At yesterday’s Georgia House hearing on lawsuit abuse reform, two witnesses highlighted how the current personal injury system takes advantage of consumers and the need for reforms that guarantee consumer protections.

Brett Johnson, the founder and CEO of trucking company Vertical Earth, highlighted a specific legal case where his company was forced to pay 120,000 times the actual damages to a car in an incident that did not involve any injuries. 

Johnson testified:

“In the spring of 2023, one of our lowboy trucks and trailers was transporting equipment across the top end of 285 near the intersection of Georgia 400. If you remember back at that time, that intersection was under construction and the traffic that day, like most days, moved it more like a fast food drive-in than actually an interstate. So our truck was easing along through that area. And another car merged in front of our truck at the low speeds. From the dashcam footage, it’s hard to tell that there actually was a collision. We don’t know exactly when it was, but apparently those two vehicles touched my truck and that other car. The driver of the other car flagged down our truck, and motioned over to the side. They called the police. Police wrote up a report. No injuries at the scene. Both cars drove off, and that was the end of it that day. In the coming weeks, we received a damage estimate for the car for $4,589, relatively small by today’s standards, and our carrier processed the claim. Six months afterwards, we received a demand letter at our office. I was surprised to read that the attorney demanded we immediately pay $540 million. Nine figures for an incident that didn’t involve any injuries at the time of the collision, and the car could be driven away. It could possibly be argued the collision was actually caused by the other car, even. This is 120,000 times X of what the actual damages were to the car. For whatever reason, our society has become desensitized to these large numbers, and they’re very commonplace. We don’t operate a billion-dollar company, and we cannot purchase excess coverage anywhere near these limits at any price, nor should we really need to. With this type of risk, we’re forced to make business decisions about which counties we work in, which type of projects to pursue, and whether to even attempt to expand services to our clients because of these increased risks. And this type of minor accident could be the end of our entire company, as well as the careers of all 600 of our employees.” 

The ramifications of personal injury cases extend well beyond the parties involved, and a single frivolous case can negatively impact hundreds of Georgia workers.

Defense attorney Zach Matthews highlighted an exhibit from a North Georgia medical lien clinic that took in 29,340 patients from trial lawyers.  Matthews noted, “Practically every law firm that does personal injury work in Georgia” works with this medical clinic. The cooperation between medical clinics and law firms is often unbeknownst to clients and drives up costs for all consumers. These accident victims can be pressured into taking risky and unnecessary medical procedures simply to benefit their lawyer’s own bottom line.