personal injury Tag Archives - Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

Vicky Bostick: How the Bostick Family Has Channeled Grief into Good

May 8, 2023 | Robin Frazer Clark

I recently had the distinct honor of representing Damien and D.J. Bostick for the death of their wife/mother, Vicky Bostick, in a rear-end collision by a tractor-trailer. We have resolved part of the case and now continue to fight for Justice for the Bosticks in another, separate products liability lawsuit. Vicky was only 50 years old on the day she died, which also just happened to be her 25th Wedding Anniversary with her husband, Damien. “Tragic” is not a strong enough word to describe this tragedy. It is unspeakable.

I have had the pleasure of getting to know Damien and D.J. and their incredible family during this process. This is one of the many things I love about doing what I do. My clients become like family to me. I represent many families who have lost a loved one because of someone else’s negligence. A family never “gets over” the sudden, senseless death of their loved one. They have to find a way to live on without him or her. The deceased loved one is always with them. I have found that families who do something to memorialize their loved one’s life and time here on Earth, something tangible to remember their loved one by and honor their loved one, handle the overwhelming grief the best.

The Bosticks have joined iThink Credit Union and the iThink Community Foundation, where Vicky worked as a Mortgage Originations Manager at the time of her death, to establish a scholarship for a student from Marietta High School, D.J’s alma mater, in Vicky’s name. It it called “The Vicky Bostick Memorial Scholarship” and candidates for the scholarship must be graduates of the Mentoring for Leadership program. Here is what iThink said about Vicky:

Know the Truth About Personal Injury Lawyers Before Hiring One: You Need An Actual Georgia Trial Lawyer

October 3, 2022 | Robin Frazer Clark

Lately, I am seeing more and more advertisements, on T.V., on Youtube, on Court TV, on Instagram, on Tik Tok, essentially on every Internet Platform you can think of, of lawyers who tout their legal acumen and ability to get an injured person a lot of money with very little effort. Some of these advertisements have fake clients in them who look perfectly normal, healthy and uninjured, claiming their attorney got them a check for $350,000.00 or some high dollar amount “just like that” with “one call.” Some of these advertisements brag about their lawyers being “trial lawyers” when they actually haven’t even tried very many cases, if any. Some of these advertising lawyers claim to be “elite” (they actually use that word) and yet haven’t even tried 10 cases. Some of these advertisements actually mislead the injured consumer with false statements about what the law and ethical rules allow. Some of these advertisements brag that their lawyers have secured more money in verdicts than any other firm in the “universe” or the “metaverse,” and yet aren’t even licensed to practice law in the State of Georgia. Some of these advertising lawyers brag about obtaining a verdict but upon closer inspection, it was a bench trial, decided by a judge, with no opposition. Things that make you go hmmm…. As a Georgia trial lawyer with over 34 years of experience, I am really just plain sick of it.

I want to help the person who has been injured as a result of someone else’s or some entity’s negligence who is looking for a bona fide Georgia Trial Lawyer to represent them with their case, all the way through trial and appeal if necessary. These are things you should know when hiring a trial lawyer.

Is the attorney actually licensed to practice law in the State of Georgia? Any member of the public can find this out very easily, thanks to the State Bar of Georgia. Simply go to the State Bar’s website, gabar.org, and on the right side you will see a “Member Directory” where you can search for the person’s name. It will tell you if that person is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, where the person went to law school, and when the person first started practicing law in Georgia. This member search on gabar.org will also tell you whether the lawyer has been subject to any public discipline. This tells the consumer how much experience the lawyer has with the law of Georgia. Do you really want to entrust your case to someone who has been a lawyer for only two years? If you are looking at a law firm’s website, you should search every member of the firm here. If only one out of the entire firm is actually licensed to practice law in Georgia, that should tell you how little experience that one Georgia lawyer, in all likelihood, actually has in Georgia law and especially Georgia trial law. Stay away.

Another (Predictable and Preventable) Bunk Bed Injury

August 18, 2022 | Robin Frazer Clark

I read with horror and sadness about another child who was severely injured from falling off a elevated bunk bed that had no bedrail or guardrail. This time it happened to a young child, Easton Oliverson, who was playing in the Little League World Series. Horror and sadness because this was a totally predictable and totally preventable incident because there were no rails on the elevated bunk bed this child fell from. This happened during the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The child suffered a head injury as the fall punctured an artery which caused bleeding on the brain and he needed a piece of skull removed during emergency brain surgery. Some encouraging news came Wednesday, KSTU reports, as Easton was awake, off of oxygen assistance, talking and sitting up in a chair.

When the incident happened, the child’s teammates heard him fall and were able to get help quickly. His uncle said the fast action by all involved may have saved the child’s life.

“We’re just at point now where he’s just in recovery,” the uncle said. “The teammates heard him fall, thank goodness. When they got into surgery, the doctor talked to [him] and said had he not gotten into surgery but 30 minutes later, he would have been dead.”

Not Surprisingly, Scooter Injuries Are On The Rise

January 10, 2020 | Robin Frazer Clark

Image result for scooter injuries
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.”

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.

Electric Scooters: The Newest Menace to Society

July 13, 2018 | Robin Frazer Clark

Transportation is constantly changing. The year 2002 brought us Segway Personal Transporters; 2009 gave us Uber (formerly “Ubercab”); 2010 brought bike-share companies to the U.S.; and 2017? Scooters. Yes, the same toys we used to ride around our neighborhoods as kids have now become electrified and are the newest, hippest mode of transportation in at least 21 states of the U.S. These electric scooter companies — namely Bird, Lime, and Spin — are taking cities by storm in recent months. People from the company drop off dozens of scooters at “nests” located around the city each morning for civilians to pick up. The person can pay through the app the $1 starting fee, ride it around — paying additionally by time or mileage — and then just drop the scooter off wherever he or she would like. At the end of the night, the company collects the scooters around the city to check for maintenance and repair needs and then deposits them around the city streets the next morning. At first blush, this idea seems great! Avoid traffic, get to a close distance quickly, and for cheap! Upon closer observation, however, just as the scooters seem to be taking over, more and more problems are quickly emerging with the newest toy-turned-transportation.

First, safety. There have been numerous accidents reported in the last few months as the scooters have become more readily available to the public. The websites and apps for these scooters suggest the riders should wear a helmet; however, there is no method of enforcement from the businesses, and when a person picks up a Bird to ride around town, a helmet does not come attached to the scooter for a rider to wear, and people walking around downtown are likely not already carrying a helmet with them when they get the urge to pick up a scooter. Bird only provides a helmet when a rider puts in a request for one. Personal injury attorneys across the country are reporting dozens of people seeking representation after getting injured on these scooters, and liability and insurance surrounding this latest mode of transportation is a relatively uncharted territory for these attorneys to try to manage. Liability can be hard to prove, and questions of insurance coverage for injuries can be tricky to answer; health insurance will say that car insurance should cover medical expenses, and car insurance points the finger back saying it won’t cover a crash on a two-wheeled vehicle. Oddly enough, according to one personal injury attorney, it’s possible that homeowners or renters insurance could cover a rider in these situations. Another attorney says that though Bird says that riders use the scooter at their own risk and limit its own liability to $100, the company’s waiver likely will not stop claims of gross negligence.

As if the safety concerns were not enough to label these scooters an official nuisance, the legal concerns may do it. According to the Official Code of Georgia, the operation of motor scooters is only mentioned once under the definition of “motor driven cycle” which also includes motorcycles, bicycles with motors attached, and mopeds. Clearly, these newly innovated technological devices (electric scooters) have yet to be addressed by many state legal codes. Because of the lack of specificity in the Code regarding the definition of electric scooters, cities around the country are interpreting law one way, and the scooter companies are interpreting it the other way. The companies do not want riders using the scooters on sidewalks, and the Cities don’t want the riders using them on streets. Additionally, confusion over whether the scooters need license and registration has been at the center of much debate over the legality of the scooters. One of the main legal concerns and problems the cities and public are having with the electric scooters is the sidewalk litter they cause. Because a rider is able to pick up, ride, and drop off the scooter wherever he or she pleases, the “dockless” nature of these scooters is causing sidewalks to fill up with scooters disposed of by inconsiderate riders, blocking pedestrians’ and wheelchairs’ paths. Though many of the legal concerns are up for debate right now, the issue surrounding the blocking of the sidewalk is not one to be misinterpreted; O.C.G.A. § 16-11-43 says it is illegal to recklessly obstruct any “sidewalk, or other public passage in such a way as to render it impassable without unreasonable inconvenience or hazard” and failure to remove the obstruction — namely, the electric scooter left lying in the middle of the sidewalk — after an official request to do so is a misdemeanor offense.

My Car Was Totaled in a Wreck: Can I Get Rid of It?

May 3, 2018 | Robin Frazer Clark

The short answer is maybe.

One of the first questions many of my clients have after they have been in a car wreck is whether they can accept the insurance company’s pay-off for their totaled car. Most people need the pay-off money to be able to buy substitute transportation as quickly as possible. Some people accept the insurance company’s pay-off well before they even think about hiring a lawyer, and well before they have even spoken to a lawyer about representing them in a car wreck case. This is certainly understandable and normal human conduct when your car has been totaled in a wreck that isn’t your fault. But can there be a problem with accepting the insurance company’s pay-off for your car and, in return, releasing ownership of it to that insurance company for salvage value?

Typically, in a car wreck that has resulted in some personal injuries due to the negligence of the at-fault driver for say, running a stop sign, or rear-ending the car in front, the answer for at least 30 years has been no. In the past, no insurance carrier ever really cared about preserving the car in a plain ordinary negligence car wreck case where there is no evidence of any mechanical failure of the car or any evidence that the car itself was, somehow, defective. In the last 5 years or so, however, that has changed. Now, in an increasingly scorched-earth tactic by defense lawyers, they often file a motion to dismiss even run-of-the-mill car wreck cases for the plaintiff’s failure to preserve or keep the car that was involved in the wreck, even if that car was totaled by the insurance carrier. This motion is referred to as a “spoliation motion” and they are becoming more and more popular as a “gotcha” tactic by defense attorneys who really have no defense for their insured’s actions in actually causing the wreck in the first place. They have to admit their insured was negligent and caused the wreck, but maybe they can get out of the whole thing by arguing that without the car to be examined by an expert, hypothetically, we can never know whether something was wrong with the brakes or the windshield wipers (yes, I have really had that argued by defense counsel in a case) or the seat belts or any of a number of made-up potential problems, even if there exists no evidence that anything about the car caused or contributed to the wreck. At a minimum it is frustrating…at the worst, it can cost a plaintiff her entire case.

Social Media Strikes Again: Teen Kills Sister While Driving, Films it on Instagram

August 9, 2017 | Robin Frazer Clark

In continuing the series of blogs on distracted driving, I saw a heartbreaking story on the news last week that unfortunately fits right in with the other blogs on Texting While Driving and Snapchatting While Driving. An 18 year old girl was driving her 14 year old sister while operating a Livestream video feature of the Instagram app. Her car drifted into the other lane, and when she overcorrected, the car flipped. Her 14 year old sister was ejected from the car and died. The older sister — while driving — captured the whole thing on video.

The older sister was arrested on-site for suspicion of DUI and gross vehicular manslaughter. Even if the family does not file a civil complaint — for the wrongful death of one daughter caused by another — the driver faces 13 years in prison if convicted on all 6 felony counts. (Keep in mind that there may be family immunity laws that would even prevent such a lawsuit).

In a recent case involving an accident while using the Snapchat app, the plaintiff sued Snapchat, Inc. for having the “speed overlay” filter, which has incentives for a driver to use the app while the car is in motion at high speeds. This differs from the Instagram Live function, which seemingly has no “incentives” or benefits for using the function except keeping friends up to date with your every move. Were this motor vehicle accident to be filed as a civil complaint, it would be interesting to see if Instagram could be held liable for the resulting death, as the “incentives” from the Snapchat app were the main argument behind the plaintiff’s claim.

Snapchatting While Driving: The New Frontier of Social Media Liability

July 5, 2017 | Robin Frazer Clark

Parental concern, law enforcement warnings, and user disapproval of the recent updates to the Snapchat app are the least of the company’s worries. Though Snapchat, Inc. has made the headlines recently due to the updates, this isn’t the first time the company has been under scrutiny from the public. In April of 2016, a complaint for damages was filed in a Georgia state court against the company for injuries sustained from a motor vehicle accident, claiming that the main cause of the accident was the speed filter of the Snapchat app.

The speed filter allows a driver behind the wheel to document his or her speed by “snapping” a picture while the car is in motion. On this one particular night, a teenage driver allegedly opened her Snapchat app while driving as an attempt to snap a picture of her car reaching 100 mph. The driver allegedly, according to the Complaint, accelerated until reaching approximately 107 mph before she realized another driver had pulled onto the road. She crashed into him at full speed. Both cars were totaled, leaving multiple people with tremendous injuries – both physical and psychological – and thousands of dollars in expenses.

The plaintiffs have sued Snapchat for negligence, in part because this is, according to the Complaint, not the first instance in which a Snapchat user has used the speed filter of the app and caused a car crash. Petitions online even called for the app to remove the filter or for the app to restrict the usage of the filter while driving. Despite knowing that the speed filter presented many dangers to the public, as of the date of the incident above, Snapchat had not removed the speed filter, thus creating the perfect opportunity for another distracted driver to cause serious harm.

Is a Text Message Worth the Price of Losing a Life?

June 28, 2017 | Robin Frazer Clark

In Washington last month, Governor Jay Inslee took a step towards improving the safety of his streets by signing a law prohibiting the holding of any electronic device (cell phones, tablets, etc) while driving or waiting at a stop light. The law will go in effect in July due to the Governor’s veto of a section that would have postponed the law’s implementation until 2019. The matter is just too important to wait.

As technology’s prevalence in our everyday lives increases, its capability of distraction from our other daily activities increases as well. This includes our activity within our car. The human’s false sense of ability to multitask often leads to problems behind the wheel. The driver only looks away for one second or only needs to pick up that napkin or only needs to change the radio station or only needs to send that last text. But those single and quick moments that the driver’s attention is diverted are the single and quick moments that can take the driver’s or someone else’s life.

The problem doesn’t only occur with drivers looking away. A driver can be very much so distracted while his or her eyes are fixed on the road. There are many different types of distractions: internal (items inside the car), external (objects outside the car), visual (eyes taken off the road), manual (hands taken off the wheel), and cognitive (distracting thoughts). It just so happens that the use of the cell phone is a combination distraction; it combines the dangerous aspects of the various types of distractions into one grand distraction. In the entire time that you go through the process of picking the phone up, looking down at it to find the contact you want to call, thinking about if the other person can answer your call, and physically dialing the call, your focus has been taken off driving long enough to have an accident.