Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

“Help, the insurance company is telling me that we have to file with the probate court to approve a settlement and that I as the parent don’t get any of the money as a result of my child’s injury!”
Unfortunately for cases where the gross amount of the settlement is over $25,000.00, this is true. The Georgia legislature amended the statute in 2021 to raise the threshold amount from $15,000 to $25,000. Read here for more information on injuries in a Georgia daycare.

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In a tragic turn of events, two women who were horsing around at the W Hotel in Midtown Atlanta fell through the window and down 5 stories to a slanted glass sunroof. One of the women died there and the other rolled off and fell another few stories to the ground where she lay critically injured.

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Many consumers call our firm asking a fundamental question; the insurance adjuster called and offered me x to settle my case, is that fair? We find that fairness really is the issue for most people. After a car accident in Georgia, they do not want to take advantage of the system, but they don’t want to be taken advantage of either.

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When a car accident case in Atlanta gets close to the trial date, your lawyers will be preparing a number of motions to limit the amount of surprises. A Motion is a document that lawyers file asking the Judge to take some particular action. In Georgia, Motions in Limine can be filed as late as the morning of trial and they are aimed at preventing the other side from using improper arguments or introducing irrelevant evidence during the trial.

For a car accident case, these motions often focus on other injuries, family problems or irrelevant criminal issues. Be sure to read the blog post on what criminal records are admissible at trial for a better explanation of what kind of crimes will impeach you in Georgia.

Without further ado, here is a lengthy Motion in Limine from a case we tried in December.

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High impact car accidents can cause a variety of traumatic injuries from compound leg fractures to simple concussions. Our injury lawyers spend a great deal of time discussing symptoms with our clients but one of the frustrating issues is that in order for a particular injury or disorder to be presented to a jury, a doctor must be willing to testify that to within a reasonable degree of medical probability, the injury or disorder was caused by the crash. You can have a serious injury after a car accident in Georgia, but if the treating doctors will not testify that it is medically probable that the crash caused the injury, then your case can be worth substantially less.

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There is a common misconception in the public that if you are injured in a car accident in Georgia, your claim for pain and suffering is worth two times the medical bills or three times the medical bills. This is simply not true. It may be been in the early 1980s but those days are long gone.

We have many anxious car accident victims who call trying to earnestly and honestly find some objective way to compute what a “fair settlement” is. The short answer is that each case is different; each injury is different.

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Atlanta Bicycle Accident Legal Issues

You are riding your bike down the street when suddenly your wheel goes into the slats of a sewer grate that is aligned parallel to the flow of traffic, you fly over your handlebars and crash face first in the street.This is every rider’s nightmare as they ride through the streets of Atlanta and it was the phone call the our Atlanta injury law firm got last week after the victim got out of facial surgery.

The question is, given the sovereign immunity that the City of Atlanta enjoys, is there anyway to hold the City responsible for not aligning the grate perpendicular to the wheels? The answer is fortunately, “yes.”

Under OCGA 36-60-5, every time the City installs a new grate on the streets, it is supposed to be oriented perpendicular to traffic for bike safety. Furthermore, sovereign immunity is not a bar because
“[a] municipality is bound to use ordinary care to keep its public streets and sidewalks… in a safe condition for travel…and in case of failure to exercise such care, the city is liable for damages resulting therefrom.” City Council of Augusta v. Tharpe, 113 Ga. 152 (1901)

This issue has not only been litigated in the past, but our appellate courts have actually issued some beneficial rulings on the subject and the City cannot have the case thrown out of court on summary judgment. Please find the most relevant case ruling below:

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Georgia Limited Liability Releases and General Releases

As a general rule, when you are injured in a car accident in Georgia, the other driver’s insurance company will only pay for their client’s negligence when they are closing the case out. When the insurance company makes an offer to settle the claim, they will require you to sign a “release.”

A release is nothing more than a contract where you as the injured party agree to give up certain legal claims in exchange for payment of money. When it comes to dealing with car accident injuries in Atlanta, Georgia, you will typically find that there are two types of releases; a “general release” and a “limited liability release.”

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The firm tried the case of Hazel v. Shapoori to a jury in Gwinnett County State Court and the jury returned a verdict for twice what Allstate had offered. This was a smaller case that the firm took on to help out a nice lady who had $6,200 in medical bills, $1,300 in lost wages and an Allstate adjuster who refused to pay more than $4,000.00. Once our firm got involved, she was offered $6,000, which we politely declined.

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Reviewing the tragic LA Times story of thefatal New York City bus crash and the evidence that a 18 wheeler may have cut the bus off and caused the accident, I am reminded of the article we wrote a year ago about accessibility of Georgia Highway Traffic cameras.

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