Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is pushing for tort reform because the state’s litigation environment is making it difficult for the Peach State’s small businesses to survive. During a roundtable discussion last week, Kemp and other state leaders heard from numerous business owners about the impacts of legal system abuse on their operations.
- The state’s civil litigation system is under scrutiny as businesses argue that it favors plaintiffs, leading to costly and frivolous lawsuits.
- These legal battles are driving up insurance premiums and forcing some insurers to pull back from Georgia markets.
- Proposed tort reform aims to balance the scales as billboard attorneys ramp up their marketing efforts to entice consumers to file lawsuits for claims large and small.
- Georgia vaulted to the top of the Judicial Hellholes report in 2022. This was due in large part to a massive $1.7 billion punitive damages award in a product liability case in Gwinnett County that was riddled with ethically questionable events and severely biased court orders.
- “Unfortunately, 2023 brought about more of the same for the Peach State. Courts across the state continue to award nuclear verdicts and the Georgia Supreme Court issued a disappointing premises liability decision and other liability-expanding decisions that will only make a terrible environment worse,” a recent report from the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) stated.
- Lawsuit abuse and excessive tort costs wipe out billions of dollars of economic activity annually in Georgia, according ATRA. $1,213.80 annual “tort tax” paid by each Georgia resident, according to a recent study by the Perryman Group. 123,900 jobs are lost each year in Georgia due to legal system abuse, Perryman Group’s report indicated.
- Lawsuits have become a significant pain point for both businesses like those represented here today and the Georgians that they serve,” Kemp said at the business roundtable. “For 10 years, we have remained the number one state in the country for business. If we want to maintain that distinction, this is an issue that we must address.”
- Georgia insurance and safety fire commissioner John King said insurance companies are asking for rate increases of an average of 25% and that while “we’ve been able to keep them about 12-14%,” the pressure is increasing. He said insurance companies are “walking away” from Georgia because of legal system abuse. “We have a challenge where our public thinks that when they get in an (auto) accident, they’ve won the lottery,” King added.
Georgia’s small business community knows we need tort reform to address these serious issues. Please reach out to local politician to voice your concern and support this much needed change.
