As an Atlanta car wreck lawyer, I keep my eye on the wrecks that occur throughout our city. In a number of recent blog entries, I have been talking about the data about car accidents here in Atlanta, with the goal of being able to synthesize that information to give us and idea of what we can do better in order to prevent deaths and personal injuries in Atlanta's car wrecks.

The data I am using is from FARS, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System maintained by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA"). The data only includes fatal accidents; even accidents that result in terrible personal injuries, paralyzed limbs, head injuries and broken bones are not entered into the system unless one of the people involved in the collision died. (Of course, when a person is killed in an accident, other people involved in the accident are often very seriously injured.) Even with that limitation, it can be very useful in helping us pinpoint patterns about just how Atlanta car accidents are occurring.

In 2008, Atlanta had 54 fatal car accidents, and a total of 59 people died from those car crashes.

In May 2008, two people, one a pedestrian, were killed in Atlanta car wrecks. On the 6th of that month, a driver hit and killed a pedestrian at the intersection of Marietta Boulevard and Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway. The accident occurred at 11:15 a.m., and yet surprisingly, Atlanta police said it involved a DUI driver who had been drinking and driving.

At the end of the month, on May 30th, a driver was killed in a single-vehicle accident here in Atlanta where Joseph E Boone Blvd / Simpson St. crosses Anderson Ave. The accident occurred after dark, at 9:45 p.m.

June 2008 had many more fatal car accidents than May 2008. In June, six people were killed in Atlanta auto collisions in the month of June. One of the six was a pedestrian.

On June 2, one person died in a one-car wreck on Bolton Rd. at the interchange with I-285. Atlanta went more than two weeks without having a fatal crash, but starting on June 20th, the numbers shot up dramatically. On June 20, 2008, a pedestrian crossing the intersection of Custer Avenue and Funtston St. was killed by a car. The accident happened at 6:58 in the morning.

The June fatal car accidents came quickly after that. On June 23, one person died in a three-car collision on I-85 in East Point. The next day, one person died during the morning rush hour on I-285 between the Martin Luther King Dr. and Cascade Rd. exits.

On June 27, 2008, one person died in a two-car crash along I-20, between Fulton Industrial Blvd. and I-285. That Atlanta accident occurred at 6:58 at night.

Two days later, on June 29th, a driver died when he lost control of his vehicle on Bolton Rd. near its intersection with Forrest Place NW and Hollywood Rd NW. That accident occurred at 10:32 p.m.

When you select the best Marietta car accident lawyer, or the best Atlanta product liability lawyer, to handle your case, you ask friends and neighbors for references. You do your research on the Internet to figure out which lawyers have received awards and been recognized by their peers. Choosing a lawyer is serious business, because that person will represent you in court as you try to receive compensation for one of the most devastating things that has ever happened to you. You want to select a lawyer you can trust, who will listen to you. You want to find a lawyer with the experience to represent you well.

Georgia law recognizes that when you choose an attorney, you are making a very personal decision. Whether you pick a Decatur personal injury lawyer, or a contract lawyer to represent your company, the courts in Georgia protect your right to choose your own attorney. "'The right to counsel is an important interest which requires that any curtailment of the client's right to counsel of choice be approached with great caution.'" Southern General Insurance Company v. Holt, 409 S.E.2d 852, 200 Ga. App. 759 [49] (1991), quoting Cherry v. Coast House, Ltd., 257 Ga. 403, 359 S.E.2d 904 (1987). See also Amwest Surety Ins. Co. v. Interstate Construction Co., Inc., 442 S.E.2d 772, 212 Ga. App. 590 [16] (1994). Said in layman's terms, courts know that picking a lawyer is a big deal, and they do not want to interfere with your choice.

Courts do have the power - which they use very sparingly - to disqualify an attorney from representing a client. "Whether an attorney should be disqualified from representing a client rests in the discretion of the trial judge. Clos v. Pugia, 204 Ga. App. 843, 845 (1) (420 SE2d 774) (1992)." Welch v. Welch, 244 Ga.App. 685, 536 S.E.2d 583 (2000) (upholding trial court's decision refusing to disqualify counsel and refusing to allow counsel to be called as a witness at trial).

For obvious reasons, courts are reluctant to interfere with the client's right to pick an attorney. "Disqualification of a party's chosen counsel is an extraordinary remedy and should only be resorted to sparingly. . . . We view motions to disqualify on this ground with some skepticism, because they are sometimes filed for tactical or harassing reasons, rather than the proper reason . . . . " Singer Island Ltd. Inc. v. Budget Construction Co., 714 So.2d 651 [11] (Fla.App. Dist.4 1998) (citations omitted). Even deposing (much less disqualifying) opposing counsel is "offensive to our adversarial system and is an extraordinary step which will rarely be justified." Scottsdale Insurance Co. v. Camara De Comercio Latino-Americana De Los Estados Unidos, Inc., 813 So.2d 250 (Fla.App. Dist.3 2002).

In all the cases I have handled in my 25 years of experience as an Atlanta personal injury lawyer, I have only seen a judge disqualify lawyers one time. I did not move to disqualify the other side's counsel, but the judge in that case raised the issue. Ultimately, his decision to disqualify the counsel was reversed on appeal.

I am a personal injury attorney in Atlanta, Georgia, and like lawyers throughout Georgia, I am witnessing a Georgia evidence statute in its death throes. The law of "res gestae" is ancient here in Georgia, but the new evidence code abolishes that law in favor of a statute similar to the federal law.

Until the new code takes effect, the law of res gestae still applies in Georgia car accident lawsuits in Georgia and in Georgia personal injury cases, as well as in other types of cases. For that reason, I am going to explain what the Georgia law is.

By Georgia statute, "[d]eclarations accompanying an act, or so nearly connected therewith in time as to be free from all suspicion of device or afterthought, shall be admissible in evidence as part of the res gestae." O.C.G.A. § 24-3-3. Res gestae is a Latin term meaning "things done" or "deeds."

Under the present law, if a person makes a statement that is part of the res gestae, then even if the person cannot be found to testify at trial, other people can testify about what the person said. Normally witnesses cannot repeat the statements of people who do not testify in court. Those statements are called hearsay, and they are considered unreliable and are inadmissible. The law of res gestae is based on the idea that statements people make in the heat of the moment, before they have had time to sit around and invent a story, are more likely to be true.

(i) Definition. To meet the res gestae exception, an exclamation must "be contemporaneous, voluntary and made at a time which indicates the lack of deliberation and deception." Gaines v. State, 232 Ga. 727, 730, 208 S.E.2d 798, 801 (Ga. 1974).

(ii) Timing. Courts have explained: "[t]o fall within the res gestae, a statement must be contemporaneous with the main fact, but need not be precisely concurrent in point of time; it is sufficient if such declarations spring out of the transaction, if they elucidate it, if voluntary and if made at such time as reasonably to exclude the idea of design." Goldsmith v. Peterson, 307 Ga. App. 26, 32, 703 S.E.2d 694, 699 (Ga. Ct. App. 2010), quoting Davis v. Reid, 272 Ga. App. 312, 317, 612 S.E.2d 112 (2005) (citation and punctuated omitted in Goldsmith).

(iii) Statements of Opinion. "As long as it is part of the res gestae, a statement of opinion is admissible." Goldsmith v. Peterson, 307 Ga. App. 26, 32, 703 S.E.2d 694, 699 (Ga. Ct. App. 2010) (citations omitted).

(iv) Standard of Review. "A trial court's determination that evidence is admissible as part of the res gestae will not be disturbed unless that finding is clearly erroneous." Copeland v. State, 235 Ga. App. 682, 684, 510 S.E.2d 124, 126 (Ga. Ct. App. 1998).

In the context of a Georgia personal injury lawsuit or a Georgia car accident lawsuit, the law was often used to allow police officers to testify about what bystanders or a decedent said about how a car accident had occurred. Gilbert Corp. v. Yetman, 219 Ga. App. 320 (Ga. Ct. App. 1995).

Under Georgia law, a suit for wrongful death is considered to be in a "statutory creation" that is "in derogation of the common law" and so courts "strictly construe" it.

Those words are fancy lawyer lingo, and I will give you the Georgia wrongful death lawyer translation.

The wrongful death law is a "statutory creation" because for a long time, Georgia law had no such thing as wrongful death lawsuits. Now, however (and "now" is a relative term that means any time after a really, really long time ago), the legislature has provided that if someone is killed wrongfully, the survivors can sue for the loss of life.

The wrongful death statute is "in derogation of the common law", which means it is "new" (again, new is a relative term that could mean "only" 100 years old or so).

Because the law is new, courts "strictly construe" the statute. Again, giving you a personal injury lawyer and wrongful death lawyer interpretation, that means that the courts will not read one single thing extra into the law; the statute will be read as is, even if it does not make sense in a particular context. And unfortunately, the statute does not always make sense. For example, in the early wrongful death statutes, the legislature did not include a provision that illegitimate children could be included in the recovery. Even if the decedent had been supporting his illegitimate child, the child could not recover for the loss of the earnings that had been sustaining him. Eventually the legislature added a provision that children born out of wedlock were considered "children". O.C.G.A. § 51-4-2(f). We will discuss another way that this statute does not make sense in my next blog entry.

The statutes that provide for a wrongful death lawsuit are complicated. Under the law, the surviving spouse has the right to bring the wrongful death suit. O.C.G.A. § 51-4-2(a). So long as the spouse is alive, the children of the decedent cannot sue. If the spouse is not alive, the children can sue to recover for his wrongful death. If the decedent does not have a living spouse or child, his estate can sue for his wrongful death.

If the decedent only had one or two children, then the wife and each child split the money evenly. However, if the decedent had more than two children, the surviving spouse is entitled to a minimum of 1/3 of the recovery from the wrongful death lawsuit. O.C.G.A. § 51-4-2(d).

Although only the spouse has the right to bring the lawsuit, that fact does not change the allotment between the children and the spouse. If the spouse brings the lawsuit and receives money as a result, the spouse holds the money she received in trust for the child or children. O.C.G.A. § 51-4-2(c).

Many people consider a wrongful death lawsuit to be just a part of a Georgia personal injury lawsuit. They see that the serious injuries led to the death, and they assume the cases are the same.

In fact, however, under Georgia law a wrongful death lawsuit is distinct from the personal case:

[A]n individual's claim for wrongful death and an estate's claim for the decedent's pain and suffering are distinct causes of action. . . . The plaintiff in his individual capacity and in his capacity as administrator are legally different persons. Stiltjes v. Ridco Exterminating Co., 197 Ga. App. 852, 853 (399 S.E.2d 708) (1990), aff'd 261 Ga. 697 (409 S.E.2d 847) (1991).

Smith v. Mem'l Medical Ctr., 208 Ga. App. 26, 27-28 (Ga. Ct. App. 1993). See also Forrester v. Southern R. Co., 268 F. Supp. 194, 196-197 (N.D. Ga. 1967) ("As a general rule, a statutory action for wrongful death in Georgia has been considered a separate cause of action. For example, a statutory action for the wrongful death of an individual has been held to be distinct from a common law action for pain and suffering.").

Here in Atlanta we seem to have had a rash of very serious hit and run car accidents during the last few weeks.

For example, on November 7, 2011, a black 2005 Chevrolet Impala critically injured Nathan Powell, 25. Powell ended up on life support at Grady Hospital after he got off a MARTA bus and was hit while crossing the street at the 1300 block of Joseph E. Boone Boulevard.

On January 3, 2012, just after a Falcons game, a car struck and seriously injured a 5-year-old child after a Falcons game. Police charged a man with hitting the child and leaving the scene of an accident, as well as driving under the influence.

Georgia law is clear that every driver should stop at the scene of an accident: "The driver of any vehicle involved in an accident resulting in injury to or the death of any person or in damage to a vehicle which is driven or attended by any person shall immediately stop such vehicle at the scene of the accident or shall stop as close thereto as possible and forthwith return to the scene of the accident . . . " O.C.G.A. § 40-6-270(a).

As a Georgia hit and run car accident lawyer, I know why this requirement is so critically important. When a hit and run driver leaves the scene of an accident, he leaves an absolute mess in his wake.

One of my car accident clients - herself the victim of a hit and run automobile wreck - explained to me that the fact that the man who hit her left the scene of the accident caused her more trauma even than the accident itself.

My client was hurt, and she sat in her car wondering how she would get medical care because she knew she couldn't afford it. She was worried about the very things that Georgia law had tried to prevent her from worrying about: car insurance, medical bills, and how to find the driver who hit her.

Georgia requires drivers to carry mandatory automobile liability insurance so that people who are injured have some way to get money to pay their medical bills and to compensate them for the injuries. When someone leaves the scene of an accident in a hit and run car accident, the people who are left behind do not have access to the insurance that the driver purchased exactly for the purpose of giving some peace of mind to the people who were hurt in a car accident the driver caused.

Worst of all, when someone leaves the scene of a car wreck, the people who are left behind may well be in danger because no one calls the emergency personnel. Under Georgia law, every driver who is involved in a car accident in Georgia has a duty to "[r]ender to any person injured in such accident reasonable assistance, including the transporting, or the making of arrangements for the transporting, of such person to a physician, surgeon, or hospital for medical or surgical treatment if it is apparent that such treatment is necessary or if such transporting is requested by the injured person." Id. at (a)(3). Apparently people who flee the scene of the accident do not realize how much critically worse their situation becomes if someone dies or winds up very critically injured because they did not get medical treatment in time. Even if they did not feel a moral imperative to help the person who was hurt, they themselves would be better off it they helped the person avoid a serious injury or death.

In addition, one of the things that bothered my client the most was a sense that she had been violated. The person who hit her didn't care enough to stick around and exchange insurance information, much less worry about whether she had been seriously injured.

Generally the police are able to track down the hit and run driver. Insurance issues are complicated in a hit-and-run accident, however. Contact a hit and run car accident attorney at the The Wallace Law Firm, L.L.C. to learn more about the car insurance issues. We understand that the car wreck mattered a great deal to you, and that the car accident insurance company for the other driver needs to take responsibility for what happened.

The American Automobile Association ("AAA") put out a report, AAA report 2011.pdf, detailing the various costs that society suffers as a result of the clogged arteries and highways around our nation. The report caught my eye for two reasons. First, the report included my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia, as one of its study sites. Unfortunately for all of us living in the metro Atlanta region, traffic is an unpleasant part of life here. The second reason the report was important to me relates to what I do for a job. I am a lawyer who handles car accident lawsuits, so I was very struck by this conclusion:

Most Americans would be surprised to learn the societal costs associated with motor vehicle crashes significantly exceed the costs of congestion.

As a personal injury lawyer, I represent clients who have been in car crashes, and as an attorney I see firsthand the high costs of traffic wrecks, in terms of deaths, injuries, disrupted lives, lost wages, etc. Many of these costs can be recouped in a car wreck lawsuit, but AAA points out a large number of costs that are borne by society, and are not part of a lawsuit. I have done several entries on those costs of traffic.

Today I want to talk about what the report tells us about traffic, and even more importantly, car wrecks, in the "Atlanta - Sandy Springs - Marietta, Georgia" area that was included in the study. I will refer to the whole area as "Atlanta Metro" for short.

The report grouped cities by their size. The report listed Atlanta's population as 5,475,213, which placed the Atlanta Metro area into the largest category, cities that are "Very Large (Over three million)". Fourteen other metro areas were placed in that category: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.

During the one-year period of the study, the Atlanta Metro region had 498 fatalities from car crashes, and the individual and societal cost of these deaths from car accidents was $2,988,000,000. An absolutely astounding 62,263 people were injured in car accidents. The cost imposed by these injuries was $7,845,000,000. In sheer terms, the cost of injuries was more than double the cost of fatalities. But the number of injuries far, far exceeded the number of fatalities. In fact, the number of fatalities was less than 1% of the number of injuries.

According to AAA, deaths and injuries from car crashes cost the Atlanta metro area, and society, $10,833,000,000. The report explains that when the cost is spread across the entire population of Atlanta, traffic accidents cost each of us $1979. By contrast, congestion cost Atlanta $2,727,000,000, or $649 each.

The costs of car accidents in Atlanta were unusually high. In general:

"For very large urban areas, crash costs are nearly double those of congestion. In other words, for every dollar spent on congestion in very large urban areas, $1.92 is spent on crashes."

In Atlanta, as a whole we paid 3.97 times as much for car wrecks as we did for congestion. Per person, we paid 3.05 times as much for car accidents as for congestion. (The numbers seem a little off from the raw data about the costs because AAA had to pull the statistics about congestion from a different database than the statistics about the car accidents.) In Atlanta, then, car wrecks are costing us much more than congestion is. I see some of the most obvious costs - like medical bills, lost wages, etc., as a car accident lawyer, but many of these costs are buried in city budgets and societal losses that are not part of any lawsuit and are not covered by any car insurance.