Atlanta Attorneys Profiles

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James (Jay) Sadd is a lawyer and partner of the firm Slappey & Sadd, LLC, Atlanta, Georgia.  With his law partner, Scott Slappey, Jay formed Slappey & Sadd, LLC in 1992 to represent families, workers, and consumers who have been critically injured or lost a loved one because of the negligence or willful conduct of others.  Slappey & Sadd, LLC represent people who have been seriously injured or disabled by car accidents, defective products, defective premises, and other acts of negligence.

• Jay was lead counsel for 37 injured victims of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing.
• Has successfully represented many other victims and families who have been mistreated by insurance companies, suffered catastrophic injuries or wrongful death.
• Jay is a frequent speaker, presenting on topics such as jury selection, insurance coverage, bad faith insurance practices, catastrophic injury, wrongful death, trucking litigation, and punitive damages.
• He has appeared as a guest and has been quoted by several national media sources, including NBC's Today Show, CNN World News, CBS television, ABC television, The New York Times, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and The National Law Journal.
• Former editor of Calendar Call, the official publication of the General Practice and Trial Section of the Georgia State Bar.
• Jay has also served as Chairman of the Legal Education Committee for the Young Lawyers Section of the Georgia Bar.
• Board member of Initiative 2000, which commemorated the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Member of the Communications and Outreach Committee of The Public Justice Foundation.
• Chairperson of the Education Committee for the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association.
• Jay has served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Director for the American Association of Adapted Sports Programs, Inc., and as an instructor for the Trial Techniques Program, Emory University School of Law.

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Jay practices in every court of Georgia, including the Georgia Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and all Georgia Superior and State Courts.  Jay is also admitted to the Federal Bar, and practices in the United States District Courts of Georgia, and the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. He is also licensed to practice in West Virginia, where he was born and raised.  Jay represents his clients from the settlement negotiation stage to trial to the appeal of a case, if necessary.

• Jay has received the Georgia Law-Related Education Consortium Award for outstanding service to the Consortium and the children of Georgia
• Certificate of Commendation from The West Virginia State Bar and The Pro Bono Referral Project for service to individual needy citizens of West Virginia.
• He is also a member of the East Tennessee State University Letter Winner's Club.

In addition to membership in the Million Dollar Advocates Forum, which is limited to trial lawyers who have achieved verdicts, awards or settlements in the amount of one million dollars or more, Jay has been lead counsel in cases in which his client has been awarded or recovered $10,250,000; $7,000,000; $5,600,000; $3,450,00; $2,600,000; $2,250,000; $2,100,000; $1,700,000; $1,600,000; $1,200,000; $1,000,000 and numerous other significant awards for compensation for losses suffered due to other's wrongdoing and/or negligence.

• Jay holds a Juris Doctorate from the Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University, 1987.
• He is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, Atlanta Bar Association, Atlanta Lawyers Club, Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, American Association for Justice, West Virginia Bar Association, Sandy Springs Bar Association, and the DeKalb Bar Association.
• Jay was named one of Georgia 's Super Lawyer 2009, as published in Atlanta magazine and Georgia Super Lawyers Magazine, March 2009.
• Named by Georgia Trend Magazine as among Georgia's "Legal Elite" for 2009.
• He holds the highest rating possible (AV) by Martindale-Hubble, a nationally recognized lawyer directory. The AV rating recognizes "the highest level of skill and integrity" in the profession.
• Jay lives in Atlanta, with his wife Laura and 2 children.

 

Scott Slappey is a partner in the firm of Slappey & Sadd, LLC, in Atlanta, Georgia.  He holds a B.S. from Georgia Southwestern College, 1983, and a Law Degree from the Walter F. George School of Law, Mercer University, 1986. Scott has been a member of the State Bar of Georgia since passing the bar examination in 1986.  Scott is also a member of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association, and the Workers’ Compensation Claimant’s Lawyer’s Association.

Scott’s main area of practice is in the representation of injured workers in workers’ compensation cases. His experience in the field of workers’ compensation began with the representation of employers and insurers in workers’ compensation cases.  However, since 1990, Scott’s work has been almost exclusively involved the representation of injured workers against their employers and insurance carriers.  Scott is a member of the Rules Committee for the Chairman’s Advisory Council of the State Board of Workers’ Compensation. This committee is charged with formulation of rules and regulations to implement Workers’ Compensation laws.  Scott also serves on the Executive Committee of the Workers’ Compensation Claimant’s Lawyers Association and has been a member of that organization since 1991.  He has also served as a member of the State Bar Communications Committee, the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association Headquarters Committee, and served for several years on the State Board of Workers’ Compensation’s Annual Seminar Committee.

Out of a concern for the environment, Scott serves on the Board of Directors for the Georgia Conservation Voters.  This is a committee dedicated to furthering the goal of protecting and conserving our environment by working on issues such as clean air, clean water, preservation of wildlife habitat, preservation of our natural resources, etc.  He also serves as the President Elect of that non-profit group.

Scott is a frequent speaker and has presented numerous articles for the continuing education of fellow attorneys on matters related to workers’ compensation.  Throughout his career, he has presented lectures on topics including exclusive remedy, cross-examination techniques, death benefits, how to achieve fair settlement for your client, the trial of a workers’ compensation case, average weekly wage, dissection of new laws, as well as lectures in many other subjects.

 

Richard E. Dolder is a partner who joined Slappey & Sadd to expand the firm's work on insurance coverage and insurance bad faith. Rich represents individuals and businesses who are improperly denied coverage or treated unfairly by their insurance companies. Some of his litigation successes include the following:

• Securing an $8.25 million settlement for a hotel that was improperly denied coverage by its property insurer..
  
• Negotiating a $1 million settlement for a small business that had to defend itself in court after its liability insurer denied coverage and refused to defend.
  
• Forcing a life insurer to pay benefits to the rightful beneficiary, after the insurer had already paid the benefits to the wrong beneficiary.
  
• Convincing a jury to award compensatory and punitive damages to a contractor after the contractor's insurer denied coverage and refused to defend.
  

Rich also counsels individuals and businesses in insurance issues not requiring litigation. Rich can help insureds in the following situations:

• Prompting insurance companies to make quicker decisions when they delay payment on valid claims while the insurance company conducts an endless "investigation."
  
• Standing by insureds when their insurance company insists on intrusive and repeated Examinations Under Oath.
  
• Providing honest and thoughtful evaluations of your claim when your insurance company denies coverage.
  

Before going to law school, Rich was an award-winning journalist. He graduated at the top of his class from the University of Florida College of Law in 1998. He moved to Atlanta, where he initially worked for a large law firm that specialized in representing certain underwriters in the insurance market at Lloyds of London. Switching sides, Rich later joined an international law firm where he represented Fortune 500 companies in coverage disputes with their insurance companies. He is president of the Georgia Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to free the wrongly convicted. He lives in Dunwoody with his wife, Kathy, and three children.

 

Ben O. Bengston - (Click Here for Truck Accidents or here Bus Accidents) is an associate in the firm Slappey & Sadd, LLC.  Ben attended Augusta State University where he graduated Magma Cume Laude in 1999 with a BA in Political Science with a concentration in International Studies.  In 2005 he graduated Cume Laude with a Juris Doctorate from Georgia State. While in law school Ben was active in Jessup International Moot Court Competition and was the President of the International Law Society. Ben has been a member of the State Bar of Georgia since passing the bar examination in 2005.

Prior to college and law school, Ben spent 4 years in the United States Army where he studied Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California.  After 2 years of study at the Defense Language Institute, Ben served as an Arabic Linguist in Army Intelligence at Fort Gordon Army Base.

After receiving his undergraduate degree, Ben worked as a disability advocate representing Social Security applicants in hearings before federal judges until he graduated from law school.  Ben’s six years of concentrating on medical issues enables him to give his clients a better understanding of the issues surrounding their injuries and how the injuries will affect their ability to work.

Upon graduating from Georgia State law school, Ben worked for an insurance defense firm where he represented insurers and employers in workers' compensation and liability cases.  This provided valuable insight to the strategies used by employers and insurance companies, which he now uses to help his clients with workers' compensation controversies.

In August 2008, Ben joined Slappey & Sadd, LLC where he now represents workers' compensation claimants and Social Security disability applicants.

 

Kurt Schulzke is an attorney and CPA of counsel with Slappey & Sadd, LLC.  He is a member of the Georgia State Bar and American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA).  He obtained his B.S. in Accounting and Master of Accountancy at Brigham Young University, in 1986.  Thereafter, he moved to Atlanta, working as an auditor and tax consultant for private and public companies at Price Waterhouse, until 1990.  He then joined the faculty at the Coles College of Business where he is an Associate Professor of Accounting and Fellow at the Coles College Internal Audit Center.

Kurt is licensed to practice in all Georgia State courts, including the Georgia Supreme Court, and in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. He earned his Juris Doctor, cum laude, at the Georgia State University College of Law, in 1998.  He is an alumnus of the Johannes-Kepler Universitaet-GSU Program on International Commercial Arbitration and the Harvard Program on Negotiation's Teaching Negotiation in the Organization.

Since 1998, as a member of the Georgia Bar, he has served a variety of clients in corporate, securities, tax and qui tam cases.  He is an Associate Member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE).  Kurt is lead co-author of World Accounting, a multi-volume Lexis-Nexis treatise on global financial reporting and has delivered seminars on financial reporting, corporate governance, corporate ethics and negotiation in major U.S., European and Latin American financial centers.  He has published in the American Business Law Journal, Journal of Forensic Accounting and the Journal of Executive Education.

Kurt has served family-owned businesses as a board member, CFO, and general counsel. He blogs on law and financial
reporting at The Schulzke Brief.