Georgia Supreme Courtroom ruling on sovereign immunity

That’s how it works.

ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court laid down what one Atlanta-area attorney described as a “bright line” in how much damages you can recover from a city if you sue one.

In a statement released Tuesday, the Georgia Supreme Court sided with an insurance company in a dispute over how much an insurance policy held by the city of College Park should cover in a lawsuit alleging wrongful death in a police chase that ended in 2016 Death of a resulted grandmother and two children.

The issue at stake was whether state law allowed the city to be held liable by its insurance policy for the deaths beyond a standard limit set by Georgia law.

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The city had a $5 million policy, which family attorneys said waived the city’s ability to be capped at $700,000 in her case. That limit is set out in a Georgian law intended to serve as a standard waiver of sovereign immunity legal provisions that would otherwise prevent anyone from suing a city in the first place. The cap varies depending on the severity of the incident.

Sovereign immunity is the legal doctrine that a city, or state, or national government, as a matter of principle, cannot be sued unless it permits suing in some way. In Georgia, the law is structured so that local governments can be sued – but only up to a certain amount of money.

What you can claim

• $50,000 for criminal damage
• $500,000 for personal injury or death of a person
• $700,000 for personal injury or death of two or more people

In the College Park case, the insurance company argued that its policy was only designed to protect the city beyond $700,000 on matters not covered by state immunities. The Georgia Supreme Court agreed, noting that the mere existence of the policy does not waive sovereign immunity beyond $700,000 and overrules previous decisions of the original trial and the Georgia Court of Appeals in favor of the $5 million sum sat.

This decision has far-reaching implications for all other cases in which someone might sue a Georgia city or county.

Previously, Atlanta area attorney Manny Arora said attorneys could seek full coverage.

“Cities, police and everyone else are protected from being sued – that’s how it generally works,” he told 11Alive’s Joe Henke of sovereign immunity. “There are exceptions to this or negligence. In this case, however, they had a $5 million policy. If you have a policy for $700,000, the person who was wronged can usually claim the entire amount. But today the Supreme Court said that anything over $700,000 “Not true in this case. Anything over $700,000 is covered by the immunity given to municipalities, police and everything else, regardless of the degree of wrongdoing.” “

Now the state Supreme Court has ruled that unless a city somehow has a policy that specifically involves some sort of wrongdoing — like a police chase gone awry — there’s no way to cross the lines.

Arora said there was a “light line rule laid down.”

“Unless that additional insurance is specific to something they listed, like a car chase situation like this, you can’t get a general insurance policy after that,” he said. “They are capped at $700,000 whether two, three or 50 people died.”

He said the Georgia Supreme Court, which is considering the matter so conclusively, is making it sort of a landmark case.

“The Supreme Court has said that should always have been the rule, but historically if there was $700,000 insurance, attorneys could reach for it. But today they made it clear that unless this additional insurance is specifically designed for this type of situation, general liability insurance will not cover it,” he said. “Unfortunately, these three people or their families will not be able to collect the full value of the policy.”

Arora added, “You’re pretty much capped at $700,000 and the Supreme Court has made that clear. We used to be able to sue the entire policy limit, but that has stopped with this Opinion.”

The only way to change that now would be for the state legislature, the Georgia General Assembly, to write new legislation.