MUNICIPAL TORT LIABILITY IN GEORGIA

For years, cities enjoyed sovereign immunity under the law and could not be sued if negligent. This has been relaxed under recent statutory provisions with respect to city motor vehicles. For most motor vehicles operated by and on behalf of city employees, municipalities are now required to carry liability insurance in the amount of $250,000 because of bodily injury or death to any one person and $450,000 for any one occurrence. While this amount is woefully inadequate for true serious injury cases or cases involving wrongful death, nonetheless, it is certainly an improvement over complete sovereign immunity. Effective January 1, 2008, O.C.G.A. § 36-92-2 mandates that municipal governments in Georgia carry a minimum of $500,000 because of bodily injury or death of any one person with an aggregate amount of $700,000 because of any one occurrence. Again, these amounts are completely inadequate for the truly serious and catastrophic claim but nonetheless a welcome improvement over what the law was previously.
Another area of law where there is still an opportunity for victims of negligence to recover against municipalities are those situations where a pedestrian is injured because of a defect in a city sidewalk or street. O.C.G.A. § 36-33-1(b) provides that municipalities shall not be liable for failure to perform their legislative or judicial power. For neglect to perform or improper unskillful performance of their ministerial duties, they shall be liable. The Georgia courts have held that a municipalities function of maintaining its streets and sidewalks in a safe condition is ministerial in nature. Thus, there is no sovereign immunity for such claims, nor any cap on damages. Nonetheless, a municipality is still relieved from liability resulting from the defect in a public road or sidewalk “when it has no actual knowledge thereof or when such defect has not existed for a sufficient length of time for notice thereof to be inferred.” See, O.C.G.A. § 32-4-93(a). For those who are injured on a city sidewalk or street due to a defect in the public thoroughfare, implied or constructive notice of a defect may be shown in a variety of ways, for example, testimony as to how long the defect had existed prior to the accident or objective evidence that the defect had existed over time. The Georgia courts have held that the term defect set forth in the statute cited relative to the duties and obligations of municipalities includes “defects brought about by any force of nature and by persons which render the [streets] and sidewalks unsafe and include objects adjacent to and suspended over the streets and sidewalks, the presence of which renders the use of these thoroughfares more hazardous.”
In Georgia, as noted, a city has no sovereign immunity for claims arising out of defects in its sidewalks and streets provided the notice of the defect is shown either via actual notice to the city or constructive notice. With respect to automobile claims, while such claims can be bought, they are limited to the recovery amounts set forth above. All other claims are still barred with the possible exception of claims based on a public nuisance theory. If a plaintiff can show that he or she was injured as a result of the city’s maintenance of the public nuisance, once again, there is no sovereign immunity for such cases. Thus, in Georgia, while there is still some possibility of an innocent victim receiving some redress for injuries sustained as a result of the negligence of a municipality, it is still an uphill battle. Regrettably, most citizens are unaware of these restrictions on their rights and only when they sustain personal injury in the truest sense of the word (personal injury) do they become aware of these restrictions. Until the legislature acts to relax the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the best that any law firm like ours can do is to work within the existing constraints of the law to protect the rights of those injured by city employees.