Georgia Injury Lawyer Blog

Good Georgia business lawyers will tell you that starting a new physician practice in Georgia is like starting any other business, with some additional considerations.

The first step in starting any business is to develop a business plan and strategy. A physician practice's business plan should involve details identifying a need in your community, anticipated payer mix, common codes with expected reimbursement, billing efficiency, anticipated growth, marketing strategy, referral strategy, and business development plans. Like any other business, you need to determine the need for your business in a community. You should do your research and planning before starting down any paths.

The next step is to incorporate the business. You need to decide between a corporation (whether a C-Corp, and S-Corp, or a Professional Corporation) and a limited liability company. The decision on which business entity to choose depends on multiple factors: general liability considerations, how many physicians will be part of the initial practice, how fast you wish to grow the practice, how much corporate maintenance you wish to do, and taxes. Ultimately, taxes and general liability are the top things to consider. Another step in the incorporation process is to obtain a tax payer ID number from the IRS.

Business accounts should be opened in the business' name, and be kept separate from all personal accounts. Insurance should be obtained for the business. It is important to work with a competent local insurance broker or agent to meet your insurance liability needs. Consider, professional malpractice, general liability, disability, worker's compensation, health insurance, and retirement plans.

It is also important for a new physician's practice to start the credentialing and contracting process early. Government payors have long processing times. Get started on the Medicare/Medicaid paperwork at least four to six months before your expected opening date. You don't want to open your practice and not be able to accept some patients because of credentialing or contracting delays. The credentialing process cannot be started without first setting up the corporate entity. You should also start the process of hiring non-physician staff, independent contractors, and administrative staff several months before your expected opening date.

Finally, it's important to manage your practice like a business. Identify financial performance indicators, the red-flags that will alert you to trouble or give you assurance that everything is going according to plan. You should review your financial indicators and business plan on a monthly basis to ensure you are on track. You are running a business and a medical practice, so it is important to understand what your competencies are and hire experts where necessary.

Continue reading "Georgia Business Lawyer Explains How To Start A New Physician Practice In Georgia" »

Georgia Contract Lawyer discusses that In order to sue for a contract in Georgia, you need to have legal standing to sue. Another fancy word for this is called "privity." The doctrine of privity of contract provides that only a party to a contract has standing to sue to enforce it, even if the contract confers benefits on others.

Simply put, that means you must have an actual vested, legal interest in the contract before you have a right to sue to enforce it. The same goes for someone who might be trying to sue you to enforce a contract. This means, if their names are not on the contract, then you better be sure that they actually have a vested legal right to sue you as a party to the contract .

O.C.G.A. §9-2-20 makes it very clear that "as a general rule, an action on a contract, whether the contract is expressed, implied, by parol, under seal, or of record, shall be brought in the name of the party in whom the legal interest in the contract is vested, and against the party who made it in person or by agent."

For over 100 years, the Georgia Supreme Court has stated that the action on a contract must generally be brought in the name of the party in whom the legal interest in such a contract is vested. O'Leary v. Costello, 169 Ga. 754, 151 S.E. 487 (1930). Consequently, the proper parties are the parties who in regard to the subject matter of the contract, have given consideration or exchanged mutual promises of performance. American Fletcher Mtg. Co. v. First Am. Inv. Corp., 463 F. Supp. 186 (N.D. Ga. 1978).

In 2009, Judge Miller, Judge Barnes, and Judge Andrews of the Georgia Court of Appeals addressed this issue and ruled that:

" the trial court erred in granting an assignee summary judgment against a debtor to collect the amount owed on a credit card account agreement the debtor allegedly entered into with an assignor because the assignee failed to show that it was entitled to file suit to recover the outstanding debt against the debtor pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 9-11-17(a); the assignee relied on the affidavit of its agent and business records custodian of its credit card accounts to show that the assignor transferred to it all rights and interests to the debtor's account, but the affidavit failed to refer to or attach any written agreements that could complete the chain of assignment from the assignor to the assignee, and although the assignee contended that the debtor did not raise its failure to present a valid assignment in the trial court, the record reflected that that issue was squarely before the trial court because the assignee directly addressed the debtor's defense under § 9-11-17 in its motion for summary judgment, referring to the affidavit to show that it was the assignee. Wirth v. Cach, LLC, 300 Ga. App. 488, 685 S.E.2d 433 (2009).

This simply means that if a corporation or person is a party suing on a contract, but their names are not on the contract---they need to show evidence that the rights and interests were transferred to them, or "assigned". If the evidence isn't there, they likely have no legal standing to sue.

Therefore, if you are dealing with a contractual lawsuit, you need to be certain that both parties have the legal standing to sue. If you are currently faced with a business dispute or a breach of contract issue, a good Georgia lawyer can help you navigate these complex legal issues.

Continue reading "Georgia Contract Lawyer Discusses: Who Can Sue On A Contract In Georgia?" »

Good Georgia personal injury lawyers are needed whenever you have complicated legal issues concerning automobile accidents and other vehicle crashes.

These legal issues are not always as straightforward as they may seem. For example, just last year, the Georgia courts faced a question as to what does the law say if the meaning of the term "accident" in an automobile liability insurance policy if it is not expressly defined, and how do you determine if there was one accident or two when an insured vehicle struck one claimant and then very shortly thereafter struck another?

In 2010, in the case of STATE AUTO PROPERTY AND CASUALTY COMPANY v. MATTY et al. 286 Ga. 611 (2010), the Georgia Supreme Court decided the answers to these questions.

Here, a vehicle driven by the insured struck a bicyclist, killing him, and then struck a second bicyclist, seriously injuring him. An accident reconstruction expert testified that, assuming the insured traveled at a constant speed of 55 miles per hour, it would have taken her just over a second to travel between the two bicyclists.

The insurance company argued that this incident constituted one accident and that under the policy, it was responsible for providing only a single $ 100,000 limit of coverage; the policy contained a liability limit for bodily injury of $ 100,000 for all damages resulting from any one auto accident, regardless of the number of insureds, claims, and vehicles in the policy declaration or involved in the accident.

In order to answer these questions, the Georgia Supreme Court adopted the cause theory for use in liability insurance cases in Georgia, whereby courts looked to whether, after the cause of an initial collision, a driver regained control of the vehicle before a subsequent collision, so that it could be said that there was a second intervening cause and therefore a second accident.

The outcome of the case is that the Court concluded that the meaning of the term "accident," when not otherwise defined in setting limits of liability, should be determined using the cause theory. The court held that this theory applied to the insurance contract at issue in this case and returned the case to the district court with directions to resolve the case by applying the cause theory to the facts of the case.

Continue reading "Good Georgia Personal Injury Lawyer: Auto Accident Attorney Law In Georgia Challenged The Meaning Of "Accident"" »

Georgia Personal Injury Lawyer and Auto Accident Attorney litigation involving the effectiveness of a notice of cancellation of a car insurance policy was addressed this past year by the Georgia Supreme Court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit certified the following question for the Georgia Supreme Court to answer: Was a notice of cancellation, properly given after a premium was past due, ineffective because it provided an opportunity for an insured to keep the policy in force by paying the past-due premium within the statutory 10 day period?

In the lawsuit, the insurance company contended that a policy was not in effect on the date of a collision due to a cancellation notice. The insurance company had sent out a notice entitled "CANCELLATION NOTICE, NONPAYMENT OF PREMIUM," and the cancellation date was printed out in small boxes at the top and bottom of the paper. The paper also had "NONPAYMENT NOTIFICATION," and "NON PAY NOTICE" stamped in large letters. The insurance company's notice also contained payment options and a detachable payment stub.

The Georgia Supreme Court answered the certified question in the negative, noting that to be legally sufficient under O.C.G.A. §§ 33-24-45(c)(1) and 33-24-44, a cancellation notice had to positively and unequivocally state that the cancellation was occurring.
The mere fact that the notice contained an option for an insured to avoid the imminent cancellation did not change the clear statement that coverage was being terminated for nonpayment.

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Continue reading "Atlanta Georgia Personal Injury Lawyer: Auto Accident Attorney Needed In Car Crash When Auto Insurance Policy Is Unclear" »

Good Georgia Lawyer continues its multi-part series on SUV Rollovers:

The Auto Industry's Refusal to Acknowledge The Need for Two Sided Rollover Testing was shown in the following:

The auto industry has consistently denied the need for an appropriate two sided test. The rollover tests selected by General Motors are "deliberately designed to avoid measuring roof crush. In one test, the vehicle is driven on a ramp, and then tips onto its side. This test can be used to evaluate the deployment of side curtain airbags, which General Motors has publicly announced it will be installing in all its vehicles by 2012, but fails to provide any information about roof crush."

Additionally, Ford also has conducted dolly rollover tests of the Ford Explorer yet the vehicle never fully inverts, and "so the test fails to realistically represent a rollover crash." Nissan also recently "announced publicly that it has developed an apparatus that is capable of fully inverting a car" and "the stated purpose of this apparatus is to test seat belt performance."

The Auto Industry's Refusal to Acknowledge The Dangers of Roof Crush:
For more than three decades the auto industry led by General Motors, has conducted a campaign to convince the courts, NHTSA, and the public that "there is no relationship between roof strength and the likelihood of occupant injury given a rollover." Lena Pons, policy analyst at Public Citizen writes that in terms of litigation the auto industry was able to draw upon "considerable financial resources to stage expensive and impressive tests, e.g. the Autoliv Ford Explorer tests, analyzed by Exponent. This science for hire makes litigation often a battle of experts, which often puts plaintiffs at a disadvantage."

For example, two studies sponsored by automakers, one in 1995 and the other a decade later, found no relationship at all between roof strength and injury risk in rollovers. Findings of the first study motivated General Motors to send out a press release to the The Detroit News in 2002 stating: "Good science, long established and well reviewed in the technical literature, has conclusively demonstrated that there is no relationship between roof strength and the likelihood of occupant injury given a rollover."

Four years later, Ford stated to the government that "substantial and compelling real-world crash data and laboratory testing have confirmed that simply increasing roof strength will not measurably reduce the risk of injury or death to vehicle occupants in rollovers." GM's actual study involved an "extensive two-part test program, referred to as Malibu I (unrestrained occupants) and Malibu II (fully belted occupants), that it claimed supported its thesis" arguing the illogical, absurd stance that fatalities occurred from passengers "diving" into the roof upside down rather than the roof crushing into their heads. However, although GM published and presented research papers making the claim that there was no link between roof strength and occupant injury, it would not release the underlying data and film until forced to do so in a major lawsuit.

Analysis of the "extensive data, film and analyses of the Malibu tests has demonstrated that, in fact, roof crush is directly related to neck injury, which occurred only in tests of production roof Malibus." Film of these tests show definitively "how these injuries are a direct result of the roof failures and that when the roofs are strong, with roll cages, the test dummies in the vehicles indicate the potential of only minor to moderate injuries from which an individual would fully recover." And the auto industries effort to promote the so-called "diving theory" (that passengers were breaking their necks from diving into the roof rather than the roof crushing into them) has been discredited as a hoax.

Despite the auto industry's refusal to acknowledge the dangers of roof crush and continued attempts to obfuscate the evidence, clear objective studies have worked to resolve the controversy. In the March 15, 2008 a study was conducted by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the results confirmed in a Status Report conclusively showed the serious consequences of roof crush along with the ration of roof strength to injury. In the words of the Institute's President, Adrian Lund: "What we do know from the study is that strengthening a vehicle's roof reduces injury risk, and reduces it a lot."

So in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence proving the dangers of SUV rollover roof crush and the imperative need for two sided roof rollover testing--why do automakers continue to resist? Experts believe that "this indifference to high SUV collision risks allowed the manufacturers to reap billions of dollars in SUV profits while thousands of motorists with no feasible way to protect themselves were unnecessarily killed or injured."

Lena Pons, policy analyst at Public Citizen explains: "The automakers have built a long record in litigation building the argument that roof strength is unrelated to occupant injury in crashes. The 'diving theory' for example, is a complex argument meant to provide an appearance that rollover crashes are violent, unpredictable events, and that occupants cannot realistically be protected. To change course and build vehicles with strong roofs, the industry would potentially open itself up to challenges in thousands of rollover cases."

Georgia Personal Injury Lawyers at Good Georgia Lawyer continue its multi-part series on SUV Rollovers:

Consumer Advocacy Recommendations as to how to solve the Rollover Problem and the Industry's Response:

On June 4, 2008, former head of NHTSA and then President of Public Citizen Joan Claybrook testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. She recommended that after twenty years of pushing for a response for NHTSA to address rollover fatalities, the agency do the following:
1. "Instead of tackling the rollover problem in a piecemeal way, it should
issue a single, unified rollover crashworthiness standard that tackles the three elements of rollover occupant protection: prevent ejection, provide adequate restraint, and ensure that occupants are not injured or killed by an intruding roof by issuing a dynamic two-sided roof strength standard that measures occupant injury potential."
2. "Provide widely publicized consumer information about roof strength using a static test that consists of two sequential platen tests until the agency can issue a dynamic crash test standard."

Historically as well as currently, auto manufacturers refuse to acknowledge that injuries are caused due to roof crush and that any two sided testing is necessary. Currently, NHTSA only requires one sided testing. But as Claybrook explained in her testimony, any rollover performance test must be two sided because the risk to the vehicle occupants completely depends on whether the occupant is sitting on the 'near side,' the side that makes contact with the ground first or the 'far side,' the side that makes contact with the ground last.

An example of this is to imagine if one was "looking at a vehicle as it rolls sideways, in slow motion: as it rolls over, first one side of the vehicle roof will make contact with the ground; then, the other side will make contact; and, depending on the speed of the vehicle crash, this sequence might repeat several times. In the first impact, the vehicle's windshield and windows often break, weakening the roof structure by as much as 30 percent, which means the far side occupant is protected by a roof up to 30 percent weaker than the occupant on the near side, which hit the ground first."

In real-world crashes, this leads to a situation where the far seated occupant often suffers fatal injuries, while the near seated occupant walks away with only minor injuries. As you can see from the following pictures, people are seriously more injured when sitting on the far side as compared to the near side.

The Problem of Far Side Impacts:
In rollovers the roof is mainly crushed and
people are seriously injured on the FAR side,
opposite to the direction of roll (or NEAR side).

As one can also see from the picture, the second, far side impact in a rollover crash is different from the first impact in a number of ways. It "has a different and more severe pitch angle and greater roll angle. The strength provided by the windshield and its bonding is gone after the first impact when both break, meaning that the roof is substantially weakened when the second or far side impact occurs."

Consequently, a one-sided test fails to diagnose a major cause of injury to occupants in rollovers, and far side roof strength is far more important than near side. "While near side tests pass vehicles that can support 1 ½ times the vehicle's weight in a static test, on the far side in a sequential test, many vehicle roofs cannot actually support even the weight of the vehicle. This is the reason for roof collapse in actual rollover
crashes."

Moreover, ejection is the most dangerous possibility for an occupant caught in a rollover crash. A vehicle's roof strength is closely tied to the risk of ejection during a rollover "because if the roof is too weak, the supporting pillars deform and collapse when the vehicle's roof strikes the ground in a rollover, warping and shattering the windshield and side windows and unlatching the doors and seatbelts allowing the occupants to be ejected.

Conclusively, in rollover crashes, people are seriously injured on the far side and from ejection due to the roof crush. As such, NHTSA's capitulation to the auto industry in allowing the current one-sided test fails to appropriately measure the roof crush risk and risk of the occupant seated on the far side. In order for the dangers of SUV fatalities to be mitigated, it is essential that a unified rollover crashworthiness standard be adopted that utilizes a two-sided roof strength test standard.

What should you do when you learn secret information that your employer is stealing from, lying to, and cheating the federal or state government? This is a question that many prospective clients encounter on the job. The best answer when faced with this question is that you should immediately seek confidential legal counsel from a whistleblower lawyer because your employer's illegal behavior may very likely constitute a violation of the False Claims Act.

Examples of the False Claims Act can include:

1. Medicaid or Medicare fraud: This is when doctors, hospitals, or pharmacies seek and receive reimbursement for Medicare and Medicaid funds. Oftentimes they may be billing for services not rendered, or misrepresenting services or goods, or even providing defective goods or services.

2. Pharmaceutical Fraud: This is when pharmacies can market drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, market drugs to doctors illegally, or charge illegal prices.

3. Federal Government Fraud: This is where contractors who sell goods and services to the federal government fail to meet contract obligations or fail to provide goods and services that meet federal laws and regulations.

4. Defense Contractor Fraud: Defense contractors who provide weapons systems, uniforms, supplies, vehicles, or other equipment are also required to comply with their contract and the laws. Those who don't are also in violations of the False Claims Act.

Why you should blow the whistle:

Whistleblowers who report violations of the False Claims Act end up saving lives by:

• Protecting Consumers by discouraging companies from selling defective and poor quality products that could cause harm;

• Protecting patients by discouraging companies from conducting medical fraud by selling defective medical products and preventing hospitals from performing unnecessary procedures;

• Protecting Soldiers by discouraging government contractors from selling faulty bulletproof vests and weaponry;

• Protecting the Environment by discouraging oil, timber, and mining companies from extracting resources from public lands unlawfully.

Perhaps the best reason to "blow the whistle" can be summed up in a quote by Reuben Guttman, expert whistleblower attorney and co-founder of Voices for Corporate Responsibility. Mr. Guttman recently surmised:

"You cannot enforce a law if there are no eyes to report the wrongdoing. When government agencies will never be able to afford enough inspectors to monitor compliance, workers and consumers need to be the eyes and ears of government. And, yes as 'whistleblowers.'"

Other Incentives to Blow the Whistle---Financial Reward:

The False Claims Act, also known as the Qui Tam law states that if you report a violation to the government and the government takes the case, you are eligible to receive a portion (usually about 15 to 25 percent) of any recovered damages. Some successful plaintiffs have recovered millions of dollars in False Claims cases. It is important to be the first source of information of the fraud because generally that is only the person who is entitled to a financial award. Additionally, the law protects you from harassment, demotion, retaliation, and wrongful termination for reporting fraud.

Williams Oinonen LLC is committed to working with whistleblowers throughout Georgia and beyond.

Good Georgia Personal Injury Lawyers Series on SUV Rollovers Continue:

NHTSA first addressed the problem of rollovers with the dynamic dolly rollover test in 1970. It was a voluntary standard, not mandated, and the auto industry used this to test vehicles for decades. In 1971, NHTSA "proposed a roof crush protection rule that would test both front corners of the roof on passenger vehicles." To summarize: both sides of a roof get crushed during the rollover: (1) the "near side" which is the term for the side of the roof which hits the ground first and (2) the "far side," which is the side of the ground that hits the ground last. During a rollover, both sides will end up very differently. The most serious injury to vehicle occupants occurs if they are sitting on the "far side" of the vehicle that makes contact with the ground last during the rollover. Thus, if you are under that "far side" of the roof during a rollover, you would likely end up suffering fatal injuries compared to if you were sitting on the "near side." Consequently, performing testing that only crushes one side of the roof--the "near side" that hits the ground first-- completely masks the true devastating results of the roof crush during a rollover.

Shockingly, however, General Motors Corporation (GM) and the Automobile Manufacturers Association (which later became the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers) have consistently and illogically argued that testing both sides of the roof was unnecessary because: 'in most cases roof structure damage is distributed to only one side of the roof in an actual rollover and that, because the roof is symmetrical it makes no difference which side of the roof is selected for testing.'" While it is true that roof crush damage is unevenly distributed to one side of the roof, it is the "far side" of the roof that receives the most damage that contains these car companies have not even been testing. It is the author's opinion that car companies sought to suppress the true results of a full and complete rollover test for fear that it would impact their bottom line in profits. Consequently, these auto manufacturers successfully pressured and lobbied for a one side roof crush test requirement, which NHTSA ended up adopting and which remains in effect today.

The problem with this test is that it was, and continues to be, insufficient. It does not fully test how a rollover affects both sides of a roof crushing down on each passenger. Consequently, because the auto industry persuaded NHTSA to forego the two sided test in lieu of the weaker one sided test, no improvements in roof strength were made. And this insufficient standard for roof crush tests is still in effect today. In 2008, a new rollover study showed that the federal government's roof strength standard does not protect vehicle occupants.

The Center for Auto Safety, the Center for Injury Research, and consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, released video showing crash-test dummies involved in traumatic impacts that would have been fatal or paralyzing to human occupants. The dummies suffered injuries "despite being restrained by seat belts and in vehicles that had receiving passing grades under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) existing roof strength standard." The comparison, "sponsored by the Santos Family Foundation, involved the 2007 Pontiac G6, 2006 Chrysler 300, 2007 Toyota Camry, 2007 Volkswagen Jetta, 2006 Honda Ridgeline and 2006 Hyundai Sonata, which were tested on the Jordan Rollover System (JRS), a device designed to dynamically test the rollover occupant protection performance of motor vehicles."

This test conducted a complete rollover showing the results of both the "near side" and the "far side" of the vehicle after roof crush. Consequently, these vehicles had roof crush damage that would have resulted in fatal injuries for their passengers, and yet, they were the same ones that performed well in NHTSA's one sided roof crush test. The study underscored "the need for NHTSA to adopt a similar dynamic test for passenger vehicles and light trucks, rather than the current static method of testing, which tests the strength of a stationary, upright vehicle's roof but disregards what happens to passengers during a rollover, as well as a rolling vehicle's ability to withstand crash forces."

As Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook once stated:
"NHTSA - complicit with Detroit auto companies - has wasted years considering a static standard it estimates will save only 13 to 44 lives out of 10,800 rollover deaths annually. It has refused to use dynamic testing for a comprehensive standard to save thousands of lives and reduce head injury and ejection. The Congress, the next administration, and/or the courts will be asked by consumers to right this wrong."