Special Treatment
for Emergency Room Doctors in Georgia -
How lobbyist money buys
legislation from the current majority party in the Georgia
legislature.
Craig Hardegree, Esq.
In Georgia, the mere fact
that someone causes you damage or injures you, does not
necessarily mean than you have a claim against that
person. You must first determine what level of care the
other person owed to you before you determine whether or
not he or she committed negligence against you by
breaching that level of care. Under negligence law, there
are three levels of care: slight care, ordinary care and
extraordinary care. The level of care which is owed to
you in a particular situation depends on how the other
person is legally categorized.
As the term might imply,
most people with whom you interact owes to you a duty of
“ordinary care” which is defined as the level of care
“exercise by ordinarily prudent persons under the same or
similar circumstances.” This degree of care applies to
other drivers who are on the road with you, property
owners and many other categories of people.
“Extraordinary care” is defined as the “extreme care and
caution which very prudent and thoughtful persons exercise
under the same or similar circumstances.” This heightened
degree of care is usually owed to passengers by the owners
and operators of buses, ambulances and elevators.
“Slight care” is defined
by the Georgia code as “that care which every man of
common sense, however inattentive he may be,
exercises under the same or similar circumstances.” Case
law in Georgia has gone further to say the slight care is
“such care as careless and inattentive persons
would usually exercise.”
Previously,
emergency room physicians and emergency room staff were
required to exercise ordinary care when dealing with
patients. Responding to what the insurance companies had
argued were too many lawsuits arising from emergency room
treatment, the legislature dropped the level of care
required of emergency room physicians and staff to that of
“slight care.” This means that the person mopping the
floor at the entrance to the emergency room now owes you a
higher degree of care than does the emergency room
physician. While the emergency room physician and staff
are no longer responsible for damages or injuries to a
patient which result from carelessness or inattentiveness,
the person mopping the floor is still responsible for
damages caused if he is careless in the manner in which he
mops the floor.
If you have been
involved in a car wreck, auto accident, truck collision, motor
vehicle crash or any other personal injury case and you live in
the cities of
Carrollton, Bremen, Bowdon, Villa Rica, Temple, Hiram, Dallas,
Douglasville or in Carroll County or Douglas County or in the
Counties of
Haralson, Paulding or Clayton, please
contact
our Douglasville Personal Injury Law Center for a free consultation
with a personal injury lawyer.
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