Georgia Injury Lawyers Blog

When to Hire a Lawyer After a Car Accident

April 13, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

No one is ever truly prepared for a car accident—you’re simply driving along, maybe listening to your favorite song, and out of nowhere your life changes in an instant. Although every accident is different, there are some important steps you need to take after you’ve been involved in one to make sure that the police and insurance companies have all of the information they need to make a determination of fault and compensate the victims. If an accident is particularly serious, you may even need to hire an attorney.

Let’s take a look at the steps you need to take immediately after an accident and when you might want to consider hiring an attorney.

What to Do After a Car Accident

Most Common Types of Truck Accidents

April 12, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

Automobile accidents of any kind can have devastating consequences, but trucking accidents are particularly dangerous due to the larger size of the vehicle involved. Truck accidents are more common in large metropolitan areas like Atlanta simply due to the presence of more of them on the roadways and more traffic bogging them down. While truck drivers are trained professionals who are generally safer drivers than regular motorists, accidents can and do happen.

Driver negligence plays a large role in trucking accidents, but they can also be caused by a variety of of other circumstances, including weather, road hazards, or the poor driving of others on the road. As with almost all types of automobile accidents, the most popular legal theory underlying liability in a trucking accident is negligence. A plaintiff in a trucking accident suit must show:

That the defendant truck driver owed the plaintiff a duty of care—in this case, they would owe the plaintiff the degree of care to avoid injury under the circumstances

How Punitive Damages Work

March 31, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

You’ve probably heard of punitive damages before, most likely through a high-profile verdict against a defendant who is seen by the public as having deep pockets. Punitive damages are controversial because the purpose of a civil action is to compensate the plaintiff, not to punish the defendant. Punishment of defendants is usually reserved for the criminal courts. However, punitive damages are intended to do just that–to punish the defendant when their behavior has been particularly vicious by awarding the plaintiff monetary awards that are greater than the amount necessary purely for compensation.

To understand how punitive damages work, we’ll need to take a quick look at how damages are awarded in a civil lawsuit.

Compensatory Damages

What is Contributory Negligence and How Can it Affect My Damage Award?

March 30, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

In most personal injury lawsuits, the reason why the plaintiff was injured usually boils down to negligence. Negligence requires a showing of a duty owed to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty, causation, and damages. In most cases, the duty owed is that of a “reasonably prudent person.” When the defendant’s conduct falls below that standard, he or she has breached this duty. Once the plaintiff establishes that his or her injuries were caused by this breach, a case of negligence has been established.

The compensation the plaintiff receives—known as “damages” in legal parlance—is the amount of money necessary to compensate the victim for the injury and to make him whole, as if the accident had never happened. However, this classic conception of negligence assumes that the defendant was totally at fault for the accident and that the plaintiff was blameless. What happens if the plaintiff was also partially at fault for the accident? In these cases, the courts developed the legal doctrines of contributory negligence and comparative negligence.

Contributory Negligence

The Most Common Types of Car Accident Injuries

March 29, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

Driving is an inherently dangerous activity. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), over three million people are injured every year in vehicle accidents in the United States. Some of these injuries are fairly minor, but, depending on the severity of the accident, can require extensive hospitalization and recovery time.

Let’s take a look at some of the most common types of injuries that can arise from car accidents.

Whiplash

When to Hire a Lawyer After a Car Accident

March 29, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

No one is ever truly prepared for a car accident—you’re simply driving along, maybe listening to your favorite song, and out of nowhere your life changes in an instant. Although every accident is different, there are some important steps you need to take after you’ve been involved in one to make sure that the police and insurance companies have all of the information they need to make a determination of fault and compensate the victims. If an accident is particularly serious, you may even need to hire an attorney.

Let’s take a look at the steps you need to take immediately after an accident and when you might want to consider hiring an attorney.

What to Do After a Car Accident

Texting and Driving in Atlanta

March 22, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

Distracted driving is the number one cause of accidents in the United States. In fact, according to a study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), about 80% of auto accidents are caused by some kind of distraction occurring within three seconds of the accident. Because of the rapid rise of texting as most people’s primary form of communication in recent years, it has become a serious factor in distracted driving accidents.

By the Numbers

Roughly a third of drivers between the ages of 18 and 64 report reading or writing text messages while they are driving. This can cause serious problems—the average length of time a driver can safely glance away from the road is two seconds; however, most drivers who are texting take their eyes off of the road for an average of 5 seconds. This makes drivers who are texting 400% more likely to be involved in an accident than drivers who are not. All in all, there were a total of of 341,000 motor vehicle crashes involving texting in 2013, resulting in about 8 deaths per day. The age group that is most likely to send a text or an email while driving is 21-24.

How Auto Insurance Works in Georgia

March 20, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

All 50 states and the District of Columbia require registered drivers to carry auto insurance. This is to guarantee that anyone injured in an auto accident will be appropriately compensated. Georgia’s auto insurance system is based upon fault, meaning that at-fault drivers are liable for personal injury or property damage resulting from an accident, and the at-fault driver’s insurance company will satisfy the liability. This is in contrast to “no-fault” systems, in which each driver’s insurance covers its own policyholder, regardless of fault

If you are injured in an automobile accident, there are three ways to seek compensation:

File a claim with your own insurance company, which will then seek compensation from the at-fault driver’s insurance company

What Causes Vehicles to Roll Over, and How to Avoid It

March 14, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

Any type of car accident can be potentially deadly, but vehicle rollovers are among the most dangerous. While they are relatively rare, accounting for only about three percent of all crashes, they account for about 30% of people who are killed while riding a vehicle. Many people believe that rollovers only affect SUVs and large vans, but a rollover can happen in any vehicle under the right circumstances.

How it Happens

As we said above, any vehicle can roll over but these types of crashes are much more common to tall, narrow vehicles like SUVs, vans, and trucks because these vehicles have higher centers of gravity than sedans and coupes. Rollovers are most common in turns because what happens when a car rolls over is essentially a pendulum effect. When a car makes a turn, sideways forces shift the center of gravity to one side. The faster you’re driving, the stronger these forces are. If these forces become too strong, they can cause a vehicle to roll over.

Texting and Driving in Atlanta

March 7, 2017 | by Slappey & Sadd, LLC

Distracted driving is the number one cause of accidents in the United States. According to a study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA), about 80% of auto accidents are caused by some kind of distraction occurring within three seconds of the accident. Because of the rapid rise of texting as most people’s primary form of communication in recent years, it has become a serious factor in distracted driving accidents.

By the Numbers

Roughly a third of drivers between the ages of 18 and 64 report reading or writing text messages while they are driving. This can cause serious problems—the average length of time a driver can safely glance away from the road is two seconds; however, most drivers who are texting take their eyes off of the road for an average of 5 seconds. This makes drivers who are texting 400% more likely to be involved in an accident than drivers who are not. All in all, there were a total of of 341,000 motor vehicle crashes involving texting in 2013, resulting in about 8 deaths per day. The age group that is most likely to send a text or an email while driving is 21-24.