One of the trickier parts of practicing car accident insurance law comes when the lawyer has to analyze “choice of law” issues, that is lawyer speak for how do you decide which State’s law applies when a case involves multiple states. So how do analyze a situation?
First, the Georgia Ground Rules for Contracts:
The remedies laid out by the contract are controlled by the law of the forum (“lex fori”) which is the place where the lawsuit is filed. Race to the Court for this one people.
We would all rather live in a world where lawyers were not necessary for car accidents, but the simple fact is that insurance carriers are so aggressive in their handling of legitimate cases that attorneys are a necessity in many situations. What is the best way to settle your Atlanta car accident injury claim for top dollar then?
I spent the past week trying a car accident case in Gwinnett County and am writing to give you an overview of some of the nuances in presenting an injury case to a conservative jury.
The word on the street is that Gwinnett has been growing more and more diverse over the last few years. As Gwinnett’s Hispanic, Asian and African American population has grown, so have their numbers in jury pools. I tried a case in Gwinnett in April last year and had a 6 person white and 6 person other jury. That is not always going to be the case though as our trial this past week demonstrated.
Our client was a 22 year old black female from Southeast Atlanta. She is intelligent and well spoken but works in a case based hair styling business with no tax records. She was a passenger in a vehicle driven by her best friend when a HVAC van turned left across her path a 8:15 AM on the drive to work. The driver of the HVAC van was ticketed but plead Nolo so the outcome of the ticket did not come into evidence. The Defense hired an expert reconstructionist to tell the jury that the crash was caused by the driver of the Plaintiff’s vehicle, claiming that she was not paying attention and that the crash could have been avoided. We did not hire a recon as liability seemed clear to us and their recon was a awful in our opinion.
What if I am seriously injured but I got the ticket? Will a lawyer take the case? We finished settling two cases for clients who were turned down by a well know TV lawyer here in Atlanta and the clients were very pleased with the outcome. This begs the question, if your lawyer has turned the case down, is it worth talking to another lawyer?
Dolphins (real injury cases with legitimate claimants) are getting caught up in a net designed to catch Tuna( ham and eggs chiropractic, MD blended cases that run through TV firms at high volume, some real, some borderline fraud).
We get a lot of web based requests for my guide to Georgia Car Insurance and Car Accidents and I always chuckle when I get a request from someone using their middle initial. Why? Because invariably, these are other car accident lawyers either looking for advice or looking to copy my marketing efforts.
Are there significant differences in jury awards against work van and truck drivers as opposed to regular car accidents? Yes
Our blog has explored a number of the issues facing car accident victims in Georgia over the last five years. Likewise, I have written extensively about how tractor trailer crashes are worlds apart in complexity. One variety of accident defendant that we have not discussed are crashes caused by company vans and work trucks. How are they different?
Last November, I underwent an epidural steroid injection in my lumber region to treat a disc injury and that’s why when the news broke last week of the contaminated epidural batches, my blood froze. As a patient we are told that the procedure is routine, that there is no appreciable risk and it is an outpatient procedure.
Over the last six months I have noticed a continued trend towards offers coming in from front line insurance carriers like Geico and Progressive that are barely over the medical specials. For example:
The above car crash resulted in $7,400 in emergency room, orthopedic and physical therapy bills along with a small scar on the victims eyebrow from the glass in the crash. The carrier’s offer? $8,382. Totally ridiculous. The justification. “That is just a soft tissue injury.” Seriously people, by definition anything that is not a bone is a soft tissue, that tautology carries no weight with juries.
Last week set a new record for calls from the too little, too late prospective clients. Too little, too late callers and normal conservative folks who were hurt in car accidents in Atlanta but were not hurt badly. They typically have bad neck or back pain but act like the conservative people they are and give their bodies 2 weeks to heal on its own. It makes sense because most of us have found that time and rest is the best medicine. The problem lies in the minority who, after two weeks still have substantial pain and finally decide to go see a medical doctor. The typical caller tells me they called the insurance adjuster and asked if the company would pay for the visit and were told “no.”
Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog