When the evidence shows the defendant acted with a specific intent to cause harm, Georgia removes the usual dollar ceiling on punitive damages. The standard $250,000 cap in O.C.G.A. §...
Georgia law limits a product manufacturer to a single punitive award for the conduct at issue. O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1 states that in a product-liability action, only one award of punitive...
When one defendant settles and the case continues against the others, the settling party usually does not vanish from the fault analysis. Georgia's apportionment system can still place a percentage...
Georgia law treats damages as compensation for the injury sustained, and where the harm can be valued in money, that compensation is the measure. The goal is to make the...
A blanket medical authorization gives an insurance adjuster open-ended access to a person's entire medical history, and there is rarely a good reason to grant that much. Georgia law does...
A permanent injury is valued by combining the lifelong economic costs it imposes with the non-economic harm of living with the condition over the rest of a person's life. Because...
Causation matters. Georgia's exception that lifts the punitive cap for impaired defendants is meant for cases where the intoxication was part of the wrongful conduct that caused the harm. Where...
The jury, as the fact-finder, ultimately fixes the present value of future losses in a Georgia case, but it does so with the help of evidence and expert testimony. The...
General damages are the losses the law presumes flow from a wrongful injury and that need no proof of a specific dollar amount. They differ from special damages in exactly...
Drunk driving sits in a special category under Georgia's punitive-damages law. O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1 generally caps punitive awards at $250,000, but it lifts that cap when the defendant acted while...