Jurors could be told whether a plaintiff injured in an auto accident was wearing a seat belt under a bill passed in the Georgia Senate.
The seat belt provision is just one component of the wide-ranging tort reforms in Senate Bill 68, which passed Friday with mostly Republican support. The bill now goes to the Georgia House of Representatives, and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has signaled his support for it, Capitol Beat News Service reported.
The legislation seeks to curtail massive jury awards blamed for skyrocketing insurance costs.
“It’s not about caving in to the demands of insurance companies or denying Georgians their ability to be fully and fairly compensated when they need to go to court,” Capitol Beat News Service quoted John Kennedy, Georgia’s Senate president pro tempore, as saying. “Instead, it’s about stabilizing costs and putting all Georgians, no matter where your ZIP code is, first.”
Democratic state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes countered, “Nothing in this bill requires a single penny of premium reduction. What this bill does is hand more power to the insurance industry.”
But Kennedy said other states enacting such reforms have seen reduced rates.
In March 2024, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law a bill that lets juries hear evidence of a plaintiff’s failure to use a seat belt and reduce damage awards on that basis. Critics of such legislation say it distracts from the bigger question of who actually caused an accident, but Chris Spear, president and CEO of the American Trucking Associations, said of the Indiana law that it provides jurors more complete information to render a verdict.
In May 2024, Kemp signed into law a bill that largely protects insurers from being sued directly after crashes involving trucks – something backers say will discourage financially crippling nuclear verdicts and boost the struggling insurance market for carriers. Now, insurers in Georgia can be sued directly only if a plaintiff can’t find the driver or carrier involved in an accident, or if the carrier has gone bankrupt.
Related articles:
Wisconsin, West Virginia split on capping damages in CMV accident lawsuits
Seat belt use can now be used as evidence in accident lawsuits in Indiana
New Georgia law restricts truck-crash lawsuits against insurers
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