Filing an Injury Claim in Georgia After SB 68: What the 2025 Overhaul Changed and What It Didn't

For almost twenty years, the basic playbook for a Georgia injury claim barely moved. Then, in April 2025, the legislature rewrote a large piece of it all at once — which means much of what you will read online about Georgia claims is now partly out of date.

Senate Bill 68, signed on April 21, 2025, is Georgia’s most sweeping tort overhaul since 2005. It did not change the fundamentals — Georgia is still an at-fault state with a two-year filing window and a hard 50 percent fault bar — but it changed what juries can hear, how medical bills are valued, and how certain cases against property owners must be proven. If you were hurt in Georgia, here is what matters as of 2026, starting with the newest rules.

What the 2025 reform actually changed

A few of SB 68’s changes are especially relevant to ordinary injury claims:

• Seat belt evidence is now on the table. For decades, Georgia juries generally could not be told that an injured person was not wearing a seat belt. For cases governed by the new law, that evidence can now come in — a significant shift in car accident litigation.
• Medical damages are tied more closely to amounts actually paid. Defendants can now introduce evidence of what was actually paid to resolve medical charges, not just the sticker price a provider billed — a change aimed at what the reform’s supporters called “phantom damages.”
• Limits on “anchoring.” The law restricts when and how attorneys may suggest specific pain-and-suffering values to a jury.
• Negligent security claims got harder. Suing a property owner over a crime committed by a third party now requires proving a tighter set of elements, including that the owner had reason to foresee the danger.

One important wrinkle: the provisions do not all apply the same way. Some govern only claims arising after April 21, 2025; others reach further back. Which version of the law applies to your situation is exactly the kind of question to confirm with a licensed Georgia attorney rather than a blog post — including this one.

The 50 percent line did not move

Georgia follows modified comparative negligence under O.C.G.A. 51-12-33. You can generally recover compensation if you were less than 50 percent responsible for what happened, with your recovery reduced by your share of the fault. At 50 percent or more, recovery is barred entirely.

Read that threshold carefully, because it is slightly harsher than the rule in many other states. In a “51 percent” state, a dead-even 50/50 split still allows a reduced recovery. In Georgia, a 50/50 tie loses. That single percentage point is why fault arguments in Georgia claims are fought so hard — and why an adjuster’s early suggestion that the accident was “really half your fault” is a negotiating position, not a ruling. The percentage is decided by the evidence, not by the first confident phone call.

Two years, generally — with fine print

Most Georgia personal injury lawsuits must be filed within two years under O.C.G.A. 9-3-33. For wrongful death claims, the clock generally runs from the date of death rather than the date of injury. Some related claims run on different schedules — loss of consortium, for example, carries a longer window, and medical malpractice has its own timing rules with an outer limit — so the safe assumption is two years, and the safe habit is confirming your specific deadline early.

Two years sounds like plenty of time. In practice, camera footage gets overwritten, witnesses move, and medical records scatter far faster than the legal deadline arrives. The strongest claims are usually the ones investigated early. For how Georgia’s window compares with other states, see our state-by-state statute of limitations guide.

The deadlines nobody warns you about: claims against the government

Here is the trap built into Georgia law: if the party responsible for your injury is a city, a county, or the State of Georgia, the two-year statute is not your real deadline. Georgia requires a formal pre-suit notice — called an ante litem notice — on schedules measured in months:

• Cities: generally six months from the injury (O.C.G.A. 36-33-5).
• Counties: generally twelve months (O.C.G.A. 36-11-1).
• The State: generally twelve months under the Georgia Tort Claims Act (O.C.G.A. 50-21-26).

Georgia courts enforce these notices strictly — both the deadline and the required contents. A collision with a city vehicle, a fall at a government building, an injury caused by a dangerous road condition: any of these can put you on a six-month clock while you are still in physical therapy. If a government entity is anywhere in the picture, treat the timeline as urgent and get qualified advice quickly.

Georgia is an at-fault state

Georgia is not a no-fault state. There is no personal injury protection requirement and no injury threshold you must cross before bringing a liability claim. The driver who caused the crash — through their liability insurance — is generally responsible for the harm that results. That makes evidence of fault the center of gravity in every Georgia car accident claim, and it makes the documentation you gather in the first days especially valuable, particularly now that seat belt use and paid medical amounts are part of the evidentiary picture.

It also means your own uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage can matter enormously when the at-fault driver carries only minimum limits — which serious injuries routinely exceed.

Damage caps: fewer than you might expect

Despite two rounds of tort reform, Georgia has no cap on compensatory damages in ordinary injury cases. The state’s attempt to cap noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases was struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2010, in Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v. Nestlehutt, as a violation of the state constitutional right to a jury trial. Punitive damages — a separate, rarer category meant to punish egregious conduct — are capped by statute in many cases, with exceptions (O.C.G.A. 51-12-5.1). SB 68 changed how some damages are argued and proven, but as of 2026 it did not impose a general cap on what an injured Georgian can recover.

What this means if you were hurt in Georgia

Three practical takeaways. First, Georgia deadlines are shorter than they look — two years at best, and as little as six months if a city is involved. Second, the 50 percent bar means fault percentages are worth fighting over, so do not concede fault to an adjuster before anyone has reviewed the evidence. Third, the 2025 reform changed the rules mid-stream, and older articles may steer you wrong — our Georgia quick-reference page keeps the current deadlines and fault rules in one place.

If you were injured in Georgia and want to know whether you may have a claim, answer a few questions about what happened and we will connect you with a participating law firm that handles Georgia cases. It is free, confidential, and there is no obligation.