Georgia Injury Lawyer Blog

As a Georgia personal injury lawyer, it never ceases to amaze me how the trucking industry lobbies to limit the rights of victims who either suffer wrongful death or serious injuries in truck accidents caused by negligent, careless, or drunk drivers.

In researching an issue last week, I ran across a website of the American Trucking Association who proudly listed, on a state-by-state basis, some of their legislative efforts to deny accident victims fair compensation. They published their "Tort Reform Scorecard 2006". Rather than concentrating their efforts on driver safety and other ways of preventing human tragedy caused by the negligent, if not criminal, operation of their trucks, they invest in trying to change the laws to limit what they have to pay to fairly compensate people with serious injuries. They seek to eliminate joint and several liability, limit or eliminate punitive damages and attorney fee awards. In some states, like Georgia and Alabama they have backed legislation limiting damages for non-economic damages.

Our firm recently settled a wrongful death case involving a truck driver using drugs who was found to have been hiding vials of urine under his belt in case he got caught and was subjected to drug testing!

In another recent case involving serious spinal injuries to our client, the truck driver switched driving positions with his friend who happened to be riding along for company. This friend who had no commercial drivers license had recently been scheduled for back surgery because he had a spinal cord injury as a result of being struck by lightening. The friend was taking prescription narcotic pain medication to ease his back pain and he had numbness in one of his legs. To top it all off they switched seats going south on I-75 at 70+ mph with a load of steel on the trailer!!

It is maddening to hear the trucking industry and other groups tout their alleged accomplishments which they refer to as tort reform. Trucking companies as well as all other businesses should be able to be held accountable for the actions of their employees who injure or kill innocent people and they should be required to make such victims completely whole for all of the damages those victims or their families sustain. "Reform" which limits an innocent victim's rights in favor of a corporations bottom line is wrong.