When you lose a close family member in a car accident or other preventable incident, Georgia law lets you seek compensation in a wrongful death lawsuit. While no amount of money can bring them back, holding the responsible party accountable can provide financial stability and answers at a time when your family needs both.
State law specifies who can bring a wrongful death lawsuit, what damages survivors can recover, and how long they have to take action. In this guide, we’ll explain who has standing to sue, what the lawsuit process looks like, and how a wrongful death lawyer can protect your family's rights while maximizing your recovery.
What Is a Wrongful Death Under Georgia Law?
Like most states, Georgia defines wrongful death as a death caused by the negligent, reckless, intentional, or criminal act of another person or entity. The death must result from conduct that would have let the deceased file a personal injury lawsuit if they had survived. O.C.G.A. § 51-4-2 gives surviving family members the right to sue for the full value of the deceased person's life.
Below is a list of incidents that commonly lead to wrongful death claims in Georgia:
- Car and Truck Accidents: Vehicular accidents cause a large percentage of wrongful death cases in Georgia, particularly crashes involving drunk drivers, distracted drivers, or commercial trucks. High-speed interstate accidents, head-on collisions, and multi-vehicle pileups frequently result in fatal injuries.
- Medical Malpractice: Patients have died through surgical errors, misdiagnoses, medication mistakes, and delayed treatment. Anesthesia errors, birth injuries, and failure to diagnose cancer or heart conditions are common examples.
- Workplace Accidents: Construction sites, factories, warehouses, and other dangerous work environments claim lives when employers fail to provide proper safety equipment or training. Falls from heights, electrocutions, machinery accidents, and exposure to toxic substances have all killed workers across Georgia.
- Product Liability: Faulty vehicles, dangerous drugs, malfunctioning machinery, and contaminated food products have fatally injured consumers who had no warning of the risks. Manufacturers, distributors, and retailers can all be held liable when their defective products cause death.
- Criminal Acts: Assault, murder, armed robbery, and negligent security at apartment complexes, bars, nightclubs, or businesses have all given rise to wrongful death claims. Property owners who fail to provide adequate security can be sued when acts of violence occur on their premises.
Wrongful death lawsuits are separate from criminal prosecutions. A criminal case punishes the defendant and requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt for a guilty verdict. Wrongful death claims, on the other hand, seek money damages for the family and only need to be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, which is a lower standard. You can still file a claim and win even if the defendant is acquitted in criminal court.
Do You Need a Lawyer to File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit?
Georgia's wrongful death law is complicated, and trying to handle a claim without legal counsel puts your recovery at risk. Insurance companies employ teams of lawyers and adjusters whose job is to minimize what they pay on claims. Without a personal injury attorney who knows their tactics, you're at a severe disadvantage.
Once you hire a wrongful death lawyer, they can do the following:
- Make an Accurate Valuation: A personal injury lawyer with experience in wrongful death cases knows how to value claims based on current Georgia law and jury verdicts in similar situations, preventing you from accepting far less than your claim is worth.
- Identify Potential Defendants: After reviewing evidence, they can identify all potentially responsible parties as well as insurance policies that can provide compensation, so you don't miss sources of recovery.
- Preserve Evidence: Wrongful death attorneys preserve information before it's lost or destroyed. Depending on the situation, this may include witness statements, police reports, accident scene photos, and video surveillance footage.
- Engage Expert Resources: Your wrongful death lawyer can hire the right expert witnesses to prove negligence and calculate damages. Examples include economists, accident reconstruction specialists, and medical professionals.
- Negotiate with Insurance Companies: They handle all communications with insurance companies, so you don't give recorded statements that can be used against you. Having a lawyer on your side can also translate to a higher settlement amount, as insurers know the attorney will take the claim to trial if necessary.
Most wrongful death attorneys work on a contingency fee basis. You pay nothing up front, and the attorney only gets paid if you recover compensation. This arrangement makes it possible for families to hire experienced counsel at a financially and emotionally difficult time.
Steps to File a Wrongful Death Lawsuit in Georgia
Before filing anything, confirm that you have legal standing. The law determines eligibility based on family relationship, and only one party has the right to file at any given time.
- Surviving Spouse: The surviving spouse has first priority to file a wrongful death claim in Georgia. The spouse receives at least one-third of the total recovery; if there are children, they split the remaining two-thirds equally. For example, if a wrongful death case settles for $900,000 and the deceased left behind a spouse and two children, the spouse receives $300,000, and each child receives $300,000.
- Children: If there's no surviving spouse, the deceased's children have the right to file and share the recovery equally. This includes biological children, adopted children, and children born out of wedlock if paternity was established.
- Parents: When the deceased has no spouse or children, the parents gain the right to file, even if their child was an adult at the time of death. Both parents typically join as co-plaintiffs if they're both living; If only one survives, that parent files alone and receives the entire recovery.
- Estate Representative: If none of these family members exist or are available to file, the administrator or executor of the deceased's estate can bring the wrongful death claim, and any recovery goes to the heirs according to Georgia's intestacy laws.
Extended family members such as siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins generally can't file wrongful death lawsuits in Georgia. Estranged spouses are a more complicated scenario: Georgia law doesn't automatically strip an estranged spouse of the right to file, even if the couple was separated at the time of death. Unless a divorce was finalized before the death occurred, the surviving spouse retains first priority.
Step 1: Investigate the Cause of Death
Once you confirm standing, your wrongful death lawyer can start collecting evidence. Depending on what caused the fatal accident, this may include:
- Police Reports: Police accident reports are important evidence in car accidents, workplace fatalities, or criminal behavior. These reports contain officer observations, witness statements, diagrams of accident scenes, and preliminary determinations of fault. Request copies from the law enforcement agency that responded to the incident.
- Medical Records: Medical records document the injuries that caused death and the treatment provided beforehand. Hospitals, emergency rooms, ambulance services, and doctors all maintain documentation that can prove what happened. If medical malpractice caused the death, these records can help expose any negligence.
- Witness Statements: Eyewitnesses to a car crash can describe how it happened, who had the green light, and whether anyone was speeding or appeared distracted. Coworkers can testify about unsafe workplace conditions, while other patients or hospital staff can shed light on what went wrong during a medical procedure.
Qualified experts can also determine whether negligence was involved. Accident reconstruction specialists visit crash scenes and examine vehicle damage to determine how a collision occurred and who may have caused it. Medical professionals can review records to identify departures from the standard of care, while engineers can evaluate whether a product was defectively designed or manufactured.
Step 2: Identify All Liable Parties
Multiple defendants can be responsible for a single death, and naming all of them increases your potential recovery. Common examples include negligent drivers and healthcare providers, property owners who failed to maintain safe premises, and criminals who committed violent acts. Even employers can be held responsible for deaths caused by their employees' negligence: if a delivery driver runs a red light and kills someone, both the driver and the delivery company can be sued.
Government entities can be defendants in wrongful death lawsuits, but Georgia's Tort Claims Act requires you to file an ante litem notice within six months of the death if you're suing a city. (Twelve months for county or state agencies.) This written notice must describe the incident, identify the responsible parties, and state the amount of damages you're seeking. Missing the six-month ante litem deadline permanently bars your civil claim against the government, even though the general two-year statute of limitations hasn't expired yet.
Step 3: Calculate Damages
Georgia wrongful death cases allow survivors to recover two types of damages: the full value of the life of the deceased and estate claims for expenses related to the death.
"Full Value of the Life" of the Deceased
The full value of life is the primary damage award in a Georgia wrongful death case. This recovery belongs to the surviving family members who filed the lawsuit, not to the deceased's estate. Georgia law divides this value into economic and non-economic components.
Economic damages include:
- Lost income, which represents the loss of financial support the deceased would have provided to their family if they had lived
- Benefits such as health insurance, retirement contributions, and bonuses
- Pension payments and Social Security benefits the family would have received
- Loss of services, including the value of household tasks, childcare, home maintenance, and other unpaid labor that the deceased provided
Non-economic damages compensate for intangible losses. They include:
- Loss of companionship, which accounts for the emotional relationship between the deceased and their family members.
- Loss of enjoyment of life, which represents what the deceased would have experienced if they had lived. This includes hobbies, travel, family gatherings, and all the activities that make life worth living.
Proving economic loss starts with the deceased's earning history. Gather tax returns, pay stubs, employment contracts, and benefits statements for at least the past several years. If the deceased was self-employed, collect business records, client contracts, and profit-and-loss statements.
Non-economic damages have no formula or calculator, but you can prove your loss through testimony from family members, friends, clergy, and mental health professionals who can describe the relationship and the void left by the death.
Estate Claims (Separate but Related)
The estate can file a separate claim for damages that belong to the deceased's estate rather than to the surviving family members. They include:
- Medical expenses incurred between the injury and death
- Funeral expenses
- Burial expenses
- Pain and suffering the deceased experienced before death
Losses in an estate claim may be proven with bills and receipts as well as witness statements about any physical and emotional distress suffered by the victim before they passed.
Step 4: File the Lawsuit in the Proper Georgia Court
Georgia’s venue rules determine which county’s superior court hears a wrongful death lawsuit. In most cases, the lawsuit must be filed in the county where the defendant lives or, if the defendant is a company, where the company’s principal place of business or registered office is located. In some situations, special rules may allow filing in another county, which is why venue is an issue your lawyer carefully evaluates before filing.
The complaint is the legal document that starts the lawsuit. It must:
- Name all accused parties
- Describe how the death occurred
- Explain why each party is responsible
- Identify the plaintiff's standing to sue
- Demand compensation
After submitting the complaint, you must serve each accused party with a copy of the lawsuit and a summons. Georgia law allows service by sheriff, private server, or certified mail in some situations. Once properly served, the accused has 30 days to respond to your allegations. If they don't respond, you can seek a default judgment.
Step 5: Litigation Phase
The discovery phase is when both sides exchange information and gather what they need for the trial. Steps during this stage include:
- Depositions: Depositions of key witnesses take place throughout the discovery period. You'll likely be questioned about your relationship with the deceased and the impact their death has had on your life. Witnesses on both sides will provide their opinions and the basis for those conclusions.
- Filing Motions: Motions take place at various stages during a wrongful death lawsuit. The accused party or parties may ask the judge to dismiss the complaint, arguing it fails to state a valid claim. Similarly, you may be able to file a motion for summary judgment and ask the judge to rule that no genuine dispute of material fact exists and you’re entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
Settlement negotiations happen throughout the litigation. The insurance company may make an initial offer, which is almost always far below what the claim is worth. Your wrongful death attorney can then counter with a demand based on the economic and non-economic damages calculated earlier. Multiple rounds of negotiation follow, sometimes with a mediator facilitating the discussions.
Trial only becomes necessary when settlement talks fail. (Georgia wrongful death trials are heard by juries unless both sides agree to a bench trial before a judge alone.) After jury selection and opening statements, the plaintiff presents their side first. The defense then presents its side. After closing arguments, the jury deliberates and returns a verdict stating whether the accused is responsible and, if so, how much compensation the family should receive.
Get a Free Case Review From a Georgia Wrongful Death Lawyer
No amount of money can bring back a lost loved one. But compensation can provide financial stability for children who lost a parent, spouses who lost their partner, and parents who lost a child. It also holds reckless drivers, negligent doctors, careless employers, and dangerous corporations accountable for the harm they cause. Pursuing justice sends a message that lives have value and that those who take lives through negligence must answer for their actions.
If you lost a family member because of someone else's negligence, recklessness, or intentional act, contact The Champion Firm, Personal Injury Attorneys, P.C. We offer free consultations and work on a contingency basis, so you risk nothing by learning your options. For more information or to schedule a free consultation with a wrongful death lawyer, please call 404-596-8044.
