Georgia Injury Lawyer Blog

The product liability lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP pay close attention to the recall of dangerous products that can lead to the wrongful death of innocent people. This week, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Polaris Industries has issued a voluntary recall of approximately 8,500 all-terrain vehicles because of a potentially dangerous steering problem, caused by a defective and dangerous front-end component. The recall applies to 2009-2010 models of the Polaris Sportsman ATV. Although there have been no reported injuries to date, there have been 19 reported incidents involving the ATV. According to Polaris the front suspension ball joint could separate from the steering knuckle, causing the rider to loose the ability to steer the ATV. Depending on the circumstances, if this occured, it could result in the operator being seriously injured or it could result in the wrongful death of the rider.

Anyone who owns a 2009-2010 Polaris Sportsman is encouraged to return it to the closest dealer who will make the necessary repairs free of charge.

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have represented the victims of dangerous products of all kinds for over 40 years. If you have been injured or lost a loved one as a result of using a dangerous product, the attorneys at Finch McCranie, LLP can help. Call us for a free consultation at 1-800-229-9159.

Georgia injury lawyers know that dog bite incidents often result in very serious injuries and in some cases, death. We have had a number of these cases over the years. The most recent case involved a real estate agent who was attacked by a large dog. Although the dog was tied up at its owners home, it was inadequately restrained by a collar which was itself a defective product. As a result, the dog got loose and literally bit off the entire calf of the female victim. We sued the homeowner for negligence and the manufacturer of the collar on a products liability theory and obtained a sizeable settlement from both.

It was reported today that a former UPS driver has sued Joe Namath alleging that he was attacked and seriously injured by Namath's dogs while he was making a delivery to his home. It is alleged that the victim in that case has undergone four surgeries and has been totally disabled from work since the incident in 2007. If the allegations are true, lets hope that Namath has a large liability insurance policy.

If you or a loved one have been injured as a result of being attacked by a vicious dog, call the Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP who have helped similar victims for over 40 years.

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP handled a wrongful death case several years ago wherein we represented the family of a young boy who died in a house fire caused by a defective humidifier.

This week it was announced that Home Depot is recalling Chinese manufacture dehumidifiers because they pose a fire hazard according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. The recall involves approximately 2,000 Hampton Bay model HB-50 dehumidifiers. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says that an internal component can fail causing it to overheat posing fire and burn hazards to consumers. The dehumidifiers were sold by Home Depot from November 2000 through May 2007. Home Depot has received approximately 18 reports of the dehumidifiers catching fire.

After the wrongful death case that our attorneys handled several years ago, we take these dangerous product recalls seriously as should consumers. If you have been injured or lost a loved one as a result of a defective product, contact the Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP who have over 40 years of experience representing injured clients.

As Georgia injury lawyers we have represented many pedestrians who have been struck and seriously injured in automobiles accidents. Just this year we represented a young mother who was crossing a roadway with her two young children when they were struck by a motorist who admitted that she never saw them prior to impact. Unfortunately one of the children died and she sustained serious injuries.

Today it was reported that a car hit an 18-year old pregnant girl and her 4-year old brother as they crossed Roswell Rd. in Atlanta. Unfortunately the child suffered serious head injuries. Allegedly they were not in a crosswalk but were in the turn lane when they were struck by the car. Georgia law makes it difficult to recover damages for your injuries if you are hit by an automobile and you are not in a crosswalk; however, a motorist still has a duty to maintain a proper lookout and see what can plainly be seen but someone exercising ordinary care. You cannot just run over pedestrians who are in the roadway if you could have and should have discovered their presence and taken evasive action. In any pedestrian case, it is crucial that a thorough investigation be done immediately to document the weather and lighting conditions existing at the time of the accident.

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have over 40 years experience representing victims of automobile accidents in serious injury or wrongful death claims. If you have been injured or lost a loved one due to an automobile accident, call us to learn about your rights.

It is a sad reality that innocent citizens are oftentimes injured by their own government. City and county employees and/or state employees operate vehicles on a day-to-day basis and like other drivers sometimes are guilty of negligence which cause considerable damage to innocent third parties. Because of the expansive conduct of governmental entities in virtually every aspect of our lives, there are many other real life scenarios whereby innocent third party citizens cam be and are injured by the acts of government employees. In such circumstances, there is always an issue as to whether the injured individual has a right to sue the government for any damages inflicted because of the longstanding doctrine of Sovereign Immunity.

Setting aside for a moment whether one can sue the government successfully and overcome a defense of Sovereign Immunity, another hurdle the injured individual faces in these cases is dealing with statutory pre-suit notice requirements. These pre-suit notice requirements are often referred to as “ante-litem” notice provisions. What this means is that before a injured citizen can sue his or her government with a claim for money damages, they must give the government pre-suit notice of the claim so that the government has a sufficient opportunity to investigate the claim and determine whether the government has any liability and, if so, what damages are involved. Here in Georgia, if an injured individual has a claim against a municipality, they must provide notice to that municipality within six months of the date of the occurrence otherwise their claim is time barred. If they have a claim against a county, they must give notice within one year and the same is true for claims against state government. There are also specific methods by which these notices must be given so if the injured individual is acting without the advice of counsel, they could run afoul of the various ante-litem notice provisions. If they do, they may not be able to sue the government - even if their claim is meritorious. This is why we have referred to these ante-litem provisions in other blogs written on the subject as “Traps for the Unwary.”

If you or any member of your family are injured by a government employee, you should immediately confer with counsel so that pre-suit notice requirements can be observed and your claims not held by law to have been waived for failing to provide statutorily mandated ante-litem notices to the government entity involved.

The Georgia Court of Appeals has recently accepted an Application for Interlocutory Review of a very important victim’s rights statute in this state. Here we refer to a case in which we represent the Plaintiff involving a tolling provision for the statute of limitations for victims of crime. O.C.G.A. § 9-3-99 was enacted as part of the Crime Victims Restitution Act of 2005 and will now be interpreted by the Court of Appals after a ruling in this appeal. Its tolling provision reads as follows:

The running of the period of limitations with respect to any cause of action in tort that may be brought by the victim of an alleged crime which arises out of the facts and circumstances relating to the commission of such alleged crime committed in this state shall be tolled from the date of the alleged crime or the act giving rise to such action and tort until the prosecution of such crime or act has become final or otherwise terminated, provided that such time does not exceed six (6) years. (Emphasis Supplied.)

As is apparent from a review of the broad language employed by the Georgia Legislature, this statute is very important for victims of crime. Many victims of crime do not know that they have civil claims against third parties. If someone is raped in a motel, they may not be able to independently recover that a rapist was formerly an employee of the motel and had been negligently left with master keys to their motel rooms. A victim of an independent trucker who is driving under the influence of drugs may not know that the trucker was operating under an oral lease agreement with a third party. This might be very important if the independent trucker had no insurance and the statutory employer/lessor had good insurance. A victim of a drunk driver may not discover until after two years that the drunk was provided far too much alcohol by a bar that knew that he would be driving in violation of the Dramshop Act. In short, there are many real life scenarios where an innocent crime victim may not even initially know whether they have viable third party claim and may not be able to discover the existence of such a claim until they are able to get access to the criminal investigative file concerning their case, something that may not occur for over 2 years. Moreover, in many cases, criminal perpetrators are not even apprehended for over 2 years and even if they are apprehended in a timely manner, they may assert their Fifth Amendment privilege and therefore withhold from the victim crucial information concerning the possible involvement of third parties.

The case that is on appeal before the Georgia Legislature will decide whether the language of the statute quoted herein applies to third parties and criminals or only to criminal perpetrators solely. In the case our firm is handling, the Defendants contend that the language of the statute only tolls the statute of limitations for causes of action that victims of crime have against the criminal perpetrators only. However, the clear wording of the statute is so broad as to clearly encompass claims against third parties as well. Indeed, it appears that the Georgia Legislature recognizes that victims many times are not only traumatized physically and emotionally and thereby delayed in bringing civil actions because of such trauma, but also are usually unable to access and/or discover important evidence and information in their cases, particularly with regards to the possible involvement of third party actors.

Continue reading "Important Victim’s Rights Statute Under Review" »

The Atlanta personal injury lawyers at Finch McCranie LLP have successfully litigated many cases involving merchandise falling from shelves in commercial establishments and seriously injuring and killing shoppers. However, what many people do not realize is that this danger also exists in homes.

For young children, the home is a playground, and while many parents childproof to ensure that their home is a safe place, some may not be aware that unsecured TVs, furniture and appliances are hidden hazards lurking in every room. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is urging parents to take simple, low-cost steps to prevent deaths and injuries associated with furniture, TV, and appliance tip-overs.

The CPSC estimates that in 2006, 16,300 children 5 years old and younger were treated in emergency rooms because of injuries associated with TV, furniture, and appliance tip-overs. Between 2000 and 2006, CPSC staff received reports of 134 tip-over related deaths.

Additionally, the CPSC reports it is aware of at least 30 media reports of tip-over deaths since January 2007 involving this same age group.

Typically, injuries and deaths occur when children climb onto, fall against, or pull themselves up on television stands, shelves, bookcases, dressers, desks, chests, and appliances. In some cases, televisions placed on top of furniture tip over and cause a child to suffer traumatic and sometimes fatal injuries.

Recent revisions to the voluntary safety standards for clothes storage units provide for the inclusion of warning labels and additional hardware to secure the furniture to the floor or wall.

To prevent these devastating events, the CPSC advises as follows:

Make sure free-standing ranges and stoves are installed with anti-tip brackets.

Dangerous window shades that pose a strangulation risk are being recalled. The Consumer Product Safety Commission today announced the recall of more than 50 million Roman-style shades and roll-up blinds because of the risk children may be strangled by the cords.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said five deaths and 16 near-strangulations from Roman shades have been reported since 2006, while three deaths connected to roll-up blinds have been reported since 2001.

Roman shades can become dangerous if a child's neck gets stuck between the exposed inner cord and the fabric on the backside of the blind, or if the cord gets wrapped around a child's neck.

Roll-up blinds pose a strangulation threat if the lifting loop slides off the side of the blind and a child's neck becomes entangled on it, or if a child neck's gets between the lifting loop and the roll-up blind material.

The CPSC urged parents to examine all shades and blinds in the home and make sure they have no accessible cords. They also advised parents not to place cribs, beds or other furniture close to windows because children can climb on the furniture and reach the cords.

Several major retailers, including Wal-Mart, JCPenney and Pottery Barn, are also participating in the recall. Consumers can obtain free retrofit kits for Roman shades and roll-up blinds online at www.windowcoverings.org or by calling the Window Covering Safety Council toll-free at 1-800-506-4636.

Buying a used car can expose a consumer to unknown dangers and problems. Recently, consumer groups and the attorneys general from 40 states called upon the Federal Trade Commission to update what they contend are outdated and inadequate protections for used car purchasers.

The changes being urged would involve adding information to the Buyer’s Guide such as whether a car suffered damages in a crash or flood or was bought back by an automaker as a lemon. A Buyer’s Guide is required to be placed in all used cars. But, the Buyer’s Guide has not been significantly improved since 1985.

The National Association of Attorneys General says it is time to protect buyers from rebuilt wrecks that are may be unsafe, are overpriced or both. The attorneys general association said that requiring more information would cost little and would result in an effective and efficient federal double-faceted assault on used-car fraud.

Not unexpectedly, the National Automobile Dealers Association opposes adding such information claiming it would impose significant, costly, and in some cases, impossible burdens on used car dealers.

Currently, this information is available to consumers through the National Motor Vehicle Title Information System, which requires all states, insurance companies and junk yards, to report vehicles so badly damaged they were considered totaled and not worth repairing. Consumers can check vehicle identification numbers for a small fee at a government website. However, many consumers don’t know that this information is available.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that about 24,000 Amby Baby Motion Beds – hammocklike beds have been recalled. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission the side-to-side shifting or tilting of the hammock can cause an infant to roll and become trapped or wedged against the hammock’s fabric or mattress pad, posing a suffocation risk.. The CPSC has instructed customers to stop using the products immediately.

The beds, made by Amby Baby USA of Minneapolis, Minnesota, were sold online through Ambybaby.com and other retailers begging in 2003. Fortunately, according to the CPSC there was only one model of the bed sold. To date there have been two known infant deaths - a 4-month old in Georgia and a five-month old in Oregon.

The Atlanta, Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie LLP bring years of experience and success to clients who have been injured or lost loved ones due to defective and dangerous products. Our attorneys have the specialized knowledge required to successfully bring these claims and aggressively pursue each case until conclusion. If you or a loved one has been injured by a dangerous or defective product please contact us for a free consultation.

Of all the possible traffic accidents in Atlanta, cases in which vehicles collide with a bicycle or a pedestrian can have the most tragic results. When walking or riding a bike, you do not have the same structural protection against impacts that you do while driving, so you are more likely to be the injured party, and you are more likely to be hurt badly.

If you are severely injured or if a loved one was killed in a bike or pedestrian accident due to the negligence of a driver, you deserve compensation for your losses, and you may need a lawyer to help you win your case.

When you are injured, unable to work, and facing medical bills, the situation can seem very dark. You not only need an attorney who will protect your rights and demand compensation, you need a friend who can give you the information and support you need.

With convenient offices in Atlanta, Georgia, Finch McCranie, LLP is dedicated to helping the victims of bicycle and pedestrian accidents in Georgia and to providing a high level of responsiveness, communication, and personal attention. At Finch McCranie, LLP, we take care of our clients. Our bicycle and pedestrian accident lawyers will fully inform you about the details of your injury case and the legal issues involved so you can make confident, educated decisions.

If you are someone you love was severely injured in a Georgia bicycle or pedestrian accident, please call the Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP at 1-800-228-9159.

Dangerous passenger buses that do not meet United States safety standards are currently traveling the roadways of this country endangering the passengers and the motoring public. Yesterday, the National Safety Transportation Board issued a call for these dangerous vehicles to be taken off the roadways.

The recommendation is part of a long list of proposals issued by the NTSB following its investigation of a deadly bus crash which occurred in January 2008 in Texas.

NTSB investigators determined that the bus driver who had only three and a half months of experience driving a bus, fell asleep about eight hours into a 10½-hour trip from Monterrey, Mexico to Houston, Texas.

The NTSB staff ruled out the bus and weather as factors, but they uncovered legal loopholes and enforcement failures that allowed the substandard bus to be on the road. The bus did not meet regulations governing safety features that should be included when the bus is manufactured. The board recommended three agencies identify the companies operating substandard buses, put the buses out of service and require the companies to cease operations or face losing authority to operate.

The NTSB found fault with Federal Motor Carrier Administration. Among other things, it could have done a compliance review of the bus operator, Capricorn Bus Lines of Houston, but failed to do so.

Capricorn Bus Lines Inc. leased buses from International Charter Services Inc., to operate in the U.S., but Capricorn had lost its insurance in 2003 because of a fatal accident a year earlier in Mexico.

Capricorn avoided oversight by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration because the lease arrangement allowed it to operate through International Charter. The NTSB faulted the
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration allowing such leases which allow unsafe operators to continue operation.

The NTSB also recommended the following safety proposals:

1. Create databases to help state law enforcement identify out-of-compliance buses and take them off the roads.

2. Require carriers to certify when they apply for operating authority and once a year thereafter that all owned or leased buses comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards.

3. Update safety videos for night time driving and use latest media, such as the Internet, to distribute them more widely.

Georgia injury lawyers know that any head-on collision between two vehicles is usually a serious matter. A head-on collision occurred today in Johns Creek on State Bridge Road which resulted in the death of one of the drivers and serious injuries to the two occupants of the other vehicle. Both individuals were airlifted to different metro Atlanta hospitals.

Automobile accidents are a leading killer of Americans. If you have been injured or lost a loved one due to an automobile accident, the Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP can help. Call us for a free consultation at 1-800-228-9159.

Our Atlanta wrongful death attorneys have represented the families of children seriously injured or killed while exiting school buses. Just today, the Atlanta media is reporting that a five year old child was killed when an elderly driver attempted to pass a stopped school bus.

The law in Georgia governing driver actions when approaching or overtaking a school bus is very clear. Ga. Code Ann., § 40-6-163 provides as follows:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (b) of this Code section, the driver of a vehicle meeting or overtaking from either direction any school bus stopped on the highway shall stop before reaching such school bus when there are in operation on the school bus the visual signals as specified in Code Sections 40-8- 111and 40-8-115, and such driver shall not proceed until the school bus resumes motion or the visual signals are no longer actuated.

(b) The driver of a vehicle upon a highway with separate roadways need not stop upon meeting or passing a school bus which is on a different roadway, or upon a controlled-access highway when the school bus is stopped in a loading zone which is a part of or adjacent to such highway and where pedestrians are not permitted to cross the roadway.

(c) Every school bus driver who observes a violation of subsection (a) of this Code section is authorized and directed to record specifically the vehicle description, license number of the offending vehicle, and time and place of occurrence on forms furnished by the Department of Public Safety. Such report shall be submitted within 15 days of the occurrence of the violation to the local law enforcement agency which has law enforcement jurisdiction where the alleged offense occurred.

What may not be clear to some is that all vehicles on a four lane road must stop when the bus has activated the visual stop signals. This is true for driver going in both directions. The only exception is for traffic flowing in the opposite direction on highways divided by a concrete barrier or grass median.

If you have any doubt as to stop or not, please err on the side of caution and stop. The tragic consequences are not worth a few minutes saved in travel time.

An Atlanta television station,11Alive, reported the death of a 19 year old Oxford College at Emory student who was struck and killed by an automobile as she was crossing the street. The girl was a native of North Carolina. Apparently the victim was crossing the street near the intersection of Mason Mill Road and Houston Mill Road in Atlanta when she was hit. The serious injuries she sustained resulted in her death early Saturday morning.

The Georgia injury lawyers at Finch McCranie, LLP have represented many pedestrian victims of automobile accidents and truck accidents over a period of 40 plus years. If you have been injured or lost a loved one due to an automobile accident, the attorneys at Finch McCranie, LLP can help. Call us toll free at 1 800 228-9159 for a free consultation.

Dangerous nurses and healthcare providers may be practicing throughout Georgia. In 1987, Congress ordered federal health officials to create a database of state disciplinary actions against nurses and other health professionals. This database includes the names of those who, among other things, have been found to have committed physical, mental and sexual abuse of patients.

While each state is required to maintain a database, no nationally available database has ben created. When a hospital or temporary agency wants to hire a nurse, there's no easy way to check whether the person has abused a patient or engaged in dangerous conduct elsewhere in the country.

This information was supposed to be added to a database of similar information about doctors which was made available to hospitals and other eligible health employers in 1990. But this has not happened.

As it stands now, only federal and state agencies and health plans, such as HMOs, are allowed access to the information about nurses. Incredibly, hospitals and nursing homes cannot access this critical data.

The federal government has announced that this information should be available on a nationwide basis to hospitals and other health facilities within a year. There is one major obstacle. Many hospitals and healthcare facilities rely on temporary agencies for nursing and other employees. Under the law, temporary agencies would be allowed to search a nurse's background only if they were designated as agents of particular hospitals or other facility. It is anticipated that these institutions will be unwilling to designate multiple staffing firms as their agents.

Unfortunately, while these problems are being debated by government officials, many innocent patients may become victims of dangerous perpetrators whose proclivities are known to the government, but unavailable to the very institutions which hire them and place them in positions of trust. This is an outrageous situation which must be corrected immediately. One can only hope that the government officials charged with this duty will take it seriously and proceed with the greatest of speed.

The serious injury lawyers at Finch McCranie LLP handle many automobile related cases. A significant number of these involve product defects. One such defect that has remained under publicized is the threat posed by power windows to children.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, estimates there are 1,995 injuries and six deaths a year related to power windows.

A consumer protection group, Kids And Cars, is calling upon NHTSA to require all automobile makers to equip vehicles with automatic reverse features so that a window will automatically stop and reverse when it hits an obstruction while closing. This is similar to the auto-reverse features found on almost all garage doors.

NHTSA says in various regulatory documents that several new safety requirements involving power windows show it is doing a good job tackling what it describes as a small, but persistent problem. However, Kids And Cars, says that NHTSA is seriously underestimating the problem based upon data that the group has obtained. It says that the method used by NHTSA to track the problem is seriously flawed in that it does not account for many private physician visits.

But, both NHTSA and Kids And Cars agree that on average five children a year die from power-window accidents.

NHTSA has taken steps to require automakers to make power windows safer. Starting on Oct. 1, 2008, all passenger vehicles must have power switches that are recessed, thereby reducing the chance that a child could close a window by leaning on the switch. By Oct. 1, 2010, power windows may be closed only by pulling up on a switch.

NHTSA is also being required by law to consider whether to require an auto-reverse feature on all power windows. The agency has looked at several alternatives and reports that it has concluded for the time being that auto reverse is not needed on all power windows. It is considering a requirement that auto-reverse be installed on one-touch or express-up switches.

Regardless of the decision that NHTSA reaches, all adults should be extremely vigilant when children are in a vehicle to insure that they cannot be injured by a power window.

Whistleblower litigation is an area in which the attorneys at Finch McCranie LLP specialize. These cases are generally brought under The False claims Act which Congress adopted during the Civil War to solicit the help of ordinary citizens in fighting contracting fraud. The law encourages citizens to bring suit on behalf of the U.S. government by ensuring that a portion of any damages or civil penalties will be shared with the person bringing the lawsuit.

Since Congress strengthened the law in 1986, whistleblower lawsuits have recovered almost 20 billion dollars, of which more than 2 billion dollars has gone to citizens.
In recent years these lawsuits have especially targeted Defense Department and health services fraud.

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a major case testing when whistleblowers who discover fraud in federal programs may sue in the name of the United States and collect some of the settlement. The case revolves around the issue of when whistleblower lawsuits might be kept out of court under a provision aimed at opportunistic lawsuits based simply on information publicly available.

The False Claims Act prohibits citizen lawsuits arising from public disclosures "in a congressional, administrative or (Government Accountability Office) report, hearing, audit or investigation." The question Monday was whether that exemption relates only to federal reports or blocks a lawsuit bringing a claim based on information publicly available in a state or local report.

The case before the Supreme Court is a North Carolina case in which an employee of a state conservation district alleged fraud tied to the county's participation in a federal disaster relief program. A federal trial judge rejected the lawsuit holding that a county audit had documented some of the problems. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit reversed, saying only federal administrative reports, audits or investigations would have precluded a suit under the False Claims Act.

The United States Department of Justice has adopted the position that only federal reports would preclude a whistleblower lawsuit under the “prior disclosure” doctrine and argued this position at yesterday’s hearing.

Thirty states have joined the side of the North Carolina county urging the court to rule that the case should be thrown out.