College Park
Personal Injury Lawyer

College Park sits in both Fulton and Clayton counties, immediately south of Atlanta’s boundary. The western portion of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, including the domestic terminal, lies inside the city’s eastern boundaries.

So a College Park address does not tell you whose courts are involved. Where in the city something happened is a real question with a real answer, and it is one of the first we ask.

Crowds, arrivals and departures

The Georgia International Convention Center is the state’s second largest and the only convention centre in the country connected directly to a major airport, by the ATL SkyTrain. Gateway Center Arena seats 5,000, opened in November 2019, and is home to the Atlanta Dream and the College Park Skyhawks. College Park Station is on MARTA’s Gold and Red lines.

Venues, a rail station and an airport terminal in the same few square miles put pedestrians, rideshare pick-ups, shuttles and travellers with luggage into the same space as through traffic on I-85, I-285, US 29 and SR 14. SR 279 — Old National Highway — ends at US 29 and SR 14 here.

A city with a great deal of built history

College Park has the fourth largest urban historic district in Georgia, with 867 structures on the Historic Register, and it is home to Woodward Academy, the largest independent school in the continental United States. Older residential streets and school traffic are a different kind of road from an interstate ramp, and a claim arising on one of them is proved differently — with neighbours, with sight lines, and with what the street was built to do.

What a county line changes in practice

Two counties means two sets of courts. A Georgia Superior Court is a court of general jurisdiction with exclusive jurisdiction over felony jury trials, divorce, equity and title to land. A State Court is a county-level court hearing misdemeanours including traffic and civil actions outside that exclusive list — Fulton County’s State Court describes itself as trying serious personal injury cases. Either court can hear an auto negligence case, and ordinary injury suits are commonly filed in State Court where one exists.

Which courthouse, which clerk and which judge you end up in front of is settled by the venue analysis above, which is why it happens at the beginning rather than the end. The deadline does not move either way: two years to file a personal injury suit, four years for a spouse’s loss of consortium claim (O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33).