Have you been injured in Atlanta? 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.

Our Atlanta office is on Peachtree Street in Midtown, and it covers the metro — Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Clayton. When you call, you’ll speak to someone local. Not a queue, not a callback in a week. 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 you pay nothing at all until 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 Atlanta office

The Atlanta office handles motor vehicle accidents, premises liability, and catastrophic injury and wrongful death cases across Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Clayton counties. Most cases that come through this office start with a crash on the Downtown Connector, I-285, I-20 or Cobb Parkway. Free consultation, available 24 hours a day, with no fee until we win.

1. Motor Vehicle Accidents — car, truck, motorcycle, rideshare, pedestrian and bicycle collisions. Metro Atlanta has the densest rideshare and delivery traffic in the state, and those cases bring commercial insurance policies most drivers never see.
2. Premises Liability — falls and assaults in stores, hotels, parking decks, apartment complexes and event venues, where an owner didn’t fix or secure something they knew about.
3. Catastrophic Injury & Wrongful Death — traumatic brain injury, spinal cord damage, and the loss of someone you love. These cases need medical experts and life care planning, and we bring them in early.

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 Atlanta attorneys work out of the Peachtree Street office in Midtown and appear in courts across the metro. 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.

• Christopher Adams — Attorney at Law.
• Kumi Rizvi — Attorney at Law
• Hal Higgins — Attorney at Law

First question: which county were you actually in?

Almost everything about your claim depends on where the wreck happened — which county, and whether you were inside a city. In metro Atlanta that is genuinely hard to know. People say “Atlanta” and mean four different counties. The fastest way to work it out is to think about what was nearby.

Take the Big Chicken. Everyone in this city knows it, everyone gives directions by it, and plenty of people would tell you it’s in Atlanta. It isn’t. It stands on Cobb Parkway in Marietta, Cobb County — a different county, different courts, different police department, and a different set of deadlines from a wreck three miles down the road in Fulton.

Here’s a quick way to place yourself:

If it happened near…	You were in
The Big Chicken · Truist Park and The Battery · Marietta Square · Cumberland Mall · Six Flags Over Georgia · Kennesaw Mountain	Cobb County
Mercedes-Benz Stadium · State Farm Arena · Centennial Olympic Park · Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza · Atlantic Station · Piedmont Park · Ponce City Market	Fulton County
Stone Mountain Park · Emory University and the CDC · Decatur Square · Perimeter Mall · Northlake · East Atlanta Village	DeKalb County
Southlake Mall · Jonesboro · Forest Park · Riverdale	Clayton County
Hartsfield-Jackson Airport	Fulton and Clayton — the airport sits in both
Gwinnett Place · Sugarloaf · Suwanee · Johns Creek	Gwinnett — our Duluth office handles those

One that surprises nearly everyone: Emory University is inside the City of Atlanta but sits in DeKalb County. Emory was annexed by the city in 2018, so an address there reads “Atlanta” — while the courthouse, the county government and the police are all DeKalb’s. If your crash was anywhere on the east side, don’t assume the address tells you the county.

If you’re not sure, don’t guess. Tell us the nearest intersection or the closest landmark you remember and we’ll work it out — it takes us a minute and it decides where your case is filed.

How long do you have to file a claim in metro Atlanta?

Most Georgia injury claims must be filed within two years. But if a city, county, or state agency is responsible, you must send a written notice long before that — as little as six months. Which deadline applies depends on which government was at fault, and in metro Atlanta that changes from one side of a street to the other.

Most people know there’s a two-year deadline for injury claims in Georgia. Far fewer know that if a government caused the harm — a city truck, a county vehicle, 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 the claim is over regardless of how badly you were hurt.

Who caused the harm	Deadline to send notice	Georgia law
A city — Atlanta, Marietta, Decatur, Sandy Springs, Smyrna, Roswell, Dunwoody, Brookhaven, East Point, College Park and the rest	6 months	O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5
A county — Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb or Clayton	12 months	O.C.G.A. § 36-11-1
The State of Georgia, GDOT, or MARTA	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

Now the part that trips people up, and it is the opposite answer depending on where you were.

In Fulton, you are almost always inside a city. Fulton spent two decades incorporating new ones, and by 2017 there was essentially no unincorporated county left. So in Fulton the six-month clock is the normal case, not the exception.

In Cobb and DeKalb, large areas are unincorporated. You can live at a Marietta or Decatur mailing address and never have been inside those city limits. There, a claim against the county runs on twelve months instead of six — and the mailing address on your driver’s licence tells you nothing about it.

Same metro, same drive to work, opposite answers. That is why we ask where the wreck happened before we ask almost anything else.

If a government vehicle or a road hazard was involved in your crash, call us the same week if you can. Not because we want to rush you — because six months moves faster than it sounds when you’re in physical therapy.

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

Each metro county files its own cases and keeps its own records. Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb and Clayton all have both a State Court and a Superior Court, and most injury cases go to State Court. Your crash report sits with whichever agency responded, which again depends on which county and which city you were in.

The difference between the two courts is practical: State Court handles civil cases like personal injury, while Superior Court handles those plus felonies, divorces and land disputes. State Court generally moves faster. But a Cobb case is filed in Cobb, not Fulton — the courthouse follows the crash, not your address.

County	Where your case is filed	Who likely has your report
Fulton	State or Superior Court of Fulton County	Atlanta PD, or the city’s own department in Sandy Springs, Roswell, Alpharetta, East Point
DeKalb	State or Superior Court of DeKalb County	DeKalb County PD, or Decatur, Dunwoody, Brookhaven, Chamblee, Tucker
Cobb	State or Superior Court of Cobb County	Cobb County PD, or Marietta, Smyrna, Kennesaw, Acworth, Austell
Clayton	State or Superior Court of Clayton County	Clayton County PD, or Jonesboro, Forest Park, Morrow, Riverdale
Any of them	—	Georgia State Patrol on I-285, I-75, I-85, I-20 and state routes

One more agency worth knowing about. MARTA has its own police force, with its own records system — so a crash involving a MARTA bus, or a fall in a station, doesn’t go through Atlanta Police at all. MARTA is also a state-created authority rather than a city department, which puts a claim against it on the twelve-month clock instead of the six.

You can request the report yourself, and you should if you’re able. But if you’d rather not chase four different agencies to find out which one has 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.