Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

What could be scarier this Halloween?

Tonight on Anderson Cooper 360° prepare to hear a chilling story of lies and deceit as the story
of two everyday Americans are haunted by undercover agents in their own
church.

Progressive Insurance willingly accepted the premiums that Bill and Leandra
Pitts paid them each month for UM Insurance. After a car crash in Henry
County that left the Pitts with injuries and damages not covered by the
at-fault driver, they turned to their UM coverage to pay for what was
left-the coverage that they had dutifully paid for every month.

Progressive Insurance, in an attempt to save a buck, hired two undercover
private investigators to follow the Pitts in their community and to their
church where the two agents posed as prospective members. Taking the deceit
to incredible lengths, the two agents talked their way into a private
Bible-study held in a private home and were privy to intimate and personal
disclosures of the church members. Progressive hoped that they would
discover something that would free them from covering the damages. But they
didn't.

The Pitts, after hiring GTLA member Wayne Grant, have filed suit against
Progressive Insurance alleging that the company's spooky tactics against
their own clients went too far. Tonight, Anderson Cooper on CNN will look
into the case.

Posted by Robin Frazer Clark | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Motor Vehicle Accidents

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Warning to all Georgia parents: another child seat has been recalled. This time it is the Bumbo baby seat, made by Bumbo International, a Texas company.

You can find out more at bumbosafety.com, but after looking at that site, it seems the corporation, like many in its shoes, is attempting to blame the parents for the lack of safety of the very product it manufactured. So many corporations, when they are caught red-handed manufacturing a dangerous product, point a finger at their own customers, rather than accepting responsibility for placing a defective, dangerous product on the market. This is the face of the fact that the Consumer Product Safety Commission says it has received 28 reports of children falling out of the seats, which prompted the recall.

Georgia parents can retrieve newly written instructions for use of the seat at bumbosafety.com. When you read them, it will probably make you mad that the corporation is blaming you, the parent. If you have such a seat at home, you might reconsider using it any further based upon the CPSC recall. Perhaps a better source for learning more about this product recall and others, is cpsc.gove, the Consumer Product Safety Commission's own website. I think it is a good idea to check that site periodically for safety information on all sorts of products.

Posted by Robin Frazer Clark | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Products Safety

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The answer is probably yes.
Georgia hospitals, along with most other hospitals in the United States, most likely discriminate against the uninsured, or those patients insured through either Medicare or Medicaid. A new study regarding patients with appendicitis certainly seems to prove the theory. This study, appearing last month in The Journal of the American College of Surgeons, used state data from 2003 and 2004 in New York and included 26,637 appendicitis patients, of whom 7,969 had a ruptured appendix. There were no significant differences in the likelihood of perforation among whites, African-Americans, Hispanics and Asians. Compared with patients who had private insurance coverage, those on Medicare were 14 percent more likely to have a burst appendix, people on Medicaid were 22 percent more likely, and those with no insurance at all were 18 percent more likely to have a rupture.

This is obviously not a very kind commentary on our nation's hospitals. Once again, it is a tell of the haves and the have-nots, as Senator John Edwards often puts it, because those who "have" private insurance get proper medical care for appendicitis well before the appendix becomes so diseased and inflamed that it ruptures and then must be removed on an emergency basis. Those who do "not have" private insurance get ignored with complaints of abdominal pain until the appendix ruptures, leading to emergency surgery, and, ironically, potentially higher medical costs.

I have strongly suspected Georgia hospitals discriminate in favor of those lucky patients who have their own private health insurance, ever since I tried an obstetrical malpractice case in Gainesville, Hall County, Georgia, where the hospital emergency department literally ignored a pregnant woman bleeding in the ER chairs. That unfortunate woman was on Medicaid. I believe had she had private insurance, instead of Medicaid, the nurses would not have left her in the ER bleeding so long until her baby had to be delivered by emergency C section and only then suffering from extreme hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation. The child later died. This new study seems to suggest I was right.

It also is not a very kind commentary on our society if we are allowing hospitals to get away with this discriminatory treatment. Are the hospitals saying only the well-off patients who can afford their own private insurance get our very best medical care? I hope in our supposedly civilized society this isn't true; otherwise, God help us.

Posted by Robin Frazer Clark | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Medical Malpractice

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I want to issue a warning to Do-It-Yourselfers out there, who enjoy a Saturday trip to Home Depot here in Atlanta, Georgia to find the materials they need to fix up something at the their houses and take pride in having done the job themselves. Do not purchase or use Stand 'n Seal, a sealant used to seal grout around tile. It has been proven to cause lung damage with just one use. At least 80 serious injuries, including 2 fatalities, have been linked to this dangerous product.

A tiny Georgia company, Innovative Chemical Technologies, made a chemical called Flexipel S-22WS, a dangerous ingredient in the sealant. There is evidence of a cover-up in that the manufacturer of Stand 'n Seal knew well in advance of marketing and selling the spray that the chemical in it could cause lung damage to innocent users. In another example of Corporate America putting profits over people, after becoming aware of numerous complaints about the product, Richard F. Tripodi, the manufacturer's chief executive, asked a staff member fielding calls at a 24-hour emergency number not to tell customers reporting illnesses that others had called with similar complaints, documents show. Truly reprehensible conduct.

Although the Consumer Product Safety Commission finally issued an official recall of the hazardous product, it remained on Home Depot shelves available for purchase by Home Depot customers well after the recall and well after the deadly side effect was known. It was not until March 2007, 18 months after the original recall, that Home Depot and Roanoke acknowledged the apparent source of the continuing problem.

I certainly hope Home Depot has finally pulled all Stand 'n Seal off its shelves by now so that no another innocent customer gets injured needlessly. Now these innocent vicitms have only the Civil Justice System to look to for some justice. Another horrible example of Corporate America's putting their profits over people.

Posted by Robin Frazer Clark | Permalink | Email This Post

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I read in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution this weekend that the first lawsuit regarding the Bluffton, Ohio bus crash, that killed or injured the members of a Bluffton, Ohio baseball team, was filed in Atlanta, Georgia. The article may not have detailed all the counts alleged or all of the defendants named in the suit, but it concerned me that it did not mention the Georgia Department of Transportation as being named as a defendant. This is concerning to me given the fact that the Georgia DOT has, for all intents and purposes, admitted it maintained a defective exit where the bus went off the interstate, onto the poorly marked exit off to the left, and then over the overpass, crashing to the asphalt below. The lawyers who filed this lawsuit, regrettably, are not from Georgia, which is another concern. These families deserve justice, and it seems to me the best way for them to obtain that is a lawsuit here in Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, against the Georgia Department of Transportation for negligent design and maintenance. The Georgia DOT has already made efforts to change the poorly designed exit, with bigger, more effective warning signs, that, in my opinion, should have been in place long ago. Many Atlanta citizens were probably already familiar with what a dangerous exit this was, as other wrecks had occurred here numerous times. Yet it was only after the Bluffton, Ohio crash did the Georgia DOT wake up and actually try to correct the situation.

My heart and my prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones in this wreck. It should never have happened, and wouldn't have happened had the Georgia DOT not been asleep at the wheel.

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