How does Georgia split fault between the property owner and the criminal who attacked me?

· 3 min read

Georgia handles this split through its apportionment system, which lets a jury assign a share of responsibility to each party involved, including the criminal who committed the attack. That allocation is the defining feature of a negligent-security case and shapes what an injured person can recover.

Apportionment among all responsible parties

Under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, Georgia divides damages by percentage of fault. A jury considers the conduct of each party and assigns a portion of the total responsibility to each. In a negligent-security claim, the criminal attacker is one of the actors whose fault can be weighed, alongside the property owner whose security failures allegedly enabled the harm. The owner’s share reflects how unreasonable its precautions were given the foreseeable danger, while the attacker’s share reflects the deliberate violence that caused the injury.

Why naming the attacker matters

Because the statute allows fault to be apportioned to the person who actually carried out the crime, that person’s role is central rather than ignored. For negligent-security claims arising on or after April 21, 2025, Georgia’s tort-reform law (SB 68) goes further and makes assigning a share to the criminal third party effectively mandatory: a jury that apportions no fault to the attacker can trigger a retrial, and an allocation that gives the attacker too little is presumed unreasonable. As a result, the criminal is identified in the case even when the lawsuit targets the property owner. The owner may argue that the attacker bears most or all of the blame, while the injured person argues that reasonable security would have prevented a foreseeable crime. How the jury balances these positions determines each party’s percentage.

How the split affects recovery

The percentages carry real financial consequences for an injured person:

  • The injured person’s own recovery is reduced by any share of fault assigned to them.
  • If the injured person is 50 percent or more at fault, recovery is barred entirely.
  • Damages are allocated according to the remaining percentages among the responsible parties.

A practical concern is collectibility. A criminal defendant who is judgment-proof may never pay the share assigned to them, which is one reason injured people often look to a property owner whose negligence helped enable the crime. The duty that anchors the owner’s exposure flows from O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1, which requires ordinary care to keep premises safe for invitees, including reasonable protection against foreseeable criminal acts.

The bottom line

Georgia splits fault between a property owner and a criminal attacker through percentage-based apportionment under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, weighing the owner’s security failures against the attacker’s deliberate conduct. The resulting percentages decide how much an injured person can recover, subject to the 50 percent bar and the practical question of who can actually pay.

This article is for general educational and informational purposes only and is not legal advice. It does not create an attorney-client relationship, and Georgia law may change. For advice about a specific situation, consult a licensed Georgia personal injury attorney.

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