Atlanta Personal Injury Lawyer
Have you been badly injured or lost someone you loved in an auto accident? On average, 2500 people are injured in Georgia car wrecks each week.
You may not be alone, but you do need experienced legal help. For over 20 years, Lee Wallace has been helping people who have been in serious motor vehicle accidents in Atlanta, the Atlanta metro area, and throughout Georgia. She puts her Harvard Law degree to work for you, taking on the insurance company so that you don’t have to.
Compensation for the Families of Fatal Car Crash Victims
Sadly, an average of five people die every day in traffic accidents on Georgia’s highways. But when someone you love has been killed, the numbers don’t matter. What does matter is finding someone qualified to handle the lawsuit you are now forced to bring, so that you can focus on helping your family get through the grief.
When you hire someone to handle a lawsuit so important to you, you need a lawyer who is respected by her peers. In polling of lawyers statewide, Lee Wallace has been voted a Georgia SuperLawyer every year since the poll began ten years ago. She also has been named one of the state’s Top 100 Trial Lawyers and Top 50 Women SuperLawyers.
Resources for People who Have Been in Auto Wrecks
In Crash Analysis, Statistics & Information, the Georgia Department of Transportation explains that at some point in their lifetimes most Georgians will be affected by a car wreck: “Try to think of anyone that you know that hasn’t been affected by a car crash. More than likely everyone has had some sort of loss. Either they have been in a crash themselves or someone close to them has been in a crash.”
To help, our law firm has put together answers to some commonly asked questions about car wrecks in Georgia:
1) What Are My Car Accident Damages?
The damages you can recover vary from state to state. In Georgia, you may be entitled to recover medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, and loss of consortium to cover your spouse’s damages. If you have received payments from medical insurance, disability insurance, or Medicare/Medicaid, these entities may ask you to reimburse them for the money they paid out on your behalf. Often these companies are not entitled to full reimbursement, and sometimes they are not entitled to reimbursement at all. Contact Lee Wallace to learn more.
2) How Do I Get the Insurance Company to Pay What My Car Is Worth?
If the accident totaled your car, the insurance company may offer you substantially less than the car was worth. The best way to get a fair and full value for your car is to arm yourself with facts and statistics about how much your car would have been worth had it not been for the wreck.
The Internet has been a tremendous boon for people battling insurance companies for payment for their vehicles. You can find out what your car would have been worth had it not been for the wreck, and use that information as you talk to the insurance company.
Two great sites to use are Kelley Blue Book and Edmunds. You can look up the trade-in value of your present car, find out what you could get if you sold your (unwrecked) vehicle to a private party, and see suggested retail values for most makes and models of cars.
3) How Common Are Deaths in Car Accidents?
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, car wrecks are the leading cause of death for Americans 1 to 34 years old. In the year 2000 alone, 41,821 people died in crashes.
4) Where Are Car Wrecks Most Likely to Occur in Georgia?
According to a January 2008 publication of the Georgia Department of Transportation, you are more likely to be in a car wreck in the metro Atlanta counties than just about anywhere else in Georgia. (Here’s an unexpected fact – although most people would consider Gwinnett to be in the Metro area, it is not one of the counties in which you are more likely to be in a car wreck.) The heavy traffic congestion in these areas means pretty much everybody is involved in a car wreck at some point.
Some of the counties that the DOT defines as “metro Atlanta” are not at all controversial – pretty much anyone would agree that Cobb, Cherokee, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties are metro Atlanta. Most people would agree that a second tier of counties should be considered metro Atlanta, although some would disagree that Fayette, Clayton, Henry and Rockdale counties are close enough to downtown to be grouped with the metro area. But the residents of four counties would probably be surprised to learn that the Georgia DOT counts them as “metro” counties: Forsyth and Hall Counties, both located to the north of the city, White County, which is north of even those two, and Spalding County, which is to Atlanta’s south.
5) How Safe Is My Car?
Some cars do better than others in crashes. How can you find out whether your car is one of the safer ones? Check out these websites:
- Car crash tests, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
- Injury, collision and theft losses by make and model, 1999-2001 models, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
- Crash test results and ratings from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
- Recalls of cars and motor vehicles
- New and used vehicles for sale, as well as reviews and research about car models
* Each case is different, and success in one case does not guarantee success in another.