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Every law produces winners and losers, but the most revealing measure of a piece of legislation is often what happens to the people who were never mentioned in the debate. Georgia’s SB 68 was crafted to solve a real problem — an out-of-control litigation environment that was driving up costs and deterring business investment. It largely succeeded at that. But in the rush to rein in lawsuit abuse, the law has also created a set of consequences — some foreseeable, some deeply troubling — that will shape Georgia courts and Georgia families for years to come.
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For property owners, retailers, and commercial landlords, the changes to negligent security law represent a fundamental shift. Georgia had long held businesses to an “extraordinary care” standard when it came to third-party criminal acts on their premises. Courts had interpreted this broadly, and plaintiff attorneys had become skilled at finding creative theories of liability in situations where businesses had little practical ability to prevent violence. SB 68 replaced this with a narrower “ordinary care” standard and added a series of new affirmative defenses — including one that makes calling 911 when a crime is threatened a complete defense to liability.
For shopping centers, apartment communities, and hotels in high-crime areas, this is genuinely significant. The prior law had created perverse incentives: a landlord who installed security cameras and kept records of prior incidents was actually making themselves more legally vulnerable, because they could be said to have “known” about a dangerous condition. The reformed law attempts to reward proactive reporting and security measures rather than punish them.
The combination of discovery stays during motions to dismiss, restrictions on voluntary dismissals, and the new litigation financing rules has meaningfully raised the cost of filing weak cases. Under prior law, a plaintiff’s attorney could file a barely-formed complaint, force expensive discovery, and use that leverage to extract settlements from defendants who had meritorious defenses but faced ruinous litigation costs. The 90-day discovery stay while a motion to dismiss is pending directly addresses this dynamic.
“The new law would create two separate classes of people who are injured: those with insurance, and those without insurance. Paradoxically, those with insurance would be able to claim less in damages than those without insurance, despite those with insurance paying substantial insurance premiums for it.”
This is the reform’s most striking internal contradiction. By capping medical damage recovery at the amounts actually paid by health insurance — rather than what was billed — the law creates a perverse incentive structure. A plaintiff with comprehensive health insurance, whose insurer negotiated the bill down to 40 cents on the dollar, can only recover that discounted amount. A plaintiff without insurance, who owes the full chargemaster price, can recover the entire billed amount.
The irony is profound: the people who did everything right — who responsibly purchased and maintained health insurance — are penalized in civil court compared to those who did not. This is not a marginal quirk; it is a structural feature of the law that will affect millions of Georgians who use their health coverage every day. Trial attorneys and consumer advocates have flagged this disparity as potentially unconstitutional, and challenges are already anticipated. Whether courts will find this creates an impermissible classification remains to be seen.
The most emotionally charged opposition to SB 68 came from survivors of sexual assault, child abuse, elder abuse, and violence — and their concerns proved well-founded. The dramatic narrowing of negligent security law has effectively eliminated viable civil claims for many victims who were harmed on business premises.
Consider the scenarios that critics described during legislative hearings. Under the old law, a 14-year-old sold for sex at a seedy motel had a civil case against the motel if the owner failed to exercise reasonable care. The legislature acknowledged this problem and carved out an exception for sex trafficking victims — which is, on its face, the right call. But the carve-out stops there. If the same girl, at the same motel, is held captive and repeatedly raped — but no money changes hands — she has no civil case under SB 68, because the sex trafficking exception does not apply. If she is murdered, her family likely has no case either.
This arbitrary line has drawn fierce condemnation from survivors and their advocates. As one trial attorney wrote in a public letter: “How can lawmakers acknowledge that the new laws would bar the civil claims of a 14-year-old sold for sex and make an exception for that, but leave the same 14-year-old with no recourse if she was raped, tortured, killed? Where is ‘equal justice under law’ in these new laws?”
Beyond sexual assault, the reforms cut off claims by victims of elder abuse and children harmed at daycare centers, sports facilities, and other institutional settings. These are not frivolous lawsuits brought by billboard attorneys exploiting the system. They are cases where real institutional failures led to real, devastating harm.
One of the selling points of bifurcated trials was efficiency: split liability from damages, and you get cleaner verdicts. In practice, lawyers on both sides are discovering that trifurcated proceedings (liability, then compensatory damages, then punitive damages and attorney’s fees) can dramatically lengthen and complicate trials. Presenting a case in three separate phases, with different evidence rules at each phase, adds procedural complexity that often benefits the party with more resources — typically the defendant.
Similarly, the requirement that juries apportion fault to criminal perpetrators — and the mandate that a judge must overturn a verdict where the jury doesn’t assign the criminal “reasonable” fault — creates new avenues for post-trial motions and appeals. Defense attorneys can now argue after every negligent security verdict that the jury failed to properly blame the criminal, creating a second bite at the apple that will slow resolution of cases and burden courts.
Unlike Florida’s 2023 tort reform, which applied only to new cases, SB 68’s procedural and damages provisions applied immediately to cases already in litigation on April 21, 2025. For plaintiffs who had spent months or years building a case under the old rules — and for attorneys who had advised clients about likely recoveries under the old framework — this retroactivity was a significant disruption.
Defense attorneys have acknowledged this gives their clients a significant advantage in pending litigation. Plaintiffs who had calculated litigation economics based on the old rules now face different evidentiary standards, different procedural timelines, and different damage caps. Constitutional challenges to the retroactive application of provisions that substantively alter legal rights — rather than merely procedures — are working their way through Georgia courts.
Civil liability for corporate negligence has always served two functions: compensating victims and deterring unsafe behavior. By dramatically raising the bar for successful claims, SB 68 may weaken the deterrent effect of civil litigation in ways that could cost lives. If a hotel chain knows that the threshold for a successful negligent security claim is now far higher, the financial calculus for investing in security measures shifts. The marginal return on hiring additional security staff or improving lighting in parking garages declines when the legal exposure for failing to do so is substantially reduced.
This is not a theoretical concern. Research on tort reform across multiple states has documented that restrictions on liability are sometimes followed by increases in injuries and unsafe conditions in the affected industries. Georgia’s lawmakers may have inadvertently shifted the cost of unsafe business practices from negligent companies to injured individuals and their families. For more information on Georgia’s Tort Reform or for assistance with a personal injury case, contact Chattahoochee Injury Law today.
Next in this series: Part 3 explores concrete reforms that could address SB 68’s shortcomings while preserving its core benefits.
