We have just recently observed the one year anniversary of the tragic bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota that killed thirteen people on August 2, 2007. Our hearts and prayers remain with those families as they continue to heal from that horrible accident. The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) ruled that the collapse occurred because the bridge design was inadequate. The new bridge currently being built in its place across the Mississippi River costs $235 Million and is to finished by December 24, 2008. You may remember that this Minnesota tragedy exposed the Georgia Department of Transportation's failure to inspect Georgia bridges adequately and I blogged on that back in August 2007. The Minnesota bridge collapse anniversary was a good excuse to reexamine where Georgia is regarding the safety of its bridges.

Unfortunately, the answer is not good news. A recent review from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts found about 9 percent of the state's bridges were classified as structurally deficient in 2007. According to TRIP, a national transportation research group, however, twenty percent of Georgia's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete. What is going on? Is the Georgia DOT doing anything differently to discover dangerous bridges in Georgia? Or must Georgia citizens wait until a tragedy hits the citizens of this State, as it did the helpless citizens of Minnesota, before our bridges are made safe? Who is looking out for Georgians' safety on bridges in Georgia?

GDOT spokeswoman Crystal Buchanan says "You should go over a bridge and you shouldn't worry about that bridge falling down." Do you trust her with your life??

I am please today to report a $20.1 Million verdict in a motor vehicle accident wrongful death case against an electrical supply company and their employee driver. The verdict came back today from the Clayton County State Court jury.

The case involved a 62 year old school teacher who suffered broken ribs when he was rear-ended by an electrical supply truck. The teacher was stopped at a red light when the truck crashed into him. While hospitalized he developed an ilieus and subsequent complications. He ultimately aspirated and died.
As it turned out the truck driver was driving a truck during the day and working nights at Wal-Mart. He was only getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night. The defendant company violated transportation regs by failing to ask him about other jobs he might be working. It took the driver a grand total of 3 weeks working two jobs before he killed someone.

About a week before trial Defendants announced their intent to apportion responsibility to a non-party. Defendants tried to blame the treating physicians for failing to save the patient they had put in the hospital. They named their medical expert the week before trial.
The decedent in this case was a very special man who was living a full life at 62. His students loved him and he did quite a lot of volunteer work for the homeless and other charitable causes. Plaintiff's counsel were Williams, Jane Sams, and Kenneth Lester of the Cochran Firm. Defense Counsel was Edward Lindsey.

I am pleased to report in the verdict department of a verdict yesterday in DeKalb County, Georgia of $4.7 Million in a medical malpractice case. No doubt the families of the victim had to wait years to realize this full dose of justice. Congratulations to Plaintiff's counsel Bill Ballard and Greg Feagle of Atlanta. Defense counsel was Jack Slover, of Hall Booth Smith & Slover, also of Atlanta. The Hall Booth firm has done the bidding of Medical Association of Georgia Mutual Insurance Company for years. The verdict restores one's faith in juries in general, and in DeKalb County juries specifically.

A very sad article appears in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution today about the unnecessary and tragic death of a North Georgia youth at an alternative school. The child hanged himself after being left for hours alone in a "seclusion" room. My friend Wyc Orr represents the mother and father of the child and they are in good hands.

The school's actions really are indefensible with obviously tragic results. This school had put the child in the "seclusion" room 19 times in his final two months there. The school's own policy required the teachers not to leave a student in the room for more than 25 minutes, but this poor child was left alone for over seven hours. And in an unbelievable act of stupidity, a teacher gave this child some string to hold up his pants and then left him alone for hours on end, during a time when this child was having a difficult time emotionally. The mother states had they just called her she would have come and picked him up. So one has to wonder "if only...."

Why didn't the school call the mom? Why did the school callously leave the student alone for seven hours? Why did the teacher give the child the rope with which to hang himself? What is going on here?

All I can say is my heart and prayers go out to the family and I pray the jury delivers the justice so richly deserved in this case. I will keep you posted.

It is with great pleasure that I report to my fair readers that the Georgia Court of Appeals has affirmed a $1.3 Million wrongful death verdict against the Georgia DOT. The case, Baldwin v. DOT, involved the Georgia DOT's failure to notice and fix a stop sign that was down for a length of time between two weeks and two months. The stop sign was supposed to be up at an intersection in Meriwhether County, Georgia at which one road had no traffic-control devices at all, and the cross-street was supposed to be controlled by the stop sign. You can readily imagine what happened. Mrs. Baldwin was driving down the road at which the stop sign was down on the ground, the intersection appeared to her to have no traffic control devices for her direction of travel and she continued on into the intersection. Unfortunately, another car was coming down the road she was crossing and struck Mrs. Baldwin's car and killed her.

There was expert testimony that the DOT was required to do a weekly drive-through inspection of this intersection. One of the purposes of this inspection was to discover if a stop sign was down. The witnesses' testimony showed that the DOT failed to discover the downed stop sign for at least two weeks and maybe as long as two months. The DOT's failure to perform their duties caused the death of Mrs. Baldwin. I understand that prior to the trial, the DOT offered only $100,000.00 to settle the death claim.

Now, I ask you, as citizens of the State of Georgia: What was the DOT thinking? This is a sign of a severely broken DOT. The Georgia motoring public relies on the DOT to perform its job to keep the roads in Georgia safe and, as shown in Baldwin, are failing miserably. How many more Georgia citizens have to die before the Georgia DOT finally takes notice and starts doing its job?

Recently, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution reported that walking while texting can be hazardous to your health. This may, in fact, be true...but I ask the question: Why is everyone so quick to blame the pedestrian? If you are behind the wheel of a 6,000 pound vehicle, shouldn't you watch where you are going and avoid ANY pedestrian, even those who are texting while they walk? If a pedestrian is walking in a crosswalk, a vehicle must yield to that pedestrian regardless of whether the pedestrian is texting, or talking on a cell phone, or picking his nose or doing cartwheels across the street. The streets of Atlanta have become so dangerous for walkers and bicyclists mainly because our automobile drivers have taken on an attitude that they own the road and watch out, here I come! This seems especially true given the proliferation of SUV's. Getting behind the wheel of an SUV does not give you the right to mow down someone walking on the street. Drivers need to take more care in operating their vehicles and pay attention to what is ahead of them in the road.

I am pleased to report a verdict last Friday, July 11, 2008 against the Georgia Department of Transportation (DOT) in Taylor County in a wrongful death case. This was a death case against Georgia DOT in which the decedent motorist hydroplaned off the road into a beaver pond and drowned. The Georgia DOT was negligent for failing to maintain a guardrail at this section of road where one was required. This verdict is significant beyond the fact that it was well tried by lawyers I know to be exceptionally talented: Chris Clark, Manley Brown and Chuck Byrd. The verdict is a valuable insight into the minds of rural county juries not only about how they value life, but how they will not tolerate any longer ineptitude by the Georgia DOT.

This verdict against the DOT comes just shortly after another wrongful death verdict against it, in Meriwhether County, Georgia, in the amount of $1.3 Million, obtained by my good friend and fellow trial lawyer, Lester Tate. In that case, the DOT had allowed a stop sign, for which they had maintenance responsibility, to remain down at an intersection for several weeks. This caused a horrible wreck resulting in the death of a pregnant woman and her fetus she was carrying. One wonders how much money the DOT could have saved the citizens of Georgia had they simply been reasonable, admitted their responsibility for causing these deaths and settling the cases before a jury told them how much they should pay.

All Georgia citizens who have replaced the tires on their cars in the last couple of years should immediately check the valve stems on the tires. They may be from a defectively manufactured lot of valve stems made by a company in China. There have been numerous instances of horrible wrecks and rollovers due to the failure of these Chinese valve stems breaking while the car is operating. Some of these wrecks have resulted in either catastrophic injuries and deaths.

The driver is completely unaware that something is wrong with his tires until it is too late. It would be a tragedy to lose a Georgia citizen to a defectively manufactured Chinese valve stem. Please check those tires today.

Below is a news article from the Associated Press that details Allstate Insurance Company's finally agreeing to pay a $7 Milliion fine for failing to disclose key documents regarding the manner in which it pays (or really, doesn't pay) claims. The Missouri Supreme Court has held Allstate's feet to the fire and made it clear those "good hands" are less than clean. Georgia Allstate insureds should take note and understand even on a first person claim, where you may be making your own claim against your own insurance you have paid for, your insurance company will act as your adversary. They are not "like a good neighbor" and you are not "in good hands"...they will put on their boxing gloves and will do everything humanly possible to avoid paying your claim.

AP
Allstate settles in disputed records case
Friday July 11, 11:48 am ET

Allstate, policyholder agree to settle case that centered on insurer's disclosure of records
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Allstate Insurance Co. has agreed to settle an insurance case that had attracted national attention over the insurer's refusal -- and eventual agreement -- to provide key documents on how it evaluates and pays claims.
The company's reluctance to release the records led to more than $7 million in fines from Jackson County Judge Michael Manners.
Manners has scheduled a July 21 hearing on whether to approve the settlement, which is the day the case was scheduled to go to trial.
Attorneys for both sides say the terms of the deal are confidential.
Allstate spokesman Mike Siemienas said the nation's second-largest home and auto insurer was happy to resolve the case. He declined to comment further.
The case stems from an 8-year-old accident on Interstate 70 involving Allstate policyholder Paul Aldridge, of Hawaii, who struck a truck from behind, severely injuring the driver. Aldridge later sued Allstate for bad faith after it refused for years to pay a claim.
Attorneys for both Aldridge and the accident victim, Dale Deer, of Warrensburg, requested a set of records prepared by consultant McKinsey & Co. on behalf of the insurance company that showed how it set up a claims payment system in the 1990s aimed at generating big earnings while keeping claims payments low.
One of the slides was titled "Good Hands or Boxing Gloves," a take on the company's slogan, "You're in good hands with Allstate."
Allstate refused to turn over the records, saying they contained trade secrets and would reveal the company's trial strategy.
In September, Manners held Allstate in contempt and began fining it $25,000 per day.
The Missouri Supreme Court in November ordered Allstate to turn over the documents, leading the company to disclose more than 120,000 pages of records.
Other states also have fought Allstate over the records, with Florida's insurance commissioner, Kevin McCarty, suspending the company's ability to sell insurance there after it refused subpoenas for the records. An appeals court later sided with McCarty. Allstate eventually signed an affidavit that it had turned over the records and would comply with future requests for documents, leading McCarty to lift the suspension.
The company in April posted 150,000 pages of documents on the Internet related to how it handles customer claims.
"Public criticisms by people with a vested interest in creating an inaccurate picture of the company's claim practices have been based unfairly on only snippets from the documents taken out of context," Allstate said in a statement with the records. "Because of the need to address misunderstandings resulting from the growing misplaced focus by our critics on very small pieces of the whole, we have decided to make the documents public."

Federal roof crush rule has been delayed
By Reni Gertner

Staff writer
Published: July 14, 2008

Just prior to the deadline for issuing a new roof crush standard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced that it is going back to the drawing board under pressure from Congress and consumer advocates.

Earlier this week, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said that the final standard would be delayed until Oct. 1.

"Because of the number of new comments we received and the additional analyses that are required, additional time is now needed to complete the final rule," she said in a letter to the congressional committees that oversee NHTSA.

The agency, which has not updated its rollover safety standards in over 35 years, was originally scheduled to send a new roof crush rule to Congress by July 1.

Under the proposed version, a roof would have been required to support 2.5 times the vehicle's weight, up from the current standard of 1.5 times the car's weight.

The delay comes in the wake of ongoing complaints from consumer advocates and members of Congress, who contend that the proposal is not strong enough. A bi-partisan group of senators sent a letter to NHTSA in June, urging the agency to take additional time to develop a more stringent standard.

Critics assert that most new cars already conform to a 2.5 standard and that the standard should be raised even higher, to 3.5.

"If we have a little increase in roof strength that doesn't result in a major decrease in fatalities and injuries, we've done nothing," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., at a hearing about the standard in June. (Click here for a story about the hearing.)

A controversial provision in the proposal stated that the standard would preempt state law claims brought by individuals injured in rollover accidents.

"NHTSA's proposed roof crush rule puts the profit of car manufacturers first and the safety of consumers last," said American Association for Justice President Kathleen Flynn Peterson in a statement responding to the delay of the final rule. "This time, when they go back to the drawing board, NHTSA should strengthen roof crush standards instead of giving negligent corporations a get out of jail free card."

A study released earlier this year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that the stronger the roof, the lower the risk of injury to occupants of a vehicle.

Plaintiffs' attorneys say that that study is boosting one of their key claims in these cases – that weak roofs are the main cause of death and serious injuries in rollover accidents.

For a story about that study, see "Report drives home plaintiffs' argument in rollover cases," Lawyers USA, April 7, 2008. Search terms for Lawyers USA website: Durango and Lawlor.

Once again, in typical corporate fashion, the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Lovejoy, Georgia, has denied any responsibility for its role in serving a customer a meal that, literally, killed him. The customer, who was allergic to crab meat, ordered Chicken Fresco, but, instead, was served Chicken Oscar, which has crab meat on it. Within thirty minutes of eating his meal, this poor customer died.

Now the Ruby Tuesday restaurant denies any culpability and says they served the customer what he ordered. Now let's stop for a moment and think about that. An adult who knows he is deadly allergic to crab meat orders a dish with crab meat on it. How likely is that to have happened? No chance! It is idiotic for the Ruby Tuesday corporation even to insinuate it, much less blame their own customer who KNEW he was allergic to crab meat.

What is wrong with corporate America today in refusing to accept responsibility for its wrongdoing? It is absurd to blame their own customer, and yet here they are doing that to avoid admitting their own tragic conduct. This is the prevailing sentiment in corporate America today. Even a death in their own restaurant after eating their own food doesn't make them admit fault! I certainly hope this family is able to get some justice for this death with Ruby Tuesday. It, apparently, is going to take the Georgia Civil Justice System to make Ruby Tuesday take ownership of killing its customer. How absurd!

Do you remember the tragic Bluffton, Ohio baseball team bus crash that occurred here in Atlanta on I-75 last year? The Georgia DOT, in typical hard-headed fashion, denied any responsibility for their confusing road signs, which led the professional bus driver to continue to drive on what he believed to be the diamond lane for buses, when, in reality, it was an exit ramp to the LEFT of I-75. By the time the bus driver realized it, he was tumbling off the overpass. There were numerous needless deaths and injuries.

Well, the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) has finally ruled it was the faulty, confusing DOT signs that caused the horrible tragedy. I am sure this comes as a surprise to no one except the Georgia DOT. Immediately after the bus wreck, the Georgia DOT was out on I-75 changing the signs, replacing the old ones and putting more signs up, even while, all the time, the DOT denied any responsibility. Georgia citizens really deserve better accountability from the DOT. Everyone in the State of Georgia (and everyone in the State of Ohio for that matter) knows this wreck was the DOT's fault, from confusing road signs to having an exit ramp from the left, which is counterintuitive, in the first place. The Georgia DOT has been in disarray lately with Board resignations and even a settlement for sexual harassment. It is high time the DOT gets its act together, before more innocent people die on Georgia roads.