After a crash in Georgia: the questions, answered on the record

An employee hurt in a crash while working can take workers' compensation and also sue the at-fault driver. The employer or its insurer then has a lien on the tort recovery for benefits paid, but under O.C.G.A. § 34-9-11.1(b) it collects only if the employee has been "fully and completely compensated" for all economic and noneconomic losses. For an injury the Act covers, the employer and a co-worker who caused the crash cannot be sued.

An equipment violation counts against an injured rider only if the missing or defective equipment had something to do with the crash or the injuries. When it did, it becomes part of the rider's share of fault under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, which reduces recovery and ends it at 50 percent. Getting the statute right matters, because each rule requires something specific, and some of the sections cited for motorcycles do not mention them.

The difference is everything: at 49 percent fault you recover 51 percent of your damages, and at 51 percent you recover nothing. The real dividing line in Georgia is lower than the question suggests. O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33(g) bars recovery when the plaintiff "is 50 percent or more responsible", so a finding of exactly 50 percent also produces zero.

The SR-13 is the Georgia Department of Driver Services' "Personal Report of Accident", a form for crashes no police officer is called to report. The form itself says it "is for your personal use and should not be mailed to the Department of Driver Services, as it will be destroyed upon receipt." No one files it with the state, there is no 30-day filing deadline, and it is not the police crash report.

Spoliation is "the destruction or failure to preserve evidence" that is relevant to "contemplated or pending litigation" (Phillips v. Harmon, 2015). The duty to preserve begins when litigation is reasonably foreseeable to the party controlling the evidence, with or without a letter from the other side, and it binds plaintiffs as well as defendants. Sanctions range up to, in the worst cases, a jury instruction presuming the evidence was adverse, a default judgment, or dismissal.

In Georgia, the driver who caused the crash pays, through liability insurance. There is no no-fault personal injury protection (PIP) requirement: Georgia repealed it in legislation that the Georgia State University Law Review reviewed in 1992. Fault is measured in percentages under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, so the insurer of each at-fault driver pays that driver's share, up to its limits, and the injured person's recovery shrinks with their share and ends at 50 percent.

The surviving spouse files first. If there is no spouse, the children file; if neither, the parents; if none, the estate's administrator or executor files for the next of kin (O.C.G.A. §§ 51-4-2, 51-4-4, 51-4-5, 19-7-1). The measure is "the full value of the life of the decedent", measured "without deducting for any of the necessary or personal expenses" of the decedent (§ 51-4-1(1)). A spouse sharing with children gets at least one-third.

At 50 percent. Under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33(g), "the plaintiff shall not be entitled to receive any damages if the plaintiff is 50 percent or more responsible for the injury or damages claimed." Below that line, the jury sets the plaintiff's percentage and the judge reduces the damages by it (§ 51-12-33(a)). A driver found 30 percent at fault keeps 70 percent of the damages; a driver found 50 percent at fault keeps nothing.

The family purpose doctrine makes the head of a household liable for a family member's negligent driving of a car kept for family use, only after two steps. Four facts must exist: permission, control handed over, the family member in the car, and a family purpose. Then the owner must have had enough authority and control over the car's use to amount to agency. Title and insurance in the parent's name do not decide it.

Make the request to the records custodian of the agency that holds the record. It must produce responsive records in a reasonable time, at most three business days, or by then describe them and give a timeline (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71(b)(1)(A)). Crash reports have their own rule: a person named in the report is entitled to a copy, and others need a statutory "need". Road and signal records are requested the same way.

Both are claims against the trucking company for its own conduct, and they use different knowledge tests. Negligent hiring asks whether the company knew or should have known the driver posed a risk of the kind of harm that happened. Negligent entrustment requires actual knowledge that the driver was incompetent. And since Quynn v. Hulsey (2020), a company's admission that it answers for its driver's negligence no longer gets these claims dismissed.

Who owns the road decides the immunity rule. A state road claim runs against Georgia DOT under the Tort Claims Act and its design and discretionary-function exceptions. A city street claim must fit a waiver such as the city's ministerial duty, which the Supreme Court of Georgia limited in March 2026 to the lanes of travel. A county road claim needs a statute waiving county immunity, and the county vehicle statute is not one.

Georgia's motorcycle rules are in O.C.G.A. §§ 40-6-311 through 40-6-315, with equipment rules in Title 40, Chapter 8. Breaking one does not assign fault by itself: the violation has to have contributed to the crash or to the injuries, and the rider's share then reduces recovery under § 51-12-33, ending it at 50 percent. One of these statutes also protects the rider, by forbidding other drivers to deprive a motorcycle of its lane.

The two problems are different. A missing registration does not by itself change who is liable; what matters for payment is whether any liability insurance covers the driver. A missing permission changes a great deal, because each Georgia theory that makes an owner answer for someone else's driving depends on something the owner did or allowed. When neither the driver nor the owner's policy pays, the injured person's own uninsured motorist coverage is the backstop.

Clear and convincing evidence that the defendant's conduct "showed willful misconduct, malice, fraud, wantonness, oppression, or that entire want of care which would raise the presumption of conscious indifference to consequences" (O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1(b)). Gross negligence does not qualify. The cap is $250,000, except for product liability and for a defendant who acted with specific intent to harm or while substantially impaired and was an "active tort-feasor", which can include someone other than the driver.

Negligence per se means that breaking a safety statute counts as negligence without separate proof of what a reasonable driver would have done. In Georgia traffic cases it is not automatic: the Court of Appeals has described a proven violation as "a prima facie showing of negligence", after which the burden shifts to the driver to show the violation "was unintentional and in the exercise of ordinary care". Causation still has to be proved.

Georgia handles underinsured drivers inside its uninsured motorist (UM) statute: your UM coverage treats an at-fault vehicle that carries liability insurance as uninsured, and how much it pays depends on which of two forms your policy uses (O.C.G.A. § 33-7-11(b)(1)(D)(ii)). Add-on coverage, the default, pays on top of the at-fault driver's available liability coverage. Reduced-by coverage, which must be chosen in writing, pays only the difference between that coverage and your UM limit.

Georgia insurers may not issue an auto liability policy without uninsured motorist (UM) coverage (umbrella and excess policies aside), and it comes off the policy only if an insured named in the policy rejects it in writing (O.C.G.A. § 33-7-11(a)(1), (a)(3)). Without a written rejection, the policy carries UM coverage. When it applies, your own insurer pays what an uninsured, underinsured, or unidentified at-fault driver would owe you, up to your UM limits.

A Georgia hospital, nursing home, physician practice, chiropractic practice, or traumatic burn care practice can claim a lien on the injured person's cause of action for its reasonable charges, subject to any attorney's lien. The lien is valid only with timely notice and filing, and unenforceable unless the provider first billed any health insurer the patient has and was rejected. Health insurers face a separate full-compensation condition.

Lane splitting is illegal in Georgia: "No person shall operate a motorcycle between lanes of traffic or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles" (O.C.G.A. § 40-6-312(c)). For an injured rider, the general traffic-violation rule applies: the violation is evidence of the rider's negligence, not an automatic loss. It counts only if it contributed to the crash or the injuries, the other driver's violations count too, and recovery ends only at 50 percent fault.

Economic damages are money losses, such as medical bills, lost wages, and car repairs; non-economic damages are everything else, such as pain and loss of enjoyment of life. Since 2025, O.C.G.A. § 9-10-184(a) defines the two for its own purposes: economic damages are "pecuniary damages recoverable in tort for bodily injury or wrongful death", and noneconomic damages are all other such damages. Punitive damages, a third category, punish or deter rather than compensate.

Lending your car makes you liable for the borrower's crash under this doctrine only if you knew, when you handed over the keys, that the borrower was incompetent to drive because of age or inexperience, physical or mental condition, or a known habit of recklessness. Georgia requires actual knowledge. That you should have known, or could have found out, is not enough.

Federal trucking rules address the motor carrier, not the injured person: they set how long it keeps certain records, electronic logs for at least six months among them, and a Georgia court can sanction a party that loses evidence after it should have anticipated litigation. Dashcam video and engine data have no federal retention period in those rules, so the first written notice to the carrier matters.

It depends on whose insurer asks and whether a suit is pending. Your own insurer's inspection and examination rights come from your policy, and refusing can risk that coverage under its terms. The other driver's insurer has no such contract; after a suit is filed, the defense can inspect the vehicle through discovery and can compel a medical examination only by court order, "on motion for good cause shown" (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-35(a)).