?

November 22, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

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Recently, there have been a couple of criminal cases heard by the Georgia Supreme Court which have involved the trial judge’s inherent duty to be the final arbiter of fairness and justice in the courtroom. Sometime this is referred to as the “13th Juror,” because the trial judge sometimes must base her or his ultimate decision on the facts, testimony and documentary evidence presented at trial…things an appellate court would not be in a position to know. A recent discussion about the notion of the trial judge as 13th juror came in an appeal of a criminal case, State v. Hamilton, 832 S.E.2d 836 (Ga. Sup. Ct. September 3, 2019) in which the Georgia Supreme Court heard oral argument on the issue of whether the trial judge was authorized to toss out three counts of assault when that the jury had convicted the defendant on, in the judge’s opinion, there was no way factually or legally for those three counts to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court affirmed the trial court’s granting of a new trial. “Having reviewed the entire record, and considering that the trial court was authorized, as the thirteenth juror, to discount Taylor’s and Hewatt’s testimony and to credit Hamilton’s story, and bearing in mind the standard of review set forth in OCGA § 5-5-50, we cannot say that the trial court’s conclusion was an abuse of its substantial discretion to grant Hamilton a new trial. See Hamilton, 299 Ga. at 670-671, 791 S.E.2d 51 (“An appellate court will not disturb the first grant of a new trial based on the general grounds unless the trial court abused its discretion in granting it and the law and the facts demand the verdict rendered.”).”

In another case recently argued before the Georgia Supreme Court, the Court told the Fulton County D.A., who was appealing a trial judge’s granting of a new trial, that the D.A. was “wasting the Court’s time” with such an appeal when the trial judge clearly has the power, right and, arguably, the duty, to grant a new trial. In that case, State v. Beard, NO. S19A0535 (Ga. Sup. Ct. October 31, 2019) quoted below, the Supreme Court’s opinion called the D.A.’s position “bizarre.” “Contrary to the State’s bizarre argument, the jury’s verdict was not demanded by the “great physical laws of the universe.” (“An appellate court will not disturb the first grant of a new trial based on the general grounds unless the trial court abused its discretion in granting it and the law and the facts demand the verdict rendered.”).’

State v. Beard, S19A0535, 2019 WL 5656338, at 4 (Ga. Oct. 31, 2019). Since then, the Fulton County D.A. dismissed its appeal and has vowed to take his argument to the Georgia Legislature in an attempt to get legislation passed that will eliminate this inherent duty and power of the trial judge.

“We Don’t Get Paid Unless You Get Paid” and Other Slogans Used by TV Advertisers

October 15, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

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I have been recovering from hip replacement surgery (my second) these last two weeks and have watched a lot of daytime television while keeping my leg elevated and ice on my hip. Although I have enjoyed the short sabbatical, I hate that it came only through the necessity of having a new hip implanted. But I am doing very well and expect to be back in my office next week!

One thing that I won’t miss is watching so many lawyer ads on TV. I do not believe they improve our image as plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers and for lawyers like me who actually try jury trials, it is perfectly clear that our jurors hate these ads. I just recently tried a medical malpractice trial in DeKalb County (which resulted in a $2.35 Million verdict for my client) and many of the perspective jurors during jury selection talked about how they didn’t trust lawyers because of the ads they see on TV and generally, because of these lawyer ads, they were suspicious of our bringing a personal injury case to trial. I had to do a lot of work in jury selection to make sure those potential jurors understood I didn’t advertise and that my case they were about to sit on was a legitimate case in which my client’s mother had died due to medical malpractice. I hate that right out of the gate I had to deal with some other lawyer’s advertisement on TV, like the person in an ad who claims her lawyer got her $900,000.00 and she doesn’t even look injured!

One of the things I have noticed while being forced to watch these TV lawyer ads, is that most of them proudly promote that they don’t get paid unless you get paid, as if they are the only lawyers in the State of Georgia who will boldly make that promise. Although their statement is true, they are not the only personal injury lawyers who don’t charge a client for their time unless and until they win or settle a case for the client. In fact, as far as I know, ALL plaintiff’s personal injury attorneys, in Georgia and the entire United States for that matter, make the same deal as these TV advertising lawyers who act like they have the monopoly on this arrangement. It’s called a contingency fee agreement and all personal injury lawyers use one to be retained to work for a client on a personal injury case. Please understand that the statement made by TV advertisers about this says absolutely nothing about their skills, ability and experience as a trial lawyer. We all work under this arrangement.

DeKalb Jury Returns Verdict of $2.35 Million in Medical Malpractice Wrongful Death Trial

October 4, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

I am proud to report that after a three week, hard-fought trial in DeKalb County State Court, a jury returned a verdict in favor of my client for $2.35 Million in a medical malpractice wrongful death case. I will blog more about this shortly, but wanted to share with my followers the Daily Report’s article first. More to come later. My client and I are proud of the jury’s courage and wisdom. Their verdict is one of Justice and the collective conscience of DeKalb County.

Jury Hits Emory Clinic With $2.3M Med-Mal Verdict in Elderly Woman’s Death

Plaintiffs attorney Robin Frazer Clark said the defendants never offered anything to settle the case, which ended with the jury clearing three of four health care providers of negligence.

Jury Duty: Accessible for All

September 24, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

A neat thing happened last week in DeKalb County State Court as I was striking a jury. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed it or appreciated it, but I certainly did. The judge had called in 60 potential jurors to go through “voir dire,” or jury selection, in my case. DeKalb jurors are some of the most diverse citizens of any county in Georgia, and that wonderful diversity was in full display during jury selection. What really caught my attention was there was an interpreter for one of the jurors. This juror could not speak English, at least not fluently enough to be able to understand detailed questions about her thoughts and feelings about money damages in civil cases, medical malpractice cases in particular.

It was apparently arranged in advance, because by this woman’s side was an interpreter. The trial court judge needed to swear in the interpreter first, before swearing in the actual juror. The oath an interpreter must take states that she will truthfully and accurately translate from English to whatever language that juror spoke and back again. The trial court, before swearing in the interpreter, asked “It is Amharic? Is that correct?” The answer was yes. And so the judge swore in the interpreter with the oath that she would truly and accurately translate English into Amharic and Amharic into English. That being accomplished, the interpreter then translated not only the juror’s oath to the woman, but also every question asked of the panel.

I was fascinated by the fact that the subject language was Amharic, with which I was not at all familiar. It is spoken principally in the central highlands of the country. Amharic is an Afro-Asiatic language of the Southwest Semitic group and is related to Geʿez, or Ethiopic, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox church; it also has affinities with Tigré, Tigrinya, and the South Arabic dialects. This doesn’t surprise me at all, as DeKalb County is Georgia’s most diverse county. DeKalb is primarily a suburban county, and is the second-most-affluent county with an African-American majority in the United States, behind Prince George’s County, Maryland, in suburban Washington, D.C. As of the 2010 United States Census , there were 691,893 people, 271,809 households, and 161,453 families residing in the county. The population density was 2,585.7 inhabitants per square mile (998.3/km²). There were 304,968 housing units at an average density of 1,139.7 per square mile (440.0/km²).The racial makeup of the county was 54.3% black or African American, 33.26% white, 5.12% Asian, 0.4% American Indian, 4.5% from other races, and 2.39% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 9.8% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 5.9% were English , 5.2% were German , and 3.5% were American .

The Alarming, Inexcusable State of Mental Health Care in State Prisons

August 19, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

As I write this, many of the headlines in the news are about the so-called “shocking” suicide of alleged child sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, who, allegedly, hanged himself while incarcerated in a Federal New York prison. What is so shocking? The only thing shocking to me about this event is how the news media and on-lookers, including United States Attorney Bill Barr, think it is shocking for someone, who was known to be suicidal, predictably, takes their life by suicide. I suppose it is only Mr. Epstein’s wealth and his ties to well-known, rich, influential people, including many politicians, that makes U. S. Attorney Barr suddenly express surprise and concern that incarcerated people are attempting suicide, many successfully, when many of them should have been on suicide watch in a Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) or an Acute Care Unit (ACU). We can do without the mock concern on the part of the U.S. Attorney. This is happening right under his nose in prisons every day and he only expresses concern when it is a wealthy person who does it?

Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide was foreseeable and predictable. Now it is being reported that he was not on a suicide watch, even though he had previously attempted suicide less than two weeks earlier. The prior suicide attempt placed him in the high-risk category for attempting again. Coupled with the fact that he was in prison for the first time awaiting trial with an indictment list that, if proven, would keep him in prison for the rest of his life (another risk factor for attempting suicide), Mr. Epstein was high risk for suicide attempt and should have been on suicide watch.

Unfortunately, this blatant disregard for the lives of inmates who are either mentally ill or acutely psychotic ( or both) and the risk it creates for them to take their own life, is prevalent in our nation’s jails and prisons. It is particularly alarming in Georgia prisons. As recently as just last week, the Macon Telegraph issued the results of its study into prison suicides and announced that Georgia’s rate has reached crisis proportions. Between 2014 and 2016, state records show that 20 state prisoners had taken their own lives. In the nearly three years since, 46 prison deaths were deemed suicides. Georgia’s prison suicide rate — at 35 suicides per 100,000 — is nearly double the national average. Between 2013 and 2014 alone, U.S. state prison suicide rates rose by nearly a third. And Southern states including Georgia, Alabama and Texas saw even larger increases in their rates. Georgia correctional officials believe one in five people incarcerated in state prisons have a documented mental health need.

Keeping Mental Health of Attorneys on Your Mind

July 11, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

Friends:

Many of you know that during my presidency of the State Bar of Georgia in 2012-2013, I made mental health of attorneys, and their family members, a primary concern. I have taken every opportunity presented to make us more aware of the stresses that attorneys face just in their daily practices and the toll that has on them and their family. We created the “How to Save a Life” Suicide Prevention Program and we know we have been successful in preventing some attorney suicides. But we also know we need to continue to effort. Often, an attorney reaches out to me about a partner in the firm, or a partner reaches out to me about his son, or counselors reach out to me to see how they can help. I am also thankful and proud that Jonathan Ringel, the Editor of The Daily Report, graciously gives me and others space in the newspaper to write about suicide prevention and to keep the conversation going. This is the only way we will eliminate the stigma of mental illness that prevents so many from reaching out for help. And help is easily available, through our Lawyers Assistance Program (800-327-9631) and the State Bar’s Lawyers Living Well Initiative. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255.

And so I was honored to be asked to participate in a podcast on the mental health of lawyers by Miles Mediation. Both Editor/Journalist Jonathan Ringel and Stacey Dougan, a lawyer turned therapist, joined in the discussion as moderated by Miles neutral, Bianca Motley Broom, and CMO, Marcie Dickson. I urge you to listen and to share with your family members, friends and colleagues. It will be worth your time. And just by listening, you may save a life.

I Was Just Put On a Jury. Why Am I Here?

June 3, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

I was just put on a jury in a case that seems pretty clear cut. So why am I here? Why is there a trial?

Many jurors may find themselves thinking this in a case in which the defendant is clearly at fault and the plaintiff is clearly injured. Most reasonable people, as jurors tend to be, would assume a clear liability case with clear injuries should be settled out of court. My concern is that when a juror is forced to sit on a jury in a case like this, the juror may very likely assume it must be because the plaintiff wanted too much money. But it seems to be a trend in many cases in Georgia that what actually has happened is that the insurance carrier for the at-fault defendant has refused to offer much, if anything, before trial, to try to resolve the case. This has been borne out many times in recent trials.

For example, in a case tried in Whitfield County, Georgia (Dalton) a jury entered a verdict in the amount of $21.6 million last month for a man who lost a leg after being struck by a pick-up truck as he walked toward a Whitfield County highway to stop traffic for a tractor-trailer. The plaintiff’s medical bills were more than $411,000 and the insurance carrier didn’t even offer that much before the trial, according to plaintiff’s attorney. He said the insurance carriers never offered any meaningful settlement despite their client’s permanent, life-altering injuries and despite a court-ordered mediation.

The Overwhelming Emotion of a Trial

April 16, 2019 | Robin Frazer Clark

Recently, I was in a courtroom in Fulton County, Georgia watching a medical malpractice trial. I was not involved in the trial; I was just a trialwatcher. When I have time, I still enjoy watching trials, both civil and criminal, for the real life drama on display. No movie or play can capture the sheer, raw emotion of a trial. A jury’s decision can be life-altering. In a civil trial for money damages, a verdict for the plaintiff can give the family of the injured person or decedent a sense of Justice and much needed closure. A verdict for the defendant can give a defendant a sense of vindication. The whole trial process is designed to find the truth. In fact, the word “verdict,” in Latin, means “to speak the truth.”

I have often seen normal laypeople who are testifying realize, on the stand, they have underestimated the emotional pressure that the formality of the courtroom imposes on them. There is something about the utter dignity and formality of the Courtroom, with the judge sitting high on the bench, with a court reporter taking down every word uttered, with 12 citizens sitting in judgment, with a Deputy Sheriff at the door, that brings the enormity of it all into crystallized focus. In this medical malpractice trial I was watching, there was a moment with one of the defendants on the witness stand when he simply broke down during his testimony. He began to tear up on the stand and the began to cry, and the plaintiff’s attorney quickly asked the judge for a break. But it was too late. The defendant began crying uncontrollably, and literally fell down on the floor from the weight of it all. His attorney had to go help get him off the floor and then out of the courtroom as the bailiff quickly took the jury back to the jury room. It was clear that the defendant had suffered something so strong emotionally that he could not go on. We were all worried about his mental well-being. I knew his attorney and knew he would make sure his client was supported emotionally and not left alone. I believe his attorney was sincerely concerned about his client’s ability now to go on with the trial and meaningfully participate in the trial and assist his attorney. In speaking with several of the attorneys in the case, both plaintiff and defense, not one of us had ever seen something like that happen in a trial before. Most of us had practiced for over 30 years. Meanwhile, the plaintiff’s attorney felt just as strongly that the defendant’s outburst of emotion directly in front of the jury was so overly prejudicial that the jury could not help but sympathize with the defendant, regardless of any instruction the judge might give to the contrary. Telling a jury they may have no sympathy for either side is easier said than done when a witness has just broken down in front of their eyes. Discussion was had by all counsel with the judge in the judge’s chambers, and I was not privy to what they discussed and argued. Eventually, the defendant who had broken down on the stand reappeared in the courtroom. He looked shaken and seemed to be trembling. He was visibly trembling as he took sips out of a water bottle. There was no question in my mind that this was sincere and beyond his control. I felt empathy for him. After about an hour, though, the judge and all counsel came back into the courtroom and the jury was brought back into the courtroom. The judge declared a mistrial and thanked the jury for their work and instructed the jury they were no longer needed and that their jury duty had been fulfilled.

Wow.