Trio of Georgia Counties

Introduction

Governor Kemp came through with his promise, and the legislature delivered a landmark package of legal reform to address some of the longstanding issues plaguing the state’s abusive civil justice environ-ment. In April, Governor Kemp signed S.B. 68 and S.B. 69 into law. These measures should have a positive impact but the onus is now on the courts across the state to follow them and implement them in their cases.

The ATRF is closely watching a trio of Georgia county courts that have been particularly problematic in recent years. Judges in Gwinnett, Fulton and Cobb counties must restore fairness and level the playing fields to ensure plaintiffs’ lawyers aren’t exploiting the system for their own financial benefit.

2025 Landmark Reforms

S.B. 68

S.B. 68 puts into effect immediately reforms addressing problematic “phantom” damage awards and “jury anchoring” as well as empowering juries with critical evidence regarding seat belt use in cases involving vehicle crashes.

“Phantom” damages are awards based on inflated medical bill amounts or “chargemaster” rates that neither a patient nor an insurer pays. Georgia courts often base awards on these list prices rather than real payments. Jury anchoring is a practice in which lawyers suggest an unreasonably large award, typically for a pain and suffering award, which becomes an “anchor” point in jurors’ minds. Both are driving factors behind the surge in nuclear verdicts® in the state highlighted in previous reports.

This comprehensive law also addresses the expansion of premises liability in Georgia that has left businesses responsible for criminal acts committed by third parties on or near their property — even if they had no way to predict or prevent such acts. These practices lead to higher litigation costs across the board and disproportionately impacted businesses operating in dangerous neighborhoods.

The 2025 law also includes several changes to court procedures that are intended to increase the fairness of civil trials. These include providing a more efficient process for seeking dismissal of a claim, having juries decide liability separately from damages, and allowing juries to consider whether a plaintiff was wearing a seatbelt when deciding auto accident cases.

S.B. 69

S.B. 69 addresses third-party litigation financing and will go into effect January 1, 2026. The legislation is a major step toward restoring transparency and integrity in Georgia’s courts. Unbound lawsuit lending leads to unreasonable settlement demands, and lengthier, more costly litigation. In addition, Georgia previously did not require companies that provide lawsuit loans, or who otherwise invest in litigation to disclose their involvement. Lack of funding transparency permits predatory financing companies or lenders who act unethically to operate without any regulatory oversight. The 2025 law requires litigation funders to register with the Department of Banking and Finances, prohibits funders from controlling litigation and engaging in other unethical practices, limits how much a funder can take of a plaintiffs’ recovery, and subjects such arrangements to disclosure through the discovery process, among other safeguards.

Trio of Problematic Counties

Following enactment of these reforms, ATRF is closely monitoring courts in Cobb, Fulton, and Gwinnett Counties to ensure judges are making measurable progress toward restoring fairness and balance in their civil justice systems. These jurisdictions have historically produced nuclear verdicts and liability-expanding rulings that pose ongoing concerns for the state. In 2025, we saw more of the same.

Cobb County

$2 BILLION VERDICT ON APPEAL

In March 2025, a Cobb County jury ordered Bayer, the parent company of Monsanto, to pay nearly $2.1 billion to a man alleging his cancer was caused by exposure to Roundup, Monsanto’s widely used weed killer. The award included $65 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages — one of the largest verdicts in a Roundup-related case to date.

On April 25, Bayer moved for a new trial, citing significant judicial errors, including:

• Exclusion of Key Evidence of Alternate Exposures – Monsanto was barred from introducing evidence that the plaintiff never actually used Roundup, including Home Depot receipts showing he purchased a different herbicide and testimony from his ex-wife that she never saw him use The company argued this exclusion allowed the plaintiff to testify falsely that he used no other herbicides, enabling his expert to claim Monsanto’s product was the sole cause of his cancer.
• One-Sided Use of Legal and Scientific Authority – The court allowed the plaintiff to rely on foreign decisions and Ninth Circuit case law but barred Monsanto from introducing similar evidence. Monsanto also was prohibited from presenting evidence of international public health agencies’ findings that glyphosate is not carcinogenic, even though the plaintiff’s case relied heavily on the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) contrary
• Unconstitutional and Excessive Punitive Damages – Monsanto argued the $2 billion punitive award is unconstitutional because it is cumulative of approximately $100 million it has already paid for the same conduct and punishes lawful out-of-state The company also emphasized the disproportionate ratio between damages and actual economic loss: the $65 million compensatory award is roughly 145 times the plaintiff’s stipulated medical bills of $450,000, while punitive dam-ages are more than 30 times the compensatory amount. Monsanto contends that plaintiff’s counsel improperly anchored the jury to high dollar figures, suggested damages based on the company’s net worth, and referenced worldwide sales figures unrelated to the claims, in violation of Georgia law designed to prevent bias against large corporations.

COURT TO DECIDE WHETHER TO APPLY STATUTORY LIMIT ON NONECONOMIC DAMAGES

In a July 1 opinion, the Georgia Appeals Court held that the Cobb County court erred in relying on a 2010 Georgia Supreme Court decision (Nestlehutt) to deny a defendant’s request to reduce a damages award to $350,000 — the maximum amount set by Georgia law for noneconomic damages in medical malpractice actions. Nestlehutt, a 2010 decision, struck down this limit as violating a plaintiff’s right to a jury trial, but that ruling was recently narrowed by the state’s highest court in Medical Center of Central Georgia v. Turner.

In Turner, the court held that Nestlehutt applies only to medical liability claims and does not address the constitutionality of the limit when applied to wrongful death claims and damages for the “full value of the life” available in such statutory actions. In light of this precedent, the Appeals Court remanded the case for the trial court to determine whether the statutory limit should apply.

Fulton County

GEORGIA SUPREME COURT TO REVIEW EXPANSIVE PREMISES LIABILITY RULING

The Georgia Supreme Court has agreed to review a Fulton County wrongful death verdict that awarded $32.5 million to the parents of a college student who tragically died in a single-vehicle car accident. The 21-year-old college student was killed when he struck an ornamental planter off the side of the road, which the family’s attorney suggested might have occurred to avoid a deer. The City of Milton was found to have maintained a “dangerous public nuisance” by leaving the planter in place. The planter was over 6 feet from the road – not in the right-of-way – and had been located there for decades without incident.

The Court will consider whether the “design and placement of objects” on a roadway shoulder is a ministerial duty reserved to a municipality or whether this is a governmental function. The Court also will decide whether planters placed on roadway shoulders are defects in public roads and will seek to clarify what the plaintiff’s burden of proof is in establishing whether the municipality violated its “ministerial duty” and whether the city is subject to immunity.

About 60 Georgia cities and other organizations have joined Milton in urging the Georgia Supreme Court to overturn the award due to severe consequences that this expansive liability would have for every city in the state. They note that liability exposure recognized in that case could easily apply to numerous other fixed objects on the shoulder of the road, such as utility poles, traffic control boxes and monuments, and benches. Meanwhile, post-judgment interest in Georgia accumulates at a rate of 11%, making Milton’s liability rise by about $10,000 per day while it appeals. Since the city’s insurance only covers $2 million of exposure, the city and taxpayers are reportedly on the hook for the remainder of the award.

The Georgia Supreme Court heard oral arguments in October 2025 and a decision is expected in spring of 2026.

GEORGIA APPELLATE COURT UPHOLDS LARGEST EMERGENCY ROOM MALPRACTICE VERDICT IN STATE’S HISTORY

In March 2025, the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld a $75 million verdict against an emergency physician and radiologist, stemming from their failure to promptly diagnose a patient with a stroke. A Fulton County jury awarded the plaintiff, who was left with “locked-in syndrome,” $46 million in damages for pain and suffering, in addition to $29 million for medical expenses.

According to the plaintiff’s lawyers, “the award is believed to be the largest emergency room malpractice verdict in Georgia history.” The Georgia Supreme Court denied review of the case in June 2025.

Gwinnett County

NUCLEAR VERDICT® AWARDED IN ETHYLENE OXIDE CASE

As discussed in the Illinois section of this report, plaintiffs’ lawyers increasingly are bringing lawsuits blaming their client’s cancer diagnoses on ethylene oxide emissions from medical sterilization facilities. One of those cases recently resulted in a nuclear verdict® in Gwinnett County.

In that case, the court awarded a retired truck driver $20 million in compensatory damages in May 2025 after his lawyers alleged that emissions from C.R. Bard’s medical sterilization facility, which has operated in Covington for more than 50 years, caused him to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Living just over a mile from the plant, the plaintiff claimed Bard failed to protect the community from the risks of ethylene oxide exposure and sued on negligence and public nuisance grounds. The company argued that his cancer was naturally occurring and not medically attributable to his low exposure to ethylene oxide. The court, however, rejected an additional $50 million punitive award in that case after a polled juror dissented from a determination that the company intended to cause harm. The compensatory damage award stands after the mistrial, and the punitive damages proceedings are expected to be retried.

Hundreds of similar lawsuits against Bard remain pending in Georgia.

MEDICAL LIABILITY NUCLEAR VERDICTS®

Gwinnett County is also known for nuclear verdicts® against healthcare providers. Examples include verdicts of $15.5 million and $18.3 million this year.

GEORGIA SUPREME COURT RESTORES SANITY TO “NOMINAL DAMAGES”

The dictionary defines “nominal” as an amount that is minimal or insignificant. Similarly, a law dictionary defines “nominal damages” as the award of a “trifling” sum when a plaintiff has established violation of a legal right but not presented evidence supporting a financial loss. In Georgia, however, some courts had allowed juries to award large amounts as “nominal damages.” Fortunately, this year, the Georgia Supreme Court curbed this practice in Gwinnett County case.

In that case, a Walmart employee, who was walking backward while pulling a box on a pallet jack, bumped into the plaintiff as she sat in a motorized shopping cart. The impact was “very light, not harsh at all.” The plaintiff declined medical assistance when Walmart employees asked if she needed paramedics; however, she went to the emergency room in the evening for head pain and blurred vision. “According to the treating physician at the emergency room, a head CT scan showed no sign of injury, and he found no signs of concussion.” Nevertheless, during his closing argument, the plaintiff’s attorney requested more than

$5.5 million in damages for his client’s future medical expenses and pain and suffering. The jury awarded “nominal damages” in the eye-popping amount of $1 million. Walmart appealed, arguing that $1 million in nominal damages “was excessive as a matter of law and not a legal award of nominal damages.”

The Court of Appeals affirmed the startling award. The court relied on the “test of relativity,” as opposed to limiting nominal damages to a “trivial sum.” In practice, this approach allows nominal damages in any amount. The court reasoned that the $1 million award was not excessive because it was “less than one-fifth the amount requested by the plaintiff.”

In June 2025, the Georgia Supreme Court vacated the $1 million nominal damage award. The Court reasoned that nominal damages are reserved for “trivial sums” where the plaintiff has established an invasion of a legal right but has not proven entitlement to actual damages in any amount, with enough certainty. The court concluded that “a million dollars is not a trivial sum by any rational measure.”

The decision is important because it will require personal injury attorneys in Georgia who seek substantial awards for their clients to present evidence — such as medical records and expert testimony — demonstrating actual losses.

 

End Notes

Georgia courts are among those experiencing a surge of lawsuits claiming that years of using hair relaxer products causes various health problems. Hundreds of such cases have been filed in recent months, many of which have been filed in DeKalb and Chatham counties. An October 2025 Georgia Supreme Court ruling is likely to result in even more of these questionable suits.

Georgia law has a statute of repose requiring product liability claims to be brought within 10 years of when the product is first sold or used. In the Georgia Supreme Court case, the plaintiff had used hair relaxers from 1995 to 2014. The lawsuit claims that long-term exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the products caused her uterine fibroids, diagnosed in 2018. She did not sue until 2022, after she (and others) learned of a study loosely linking such products to a higher risk of developing uterine cancer.

The trial court denied dismissal of the suit in 2023, finding the statute of repose did not begin to run until 2014 because the plaintiff was exposed to a “new product” every time she applied the hair relaxer. An intermediate appellate court, however, found the period to file a lawsuit begins with the first sale of the product to a person and, for that reason, the time to file product liability claims had ended.

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed. Like the trial court, the Supreme Court adopted a “per-unit” interpretation of the statute of repose, holding that the 10-year period restarts each time a person purchases the product. Because some of the plaintiff’s hair relaxers were purchased within that timeframe, dismissal was improper.

While allowing the claims to proceed, the Court emphasized the plaintiff still faces a difficult burden to prove that products purchased within the repose period caused her harm, independent of earlier exposures. The concurrence, joined by all justices, expressed doubts about the plaintiff’s ultimate ability to succeed but agreed that the issue was not ripe for resolution at this stage.