Civil litigation reform takes center stage in Georgia General Assembly

Yahoo

07-02-2025

ATLANTA () — The Georgia General Assembly concluded its 13th legislative day on Thursday. That means there are 27 workdays remaining.
And many of those days will be consumed with civil litigation reform – commonly called tort reform. It's being driven by Governor Brian Kemp and the state's business community.
It came up last year, but was punted into the 2025 session. And now the ball is in the General Assembly's hands.
In his State of the State address, last month, Gov. Kemp threw down the gauntlet and made Civil Litigation reform a top priority. Even to the point of threatening a special session if the lawmakers don't address the issue.
Senate Bill 68 has just started its path through the General Assembly. The governor's Senate allies dropped the bill last week.
On the House side of the General Assembly, it's a waiting game to see what the legislation looks like when it is voted out of the Senate. The hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee has not scheduled a hearing.
'I have scanned through but not studied the bills,' said Rep. Vance Smith, R-Pine Mountain. 'The bills are starting in the Senate, so once they go through the process of the Senate, we don't know if that bill will look the same. What changes will be made? So instead of putting a lot of effort into it right now, I need to know what's in this bill. But I'm anxious to see what they pass out and what comes to our Judiciary Committee.'
Rep. Carolyn Hugley, D-Columbus, is the chair of the House Minority Caucus. She is carefully watching what the Senate does to the original bill.
'We need to look for those things that we can agree on,' Hugley said. 'I think that people are interested in what we're going to do on premises liability, for example,' Democratic Rep. Carolyn Hugley said. 'But there's a lot of work yet to be done, and there's no guarantee that if we pass the bills as they are today, your insurance rates will go down tomorrow. So, we've got a long way to go, and I think this is probably going to be one of the last things that we resolve this year.'
Not only is this bill front and center for lawmakers, but it has also drawn the intense interest of lobbyists and Georgia trial lawyers. State Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, is in a Senate Republican leadership position as the WHIP.
'Well, I will tell you, there's an equal amount of lobbyists up here working on both sides,' Robertson said. 'But the reality of it is, is our system is broken and there needs to be an adjustment. How much of an adjustment is going to be decided by the experts around the table, which are the legislators, the trial attorneys, the insurance companies, the hospitals, and the chambers of commerce. And so what we have to do as legislators is listen to what everybody says.'
Columbus Trial Lawyer Brandon Peak has been under the Gold Dome this week talking to lawmakers about this legislation and it's impact.
'We represent everyday Georgians, and everyday Georgians don't have lobbyists,' said Peak. 'And so it's important for us to be able to educate members of the General Assembly who are very busy about the implications that this so-called tort reform bill has for the people who they represent, their constituents.'
This legislation comes as Georgia has been named the best state in the nation to do business. But there are other groups that claim the state is a judicial 'hellhole' for these businesses because of large jury verdicts.
'We have businesses throughout the states that are having to go out of the state to find insurance,' Robertson said. 'What we what we cannot make this is a tug of war between trial attorneys and the business community.'
And Robertson said there is one way to make that happen.
'What we have to do is sit down together, find reasonable legislation that accomplishes what both sides need to accomplish with the bottom line being let's continue to be the best state to do business and then let's pull ourselves out of that lawsuit hellhole that we're in,' Robertson said.
Georgia Trial Lawyers Association President Jason Branch says it's hard to reconcile two seemingly inconsistent facts.
'But we have remained the No. 1 state to do business for the last 11 years,' Branch said. 'And Gov. Kemp's done a tremendous job in leading this state in allowing us to be the No. 1 state to do business for the last 11 years. When you look at reports such as judicial hellholes that are put out by self-serving interest groups to try to garner support for an agenda, that's where the disconnect becomes a difference between looking at objective data and what the true condition of the state versus working with cherry picked data points or exceptions to the rule and try to suggest that it's otherwise?'
The next step for Senate Bill 68 is a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. That hearing is not scheduled.
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