Bill Banning Texting While Driving (TWD) Introduced in Georgia House
Two Georgia lawmakers are proposing a ban on texting behind the wheel that could make the practice illegal for all drivers.
State Reps. Allen Peake and Amos Anderson have introduced bills to prohibit the practice and come with a fine and driver’s license penalties. If the law passes, it would go into effect on July 1 and make Georgia the 20th state to outlaw texting while driving. Colorado, Louisiana, New York, Virginia and Washington are among the 19 states that ban text messages for all drivers. Nine states ban text messaging for teen drivers.
Peake says the bill is a step in the right direction for Georgia. He stopped short of a total ban on cell phone use and says the legislation addresses the “more dangerous” practice of texting.
Representative Mary Margaret Oliver introduced another such ban last session in House Bill 23. There was no explanation why these two Representatives felt the need to introduce an entirely new bill when House Bill 23 accomplishes the same thing. House Bill 23 has already been passed by the House and awaits action from the Senate.
I have written often in the past about Judge Anthony Alaimo, a United States District Judge for the Southern District of Georgia, who the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association honored with its first Anthony Alaimo Guardian of Justice Award last year. Judge Alaimo passed at the end of 2009. Put simply, there will never be another person like him. Below is a column that appeared in the Augusta Chronicle about this Great American.
The Alaimo way
Groundbreaking federal judge set a gold standard for the bench
Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
U.S. District Court Judge Anthony Alaimo wasn't some judge who delivered generic up-or-down decisions from an unfeeling bench. He helped shape the very culture of the legal profession and the judiciary in Georgia.
If you heard the man's life described, you almost would think you were hearing the plot of a movie. In a way, you would - more about that in a bit.
When Alaimo died Dec. 30 at age 89, Georgia lost perhaps its most eminently fair jurist. Atlanta civil rights attorney Robert Cullen, who had argued many cases before Alaimo, described the judge in later years as "something of a folk hero in the white and the black communities. He was an extraordinary jurist who did extraordinary things."
How powerful is Alaimo's legacy? When the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association created its Award for Judicial Excellence in 2008, it not only gave the very first award to Alaimo, they named the award in his honor.
At that first ceremony, Augusta attorney John C. Bell Jr. summed up the high points of Alaimo's career as "shining examples for the bench, the bar and for every soul lucky enough to claim that title 'citizen of the United States of America.' "
Alaimo came to America as a toddler in 1922 with his Sicilian immigrant parents, and in Jamestown, N.Y., he grew into a young man who embraced hard work and solid moral values. He cut hair and shined shoes to help put himself through college. And like many patriotic young men of the Greatest Generation, he served his country in World War II, as a B-26 bomber pilot.
We mentioned a movie plot before. Alaimo was the only member of his flight crew to survive when his plane was shot down in 1943. While imprisoned by the Germans, he helped fellow prisoners tunnel to freedom in a daring breakout that was immortalized in the 1963 film The Great Escape. He engineered his own great escape from another prison camp in 1945.
After graduating from Emory University with a law degree in 1948, he practiced with distinction in Atlanta and Brunswick. But it wasn't until after he was confirmed for the federal bench in 1971 that he began striking his greatest blows for fairness and equality.
Perhaps his best-known decision was in the historic 1972 Guthrie v. Evans case, which spurred sweeping prison reforms, starting with the then-notoriously corrupt, rat-infested, sewage-swamped Georgia State Prison at Reidsville. His decisions dramatically improved the security, safety and basic privileges of prisoners.
Closer to Augusta was the landmark Rogers v. Lodge case in 1982, which confronted election procedures that Alaimo found were unfairly diluting minority voting strength in Burke County - a decision reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
He served as the Southern District of Georgia's chief federal judge from 1976 to 1990, assuming senior judge status the following year. And through it all, he set a pace and a tone in the legal community that stressed decorum, respect and, above all, justice.
Augusta attorney David Hudson counts himself among the fortunate who began practicing in front of Alaimo.
"We were expected to be professional, courteous and prepared," he said. "He was a marvelous mentor to all of us who learned to try cases the Alaimo way."
Sadly, the "Alaimo way" can no longer be witnessed firsthand, only hopefully emulated by others. This fine judge truly will be missed.
From the Wednesday, January 13, 2010 edition of the Augusta Chronicle
How many hoops should you have to jump through to get justice? It's a fair question that many people struggle with. Recently, the CEO of a Georgia medical services company suggested in a guest column in the Atlanta Journal and Consitution on Friday, January 8, 2010, that to be really sure that Georgians who have been harmed by negligent medical care are worthy of justice we should subject them to one more hoop. Not coincidentally, it's a hoop that benefits only medical professionals and insurance companies – the only two interest groups that profit when injured patients are prevented from securing justice.
What this CEO has proposed is that, instead of allowing victims of medical malpractice the same Constitutional Right to Trial by Jury enjoyed by all other Georgians, people harmed by medical malpractice would have to get permission to have a jury trial from a “screening panel” comprised of members of the medical and insurance industries, the same entities that want to avoid compensating injured patients. This approach is wrong and adds an unnecessary, ineffective layer to our civil justice system.
The fact is all medical malpractice cases brought in Georgia have already been through multiple screening hoops. The first hoop is that you have to have had something very bad happen as a result of malpractice. Your next hoop is that you have to find a lawyer willing and able to take your case. That lawyer will tell you that there is another, special hoop that protects only professionals charged with negligence. In order to pass through that hoop, the patient must find a medical professional willing to publicly criticize their colleague and sign a document swearing that malpractice happened. So far your case has been screened three times: Something bad happens. You find a lawyer who will invest in helping you find justice. And, you find another doctor who agrees that there was malpractice and is willing to say so. Then there’s a fourth screening before you can have a jury hear your case: the judge must screen the case, too.
Our Founding Fathers created the world's best independent screening panels when they imbedded the right to a trial by jury in our Constitution. You are entitled to a jury of your peers, not a two step process, the first of which is a trial by jury of the defendant's colleagues. We trust the people of our communities to fairly resolve our disputes when we are unable to resolve them ourselves.
The CEO cites an approach tried in Maine as being the right fit for us here in Georgia. He fails to mention that this approach is regularly criticized by the Supreme Court of Maine as being inadequate and harmful to the people of Maine. He cites, as a reason for needing “screening panels,” a Georgia case involving a plastic surgeon who carelessly destroyed the blood supply to a woman’s face and left her horribly disfigured. He suggests that this woman – who was horribly injured through no fault of her own and who successfully navigated all of the legal hurdles to hold the wrongdoer accountable for herself and other patients – has not done enough. He says she needs to clear yet another hurdle to prove herself worthy of a jury trial. The suggestion is outrageous and it serves no purpose but to deny those who have been harmed their fair measure of justice.
Why should patients who have been harmed by medical malpractice have to go through two trials when everyone else only has to go through one? Why should medical professionals get special treatment? It's a question with an obvious answer: They shouldn't.
