Have you been injured in Augusta? Don’t sign anything yet.

AFTER THE ACCIDENT

The calls started before you got home from the hospital

You’re sore, your car is somewhere you didn’t put it, and someone from an insurance company has already left a voicemail. They sound friendly. They want a quick recorded statement and a signature on a form, and they’d like to get it done today. Meanwhile you’re trying to work out how you’ll pay for a scan, and whether you can get back to your job on Monday. That’s a lot to carry at once, and none of it is your fault.

Still dealing with the hospital side of it? Our guide to where crash patients are taken around Augusta covers which emergency rooms ambulances use and why those first records matter to your claim.

Our Augusta office is downtown on 10th Street, minutes from the courthouse where your case would be heard. When you call, you’ll speak to someone local. No phone tree, and no waiting a week for a callback. Ken Nugent built the firm around one idea: that the person who takes your case ought to know your roads, your courts, and your community.

Across Georgia we’ve recovered more than $5 billion for over 300,000 clients in 45 years, from nine offices. You pay nothing up front, and there’s zero fee unless we win your case.

Don’t sign anything from the insurance company before speaking with an attorney. Their first offer is almost never their best.

What we handle at the Augusta office

The Augusta office handles motor vehicle accidents, catastrophic injury and wrongful death, and premises liability cases across Richmond County. Most cases that come through this office start with a crash on I-20, the Bobby Jones Expressway, Gordon Highway, or Washington Road. Free consultation, available 24 hours a day, with zero fee unless we win.

1. Motor Vehicle Accidents: car, truck, motorcycle, rideshare, pedestrian and bicycle collisions. I-20 runs Atlanta to Columbia through Augusta, and interstate trucking cases are a steady part of the work here.
2. Catastrophic Injury & Wrongful Death: traumatic brain injury, spinal cord damage, and the loss of someone you love. These cases often depend on treating doctors and life care planners to show what the years ahead will cost, and we involve them early.
3. Premises Liability: falls in stores, parking lots, and apartment complexes, where a property owner didn’t fix something they knew about.

Not sure which one fits what happened to you? Call and we’ll tell you, even if the answer is that you don’t need a lawyer.

Who you’ll be working with

Our Augusta attorneys work out of the office on 10th Street. You’ll be given a specific attorney and a specific case manager when you call, and you can reach both of them directly throughout your case rather than going through a call center.

• Marcus Roberts, Attorney at Law. His practice centers on people hurt in Georgia car accidents. Before joining the Augusta office of Kenneth S. Nugent, P.C., he spent six and a half years as an Assistant Public Defender in the Dougherty Judicial Circuit, which is a lot of time in front of juries on behalf of people who couldn’t pay for a lawyer.
• Jenna Matson, Attorney at Law. Born and raised in Columbus, Georgia. University of Mississippi, B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations, 2005. Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law, J.D. 2008.

Hear it from your Augusta neighbors

These are people who called our Augusta office after a wreck. They can tell you what it was like better than we can.

How long do you have to file a claim in Augusta?

Most Georgia injury claims must be filed within two years. But if a government is responsible, you may need to send a written notice much sooner, sometimes within six months. Augusta and Richmond County are a single consolidated government, which makes that deadline harder to pin down than it looks, and the clock starts the day of the crash.

Most people know there’s a two-year deadline for injury claims in Georgia. Far fewer know that if a government caused the harm, such as a city truck, a county vehicle or a road that wasn’t maintained, you have to send a formal written notice first, and that deadline can be a quarter as long.

That notice is called an ante litem notice. It’s Latin for “before the lawsuit,” and it means exactly that: a letter you have to send to the government before you’re allowed to sue them. Send it late, and you may lose the right to recover anything from that government, however badly you were hurt.

Augusta consolidated with Richmond County in the 1990s. In most Georgia counties you can ask a simple question, city or county, and get a clear answer: six months or twelve. Here the entity you’re claiming against is both at once, and Georgia sets two different deadlines depending on which one it counts as.

Who caused the harm	Deadline to send notice	Georgia law
Augusta-Richmond County consolidated government	6 months (assume the shorter)	O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5 / § 36-11-1
The cities of Hephzibah or Blythe	6 months	O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5
The State of Georgia, GDOT, or Augusta University	12 months	O.C.G.A. § 50-21-26
A private driver or business	2 years to file suit	O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33

Our practical advice is the same one we’d give a family member: assume six months. If the shorter deadline turns out to apply and you sent notice at eight months, the claim may already be lost, and that is very hard to fix. If the longer one applies and you sent notice at five, you’ve lost nothing. We walk through which Augusta-Richmond County deadline applies to your claim on its own page.

Two Augusta wrinkles worth knowing. Hephzibah and Blythe are still their own cities. Consolidation didn’t absorb them, so a claim against either goes to that city on its own clock. And a crash on Fort Gordon is not a Georgia claim at all. Federal installations run under federal law, with their own procedure and their own deadline. If your crash happened on post, tell us early, because that route looks nothing like the one above. Our guide to injury claims on or near Fort Gordon explains how it works.

Cross into Columbia County, where Evans and Martinez sit, and the government you deal with changes again. Columbia County has only two cities, so most claims against local government there are county claims. We keep Columbia County’s crash report, court and deadline rules on their own page.

If a government vehicle or a road hazard was involved in your crash, call us the same week if you can. We aren’t trying to rush you. Six months simply moves faster than it sounds when you’re in physical therapy.

Which court hears your case, and who has your crash report?

Richmond County injury cases are filed in State Court or Superior Court, part of the Augusta Judicial Circuit. Your crash report is held by whichever agency responded, and in Augusta that is usually the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office, because the consolidated government has no separate city police department.

This surprises people who have moved here. In most Georgia cities, a crash inside city limits means a city police department. Augusta doesn’t have one. When the city and county consolidated, law enforcement went to the Sheriff, so the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office patrols downtown Augusta and the rural edges of the county alike. Asking for “Augusta Police” wastes days.

Where the crash happened	Who has your report
Anywhere in Augusta-Richmond County	Richmond County Sheriff’s Office
Inside Hephzibah or Blythe	That city’s police department
I-20, I-520 and state routes	Georgia State Patrol
On Fort Gordon	Military police (federal process)

Our walkthrough on how to get an Augusta or Richmond County crash report covers each agency, what it costs and what to do if the wrong office has your report.

You can request it yourself, and you should if you’re able. But if you’d rather not chase it, tell us where the crash happened and we’ll pull it. It matters. The officer’s diagram, the citation, and the listed witnesses often decide how an insurance company values your claim before anyone talks about a settlement.