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The Georgia Court of Appeals this week handed down multiple decisions, three of which could indirectly affect property and liability insurance coverage in the state for years to come.

In a case over a deliberately set Atlanta apartment complex that killed a man and left 30 residents without a home, a jury in January 2024 had awarded $140 million to the family of the deceased resident. On Oct. 31 this year, the appeals court vacated the huge verdict against the landlord and remanded the case for a new trial.

The trial judge had given the jury improper instructions on premises liability, the appellate judges said. Despite the appeals court noting that the landlord had failed to install smoke detectors and sprinkler systems as required by law and regulation, “we conclude as a matter of law that the cause of the injury lay in an area possessed by Hughes (the deceased victim) and that it was error to charge the jury on premises liability law,” reads.

Instead, because the fire was set in a closet – not a common area at the complex – the jury should have been educated on landlord liability law, which exempts landlords from general landowner liability, the appeals court wrote.

The effect of the erroneous jury instruction was “to supplant the landlord’s limited duty to keep the premises in repair with ‘a harsher rule of responsibility than that to which it was already subject,'” the court wrote, citing a 1933 court ruling.

A further appeal by the Hughes estate are expected.

In a second opinion this week, the case involved allegations that may sound familiar to auto insurers: An Atlanta plaintiffs’ law firm was allegedly stirring up litigation with illegal ambulance chasing. No, it was not an insurance company making the accusations. It was another injury lawyer.

In Cambre vs. Lazenby, the appellate court on Nov. 3 found that a lower court should have dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit. The case started in 2024 when Gainesville, Georgia, lawyer Shane Lazenby filed suit against Cambre & Associates, an Atlanta injury law firm.

Cambre was obtaining information about auto accident victims before that information was made public, then sending runners to solicit the victims as clients, often using high-pressure tactics, Lazenby alleged. Such practices are illegal under Georgia statutes and state Bar rules, the plaintiffs said.

Lazenby argued that the alleged ambulance chasing and “case running” gave the Cambre firm an unfair business advantage and constituted racketeering – in violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. A trial court refused to dismiss the lawsuit, which Cambre’s team had said failed to state a claim or allege all necessary elements of a RICO violation. The appeals court disagreed.

“The facts alleged in support of Lazenby’s RICO claim are simply too attenuated and speculative to form the proximate cause of the supposed financial losses theoretically incurred by Lazenby and others similarly situated,” the appellate .

In a third case, the appeals court found the opposite – that a trial court should not have dismissed a RICO suit brought by two whistleblowers stemming from a construction firm’s allegedly fraudulent immigration paperwork.

In Wommack vs. G.S. Construction, two human resources directors charged that the contractor had maintained a trove of fake documents purporting to show that illegal immigrant workers were fully documented.

The HR managers “discovered documents, such as fake social security cards, handwritten social security numbers, and fake permanent resident cards, that indicated the defendants were assisting these employees in committing identity fraud,” the court explained. Fraudulent drug screenings were also provided, the HR manager argued.

After insisting that she was required to report the unlawful employment, the first HR manager, Amy Weavear, was fired. Another one, Steven Wommack, was hired, and then fired in a similar manner, the court opinion said. Following their terminations, the plaintiffs filed a Georgia RICO civil complaint.

Illegal immigrant labor can potentially affect workers’ compensation, builder’s risk and commercial liability insurance coverage, by underreporting payroll and the level of risk involved. Some construction firms around the country have long been accused of hiring undocumented aliens and faking insurance coverage or deceiving insurance carriers.

“Both plaintiffs asserted not only that they suffered financial injury, including loss of wages, but also mental and emotional distress, and damage to their reputations,” the appeals court noted in .

The trial court found that Georgia courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have held that a fired employee cannot turn the termination into a RICO suit. But the appellate judges said that the case law that those court decisions had relied on were not exactly on-point for this case. The plaintiff HR managers had alleged that the RICO violations were directly harmful to them and were made in furtherance of a scheme to profit from unauthorized immigrant labor.

“At this stage, because the plaintiffs have alleged that the defendants’ acts or threats were intended to deter them from reporting the defendants’ criminal activity or later testifying, in violation of OCGA § 16-10-32(b) or OCGA § 16-10 93(b), the plaintiffs have each alleged that the defendants directed a predicate offense at them and that they suffered direct harm as a result—which is sufficient to withstand a motion to dismiss,” the appellate court wrote.

Topics Georgia