Assessing Economic Damages in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Litigation: The State of Georgia

Damages analysis in Georgia has many similarities with that done in other states. Nonetheless, Georgia personal injury and wrongful death law has some peculiarities, particularly with respect to the legal foundation for the law and the choice of discount rate. Section II of this paper summarizes the general legal structure that underlies damages analysis. Section III provides specifics on many issues confronting forensic economists when applying Georgia law. Finally, Section IV provides some concluding comments. II. The Legal Setting Damages under Georgia law are computed from the perspective of the loss to the decedent as if the individual had survived. This feature has its roots in Britain’s first statutory codification of wrongful death actions, the Lord Campbell’s Act passed by the British Parliament in 1846.2 Although the Georgia law constrains the party filing the action to specific family members, the loss estimate is not from their perspective. Instead, the person bringing action is essentially operating as if representing the deceased rather than the survivor. The damages question is what the loss to the decedent is, and not what are the damages to any survivor or to the estate. The focus on the loss to the decedent in a death case is as if that individual has been totally disabled and has lost all capacity to work and generate future earnings. Thus, a death case is similar to a total disability case and the valuation processes for wrongful death and personal injury cases are almost identical. The differences lie with the specific statute authorizing the action and that there can be no future medical care costs in a death case. One direct consequence of the Georgia law’s focus on the decedent is that plaintiffs may not recover any damages for their own mental suffering or loss of emotional support that they would have received from the decedent (Glawson v. Southern Bell; Southern Ry. v. Turner). While the plaintiffs may have suffered