Have you been injured in Macon? 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 Macon office is downtown on Mulberry Street, minutes from the courthouse where your case would be heard. 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 Macon office

The Macon office handles motor vehicle accidents, catastrophic injury and wrongful death, and premises liability cases across Bibb County. Most cases that come through this office start with a crash on I-75, I-16, Eisenhower Parkway, or the interchange where the two interstates meet. 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. Macon sits where I-75 and I-16 cross, which puts an enormous volume of freight through the middle of the county. Truck cases are a large 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 need medical experts and life care planning, and we bring them in 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 Macon team works out of the office on Mulberry 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.

• Jason Downey — Attorney at Law. More than two decades of personal injury trial experience across Georgia. He previously worked in the Macon office of a national plaintiff’s firm, and before that was in-house counsel for an insurance company — so he has spent years on the side that decides what a claim is worth, and knows how those decisions actually get made.

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

Most Georgia injury claims must be filed within two years. But if a government is responsible, you must send a written notice long before that — as little as six months. Macon and Bibb County merged into one government in 2014, 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 — 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.

Macon’s merger is recent — it happened in 2014, and plenty of people here still think of the city and the county as two separate things, because for most of their lives they were. They aren’t any more. There is one government now, and Georgia law sets one notice deadline for cities and a different one for counties. Macon-Bibb is legally both at once.

Who caused the harm	Deadline to send notice	Georgia law
Macon-Bibb County government	6 months (assume the shorter)	O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5 / § 36-11-1
The State of Georgia or GDOT	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 is gone and no argument fixes it. If the longer one applies and you sent notice at five, you’ve lost nothing.

One more thing that catches people in Macon: I-75 and I-16 are state routes, maintained by the Georgia Department of Transportation, not by the county. If a road condition on either interstate played a part in your crash — signage, a work zone, a barrier — that is a claim against the State, on a different clock and a different statute from a claim against Macon-Bibb. Where you were standing changes who you write to.

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?

Bibb County injury cases are filed in State Court or Superior Court, part of the Macon Judicial Circuit. Your crash report is held by whichever agency responded: the Macon-Bibb County Sheriff’s Office almost everywhere in the county, and the Georgia State Patrol on I-75, I-16 and other state routes.

Here is the part that trips people up. When Macon and Bibb County merged, the Macon Police Department was folded into the Sheriff’s Office. There is no city police department any more. People who remember calling Macon PD, or who search for it online, end up chasing an agency that no longer exists — and a records request sent to the wrong place can cost you weeks you don’t have.

Where the crash happened	Who has your report
Anywhere in Macon-Bibb County	Macon-Bibb County Sheriff’s Office
I-75, I-16 and state routes	Georgia State Patrol
On a college or university campus	That institution’s campus police

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.