Increasingly, a cause of automobile accidents is a driver’s use of a cellphone. While this has been a major problem for many years, the Georgia legislature recently attempted to minimize a driver’s use of a cellphone by passing a new law – O.C.G.A. § 40-6-241.
A common, but mistaken, belief is that the investigation of a serious wreck will be adequately handled by the police or their insurer. However, police resources are often stretched very thin. Even when police have sufficient time and resources to investigate an accident, they may not have adequate training to identify subtle evidence or make complex calculations to figure out what happened.
Until recently, the question of when an insurer’s duty to settle arose under Georgia law was up for debate. See U.S. Kingsley v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 353 F.Supp.2d 1242, 1249 (N. D. Ga. Jan. 31, 2005) (recognizing that Georgia law “is unsettled whether a plaintiff must make a policy-limits demand for an insurer to be held liable for a tortious refusal to settle.”). A recent decision from the Georgia Supreme Court resolved much of that uncertainty.
In Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, 139 S. Ct. 1029, 203 L. Ed. 2d 390 (2019) the United States Supreme Court held that a business, including a law firm, engaged in the enforcement of a security interest through nonjudicial foreclosure proceedings was not a “debt collector” for nearly all purposes under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (“FDCPA”) (15 U.S.C. § 1692 et seq.)
