SB 68 — Tort Reform: Comprehensive Revisions

This is the first bill in Governor Kemp's Tort Reform package. 

This legislation limits any trial to recover damages for bodily injury or wrongful death to economic damages and prohibits arguments for noneconomic damages, both of which are defined terms in the legislation. 

Additionally, the legislation amends procedures related to answers, defenses, and objections, when such are presented and heard, when defenses can be waived, and when discovery can be stayed. It also amends procedures relating to dismissal of actions and adds new statutory provisions relating to court and litigation costs, limiting the ability to recover attorney fees, court costs, and other expenses of litigation. 

The legislation also authorizes consideration of the failure of an occupant to utilize a seat belt in civil actions to be admissible evidence on issues of negligence, comparative negligence, causation, assumption of risk, or apportionment of fault, or for any other purpose. However, the failure to wear a seat belt cannot be utilized to cancel insurance coverage or increase rates. 

Significantly, the legislation adds a new article to Title 51 of the Georgia Code, relating to torts, relating to premises liability. This new provisions provides for definitions and clarifies that an owner or occupier of land would be liable for negligent security (a newly defined term) arising from any injury sustained by any person upon the premises if certain, very specific factors could be proved:

1. That the wrongful conduct was caused by a third person but was reasonably foreseeable by the owner or occupier (something which will require very specific facts to be proveable including prior warnings or prior occurances);
2. That the injury sustained by the invitee was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the wrongful conduct of the third person;
3. That the wrongful conduct was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the third person exploiting a specific condition of the premises;
4. That the owner or occupier failed to exercise ordinary care to remedy the condition; and
5. That such failure by the owner or occupier was the proximate cause of the injury.

The newly proposed provisions on premises liabiity would also prohibit liability against an owner or occupier for injuries by trespassers, injuries which occured off-site, which arose from wrongful conduct of a third person when the owner or occupier had a right to exclude such third person, when the wrongful conduct was from a third person who the owner or occupier had a commenced eviction proceedings against the third person, if the injury was sustained by a third person who was on the premises to violate the law; was an injury sustained on a premises used as a single-family residence, or if, based on a warning of imminent wrongful conduct by a third person, the owner or occupier made a reasonable effort to inform law enforcement of the issue. 

In cases involving negligent security, the legislation proposes a new standard for apportionment of fault and it limits the liabilities of security contractors to the same standards as that of the owner or occupier. 

Addressing damages, the legislation proposes to limit special damages for medical and healthcare expenses to the expenses of medically necessary care, treatment, or services, and specifically limits such special damages to: 

1. Amounts paid by or behalf of a plaintiff to healthcare providers;
2. Amounts necessary to satisfy the incurred unpaid charges for reasonable care; and 
3. With respect to medical and healthcare expenses not year incurred, to those amounts which are actually necessary to satisfy future medical care.