Georgia Tort Reform 2025: What Changed

Both bills were signed the same day, but the provisions inside them switch on in three different ways, and telling them apart is the single most practical thing to understand about the reform.^[1]

Arising-after rules attach to when the injury happened. The negligent security framework and the new medical-damages rule govern causes of action arising after April 21, 2025; an earlier injury runs under the old law no matter when suit is filed.

Commenced-after rules attach to when the lawsuit was filed. Seat belt admissibility works this way: a case filed on or after April 21, 2025 is under the new rule even if the crash happened years earlier, and a case filed the week before the signing keeps the old protection forever.

Trial-procedure rules, bifurcation, the anchoring limits, and the new motion and dismissal mechanics, govern how cases are litigated going forward, including cases that were already pending.

For nearly forty years, Georgia juries could not be told an injured person was unbelted. The reform reversed that: in cases commenced on or after April 21, 2025, seat belt non-use may be considered on negligence, comparative fault, causation, and damages, subject to the trial court's discretion to exclude it under the ordinary evidence rules.^[2] The old protection against insurers raising rates over non-use survived.

The filing-date trigger makes this the reform's sharpest trap, and the full rule, what the defense must actually prove, and how the argument gets contained, are covered on our page about the seat belt defense in Georgia.

Before the reform, a Georgia jury valuing medical damages generally saw the amounts billed, even when insurance had settled those bills for a fraction of the sticker price. The new medical-damages rule limits recovery to the reasonable value of necessary care, and it lets the jury see both sides of the ledger: the amounts charged and the amounts actually necessary to satisfy them under the health coverage that applied, including public insurance and workers' comp rates.

The rule reaches treatment relationships too. Care provided under letters of protection is discoverable, and so are a provider's referral relationships and any sale of its receivables at a discount. For claims arising after April 21, 2025, the days of building damages on numbers nobody ever paid are over, which makes documenting the real, defensible value of care the new center of the damages fight.

The reform rewrote the rules of argument for noneconomic damages. Counsel can no longer suggest dollar figures for pain and suffering during jury selection or opening statements, and the argument, when it comes, is allowed only after the close of evidence, at the party's first opportunity to argue damages.

The content is policed as well as the timing: the argument must be rationally related to the evidence of noneconomic harm, and references to objects or values with no rational connection to the proof, the athlete's salary, the price of a painting, are barred. Pain and suffering itself remains fully recoverable and uncapped; what changed is how, and when, its value can be argued to the jury.

Any party in a bodily injury or wrongful death case can now elect a bifurcated trial. Phase one decides fault and apportionment; only if the defense loses does phase two hear the damages case, the medical testimony, the life-care evidence, and the human cost.

The court can refuse the election in two situations: when the amount in controversy is under $150,000, or when the plaintiff is the victim of a sexual offense who would suffer serious distress testifying twice. Everywhere else, expect defendants to use it, because the structure keeps the severity of the injuries out of the fault decision. It applies to pending and future cases alike, which made it one of the first provisions felt in Georgia courtrooms.

For attacks and assaults on business property occurring after April 21, 2025, Georgia replaced its totality-of-the-circumstances case law with a statutory framework.^[3] An invitee's claim now turns on defined foreseeability triggers, a particularized warning, or prior substantially similar conduct on the premises or within 500 yards, plus a hazardous condition that raised the risk, with a narrower standard for licensees and mandatory apportionment to the criminal actor.

Incidents before the effective date still run under the older law, so the attack date decides the framework. The elements, the exemptions, and what survivors now have to prove are broken down on our page about Georgia negligent security claims.

Since 2021, a defendant sued alone could not ask the jury to assign fault to someone the plaintiff never sued; the Georgia Supreme Court's Alston & Bird v. Hatcher Management Holdings decision had read single-defendant cases out of the apportionment statute. The reform reversed that. Under amended O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, nonparty fault is back on the verdict form in one-defendant cases, with the usual 120-day notice requirement.^[4]

The practical effect lands on case-building: suing one convenient defendant and ignoring the rest now invites an empty-chair defense in any case, whatever its defendant count. How the notice works and how the strategy answers it are covered on our page about Georgia's nonparty fault and empty-chair rules.

Three quieter mechanics changed how Georgia cases move.

Motions to dismiss now pause the case. A defendant who files a timely motion to dismiss no longer has to answer while it is pending, and the motion triggers an automatic discovery stay until the ruling or 90 days, whichever comes first, with the court directed to rule within 90 days of briefing.

Voluntary dismissal has a real deadline. Georgia plaintiffs could historically dismiss and refile remarkably late in a case. A dismissal without court approval is now effective only within 60 days after the defendant answers, which ends the old late-stage dismissal strategy and raises the stakes of filing right the first time.

Neither change decides cases by itself. Both reward the side that files clean pleadings and works the calendar deliberately.

The companion act regulates the third-party litigation funding industry for the first time in Georgia. Funders must register with the state's Department of Banking and Finance, funding agreements of $25,000 or more must be in writing, and the existence and terms of a funding arrangement are discoverable by the other side, with disclosure obligations mandatory from January 1, 2026.^[5] The act also walls funders off from controlling litigation decisions, which belong to the client and the lawyer.

For injured plaintiffs the practical takeaway is caution: money taken from a funder during a case now has a paper trail the defense can see, and the terms of a bad funding deal can follow the claim. Talk to your lawyer before signing anything a funding company sends.

The loudest misconception about the reform is that Georgia capped injury verdicts. It did not.

There is still no cap on pain and suffering in Georgia; the Nestlehutt rule stands, and the reform regulated how noneconomic value is argued, never how much a jury may award. The map of what Georgia caps and what it refuses to cap reads the same as it did before the signing. The 50 percent comparative fault bar is unchanged, as our page on Georgia's modified comparative negligence rule explains, and the two-year statute of limitations, the ante litem deadlines, and the wrongful death full-value measure all survived untouched.

Current as of August 2026: neither act had been struck down or materially limited by a court ruling as of this writing. Georgia's legislature convenes each January, and this page is reviewed after each session.