Jim Matthews

Jim handles a wide range of plaintiffs’ personal injury cases. He focuses his practice on product defects, medical negligence, and trucking accidents.

Jim is from Cordele, Georgia, where he attended Crisp County High School before attending Georgia Southern University on a baseball scholarship. After being drafted by the Atlanta Braves, Jim played professionally in the minor leagues for a short while before ultimately following a path toward his legal career. He graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1983.

With more than 40 years of legal experience, Jim has earned a reputation as a seasoned and successful trial lawyer. In the early years of his career, he defended hundreds of personal injury cases. He defended hospitals and physicians, trucking companies, and manufacturers of a wide range of products, including tobacco and asbestos products. He also worked on behalf of companies in business litigation matters. Jim eventually decided to switch sides and focus on the representation of plaintiffs after a successful trial in which he represented a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in a personal injury case. At Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley, P.C., he now handles a wide variety of personal injury and wrongful death cases brought by injured victims and their families, as well as plaintiff business litigation. Most of Jim’s clients are referred to him by other attorneys and former clients he has helped in the past.

Jim is actively involved in the pelvic mesh and hernia mesh litigation. He is co-lead counsel in the C.R. Bard hernia mesh consolidated litigation in Rhode Island, was lead counsel in the Atrium C-Qur hernia mesh litigation in state court in New Hampshire, and was state court liaison to the New Hampshire federal court C-Qur multi-district litigation.

He had significant roles in the discovery, deposition, and pre-trial stages of the Ethicon/Johnson & Johnson Physiomesh hernia mesh multidistrict litigation in Atlanta (which was settled before trial) and in all stages, including trial, in the C.R. Bard pelvic mesh MDL in federal court in Charleston, West Virginia (which settled after a win for his client in the first bellwether trial).

Following many successful medical malpractice cases, Jim was chosen to co-author the chapter on Legal Issues in a highly respected medical textbook, Clinical Anesthesiology Practice.