Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

Justice is Served: Oregon High Court Reaffirms $79.5M Jury Verdict in Philip Morris Case

February 1, 2008 | Robin Frazer Clark

Justice is Served…for the third time, no less. The Supreme Court of Oregon has reaffirmed a $79.5M jury verdict in a tobacco products safety case against Philip Morris. The award was for the family of Jesse Williams, a former Portland janitor who started smoking during a 1950s Army hitch and died in 1997 six months after he was diagnosed with lung cancer. A jury in Portland made the award in 1999.

The Oregon Supreme Court said in Thursday’s ruling that Philip Morris and the tobacco industry worked during the 1950s on a “program of disinformation” to create doubt about the dangers of smoking. Williams “learned from watching television that smoking did not cause lung cancer,” but, once he came down with it, said the “cigarette people” had lied to him.

What’s particularly satisfying about the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision is that it reaffirms, for the third time, that the jury in the American Civil Justice System knows best. Despite the repeated attempts by the United States Supreme Court to take away the plaintiff’s verdict in this case, the Oregon jury’s decision has finally prevailed, proving again the jury knows best and the jury system works. It seems that only when Big Corporate America loses a trial does it rail against what they term “activist”judges. What is surprising is, if there is any “activist” judges in this case, it is the United States Supreme Court justices. They tried and tried to take away the jury’s verdict and impose their own judgment on a trial that involved Oregon citizens and was decided by Oregon citizens. But, fortunately, the Justices’ attempts have failed and, hopefully, the jury’s verdict will now stand in this case.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around in Kentucky Comair Airplane Crash

January 31, 2008 | Robin Frazer Clark

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.

Wealthy Insurance Companies Rob Their Own Insureds

January 31, 2008 | Robin Frazer Clark

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.

Car Seats Save Lives~Buckle Up the Ones You Love

January 28, 2008 | Robin Frazer Clark

This child never had a chance. Yesterday, in Atlanta, a two month old infant was killed because she was sitting in her mother’s lap while her mother was driving a car and hit a telephone pole. The air bag deployed, as it should, and the infant died immediately. The mother was physcially unharmed. As would have been her baby if the mother had simply taken one minute to strap her into a child’s car seat.

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Parents can learn more about child car seat safety from the National Highway Traffic Safety Admininstration (NHTSA) and its Child Passenger Safety Program. Specifically, for Georgia law on child car seats, parents can have their questions answered at The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety.

Georgia State Bar Board of Governors Concerned About Effect of the GREAT Plan

January 27, 2008 | Robin Frazer Clark

As you may know, I am a member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Board of Governors, the governing body over Georgia’s 38,000 lawyers. We, the Board of Governors, recently held our Mid-Year meeting here in Atlanta, and one item on our agenda was the GREAT Plan, HR 900, the new tax plan being proposed by the Speaker of the House, Glenn Richardson, a Republican State Representative from Paulding County. The Georgia Board of Governors voted to express our concern with and opposition to the GREAT plan, as it applies to the taxation of legal services. Because the Speaker has now exempted business-to-business transactions from the
plan’s tax scheme, that means only individual Georgia citizens, not corporations, would have to pay the tax on legal services. Corporations get a free pass, while Georgia would be trying to raise revenue on the backs of individual Georgia citizens, those who can least afford it. How could this possibly comport with the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the laws? It can’t, but that has often before never been much of an impediment to the Georgia General Assembly’s passage of laws, as evidenced by 2005’s SB3, the so-called “tort reform” bill. Much of SB3 has now been held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Georgia, and it is only a matter of time before the remaining provisions are also ruled unconstitutional. In the meantime, though, many deserving Georgia citizens have been robbed of justice because of SB3.
I am proud of the action taken by the Georgia Board of Governors expressing opposition to the proposed tax scheme. If there is anyone who will stand up for the individual Georgia citizen, it is the honorable lawyers of the State Bar of Georgia.

Robin Frazer Clark Named Georgia Trend’s 2007 Legal Elite

December 17, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

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2007 Georgia’s Legal Elite
I am pleased, humbled and honored to announce I have been named by Georgia Trend Magazine as one of its 2007 Legal Elite in the area of Plaintiff’s Personal Injury in Georgia. Of the 43 lawyers named as Legal Elite for the practice area of Personal Injury in Georgia, only 21 were named in the specific are of representing plaintiffs, and of those 21 lawyers only three were female and I am extremely honored to have been named as one of those. Selection to the Legal Elite list means I was one of 21 plaintiff’s personal injury lawyers (out of a total of 38,000 lawyers in the state) in Georgia selected by their peers as the most effective in plaintiff’s personal injury law practice. Recipients were chosen by our peers, which means my colleagues in personal injury law consider me to be one of the most effective plaintiff’s trial lawyers in Georgia for my clients. Quite an honor, indeed!! This honor really acknowledges my level of expertise in plaintiff’s personal injury work in Georgia and my dedication to my client’s cause.

$36.5 Million Verdict Against Swift Trucking Company

December 5, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

An Arizona jury returned a plaintiff’s verdict yesterday of a whopping $36.5 Million against Swift Trucking Company for Swift Trucking’s driver’s negligence in causing a horrible crash that killed the father of eight children. $13.5 Million of the verdict was for punitive damages to punish Swift for not producing their driver’s logs in the litigation. Tractor-Trailer drivers are required by Federal law to maintain log books showing how many hours they have driven. At issue in this case, and many others, was driver fatigue.

Swift tractor-trailers are all over the roads of Metro Atlanta and Georgia. For safety’s sake, drive as far away as possible from big tractor-trailers. Leave a lane between you and them if you can. Try never to drive in front of them if possible. Some wrecks, like the one in Arizona, are 100% the fault of the truck driver and there is often nothing the victim could have done to avoid the wreck. But it helps increase your chances of not having a wreck with them if you stay as far away from them on the roads as possible.

Old News: Doctors Protect Their Own

December 4, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

It’s not news that doctors protect their own, although that fact is now proven. In a recent study, 46 percent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it. This in spite of the fact that in 2000, the U.S. Institute of Medicine reported that up to 98,000 people die every year because of medical errors in hospitals alone.

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There is probably plenty of blame to go around for this phenomenon: inadequate State Medical Boards, hospitals that profit off of physicians, and an attitude of many physicians that they simply should not be held accountable for their errors, because, they are, after all, doctors. Let’s hope the Georgia Composite State Board of Medical Examiners, the Board that oversees all physicians licensed here in Georgia, does a better job of cleaning their own house. Plaintiffs’ trial lawyers who handle medical malpractice cases here in Georgia, as I do, will do everything we can to hold negligent physicians accountable in a civil court of law, as long as the Georgia Legislature stops limiting a Georgia citizen’s access to the courts and, thereby, to justice.

Three Botched Brain Surgeries in Same Hospital Indicates Systems Failure

December 4, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

It is hard to believe this actually happened, I know, but in a Rhode Island hospital, there have been three botched brain surgeries in the last ten months in which the physician operated on the wrong side of the brain! In two cases, the doctors did not realize the errors until after they had opened the skull. This is not just rotten luck: this is evidence of a significant systems failure in that hospital.

We, as Georgia citizens, can only hope we would be better served by our hospitals and our physicians, and that the Georgia Composite State Board of Medical Examiners would be more diligent in weeding out incompetent doctors. We place our lives and the lives of our loved ones in the hands of these physicians and we expect some minimum level of competence, which clearly is absent if the physician operates on the wrong side of the body.

Log Truck Accident Kills 12 Year Old

December 3, 2007 | Robin Frazer Clark

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Another log truck accident in Milledgeville, Georgia has killed a 12 year old girl and injured her mother. The accident happened on Sparta Highway in Baldwin County. Although much of the Georgia economy depends on logging, these accidents with logging trucks happen too often and, when they do, they are usually fatal. Although the details of this accident haven’t yet been made public, my guess based on my experience in handling these types of serious trucking accidents is that logs may have become unstable or lose and may have gone right through the Toyota Camry in which the child was riding. My heart goes out to the mother who was driving and to the child’s family. There is nothing as devastating as the loss of a child.