Archive for October, 2009
The manufacturer of the most common brand of electroshock gun, Taser International, issued a warning last week for officers to stop stunning people in the chest. The company warns that shooting someone in the chest may cause an “adverse cardiac event.”
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has the story.
The warning came in the form of a training bulletin to all law enforcement officers that carry the company’s stun guns. Instead of shooting someone in the chest, face or neck, ...
Continue Reading
On Friday, a Watkinsville, Georgia physician assistant, Ulys Randall Riner, pleaded guilty in Newton County to running a Ponzi scheme in which he stole more than $4.5 million from investors. Prosecutors believe that Riner stole from more than 20 Georgians, and that most of the victims were his friends.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has the story.
Riner was arrested in 2006 for using a strategy called “factoring” in which he sold fraudulent promissory notes to investors. Specifically, Riner would ...
Continue Reading
On Monday, the Supreme Court of Georgia made it easier for insurance customers to sue their insurance companies when the company has acted in bad faith during settlement negotiations. The Court ruled that an insurer that offers the full amount of its policy in a settlement involving multiple insurers is not automatically immunized from a bad faith claim, because an insurer must still act reasonably in regards to any conditions it attaches to the offer.
A bad faith settlement claim ...
Continue Reading
DeKalb County, Georgia was facing a lawsuit by a homeless man who complained that a police officer kicked him out of the county and then beat him. The county settled the case last week for $165,000.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has the story.
The incident happened five years ago when Robert Williams was found sleeping behind a restaurant on Halloween by Officer Ronald Jones. Williams asked to be arrested in order to find warmth and food, but instead, the ...
Continue Reading
The Georgia Supreme Court heard arguments this week about whether to uphold a Georgia law which requires a plaintiff to establish gross negligence in order to prove medical malpractice in emergency rooms.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution has the story.
Georgia recently passed a wave of "tort reform" laws aimed at making it harder to sue doctors. One such law raised the level of culpability that an injured emergency room patient must prove to hold a doctor liable from negligence to ...
Continue Reading
