Georgia victims of medical malpractice, and the insurance companies that provide insurance to doctors and hospitals, are anxiously awaiting the Georgia Supreme Court’s ruling on whether damages caps are unconstitutional. Marietta Daily Journal columnist Joe Kirby recently addressed the issue in his article, No Miracle Cure.
Investigating and litigating civil cases involving interstate trucking collisions and automobile wrecks is significantly different due to the Federal Motor Safety Regulations governing the operation of Interstate Motor Carriers as well as the technology on board today’s tractor-trailer. As a former lawyer for some of the nations’ largest trucking companies, I was often called to the scene of major collision within hours of the incident. When there is a trucking accident that causes serious injury or death, trucking companies immediately begin gathering experts and building their defense. If you or a loved one has been involved in a trucking accident, it is important to consult with a Georgia trucking lawyer as soon as possible for a variety of reasons to level the playing field.
First, significant evidence can be lost forever if the accident is not investigated immediately. Accident reconstruction engineers, hired by your trucking lawyer, can determine many important facts from promptly inspecting an accident scene, such as speed, braking, and lane of travel. This can be determined from skid marks, yaw marks, road gouges, and other evidence that might be completely gone after a few days or weeks. Additionally, many tractor-trailers have various types of on-board technology that record invaluable crash data that can be lost if not downloaded and stored promptly. For example most diesel engines have accessible electronic control modules (ECMs) or electronic control units (ECUs), that upon hard braking, record and collect various data including truck speed and braking. Often this data is lost if is not downloaded soon after the accident and the truck is put back into service. Some tractor-trailers even have accident reconstruction computers that record extremely detailed crash and pre-crash data. The sooner an accident is investigated the more likely it is that important facts and data will be captured and preserved.
We are constantly hearing about product recalls warning the public of products that turned out to have design flaws or unexpected problems. However, a more troubling fact is that many corporations know their products can cause serious injury or death and sell them anyway, even when there is an easy and inexpensive solution that will make the product safer.
The American Association for Justice has recently issued a report documenting true stories of corporations that knowingly sold defective products to American consumers and the devastating consequences caused by these products. Here are a few of these shocking true stories.
• A pharmaceutical company that discovers that its drug causes severe side effects in pediatric patients…and then spends hundreds of millions of dollars marketing to children.
• A company that discovers its medical device is little more than a bomb waiting to go off in people’s hearts…and then decides not to tell anyone.
• A car company that discovers that if it does not spend $11 dollars per car to fix a defect, hundreds of people will be horribly burned…and decides it would be cheaper to let them burn.
• A company that discovers its bulletproof vests are defective…and then sells them anyway to be worn by law enforcement, the military, and the President of the United States.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Marietta police prevented a potentially deadly situation when they apprehended Leonel Rodriguez driving the wrong way southbound on I-75. Early Saturday morning, September 27, Mr. Rodriguez was arrested for suspicion of DUI and numerous other offenses after driving his truck the wrong way on I-75 at speeds around 85 mph.
Marietta Police spokesman, Mark Bishop, had high praise for the officers that made the daring stop. “In this situation, our officers have the right to use deadly force,” Bishop said. “Both took a great chance in this situation with their lives.”
It has become a regular practice in Georgia for nursing homes, assisted living, rehabilitation centers, and long-term care facilities to include forced arbitration contracts in the required admission documents. These mandatory arbitration contracts are forcing Georgia’s elderly citizens to waive their constitutional right to a trial if they become victims of medical malpractice or abuse at the hands of the nursing home. First, these arbitration contracts are typically hidden in a stack of admission documents. Additionally, it is impossible for patients and families to contemplate the magnitude of what they are signing at such a stressful time. Nursing home admissions are often made under emergency situations or when a potential resident or family is faced with inadequate resources to care for a loved one; and when they sign this document they are forever waiving the right to seek civil justice in a court of law with no regard to the severity of the neglect, abuse, or malpractice.
In the nursing home medical malpractice cases we have handled involving forced arbitration agreements, clients tell us they had no idea they had signed such an agreement and certainly did not realized they were waiving the right to pursue a claim for neglect, abuse, or malpractice. The types of cases most affected by this wide spread nursing home practice are typically catastrophic – such as amputations caused by undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions, painful pressure sores that untreated lead to infection, amputation, and death, serious injury and death from malnutrition or dehydration, and physical and sexual abuse. Although Georgia law (See O.C.G.A. § 9-9-62) is supposed to render these offensive arbitration contracts unenforceable, nursing homes have gotten around the law arguing the doctrine of Federal Preemption. Although, thus far, our medical malpractice lawyers have been successful in defeating the mandatory arbitration contracts we have encountered in our cases, these agreements are being enforced by Georgia Courts in some circumstances.
