This month marks the one-year anniversary of a significant shift in Georgia's legal landscape. On April 21, 2025, Governor Kemp signed Senate Bills 68 and 69 into law. This sweeping tort reform legislation was pitched to Georgia consumers and businesses as a remedy for rising insurance costs and a way to keep insurers from exiting the state. A year in, it's worth stepping back and asking: what did this law actually do, and who does it help?
First, What's a Tort?
Before diving into "tort reform," it helps to understand what a tort is. Put simply, a tort is a civil wrong that causes harm to another person's body, property, reputation, or rights. When someone rear-ends your car, slips on a wet floor at a negligent business, or is injured by a defective product, the resulting legal claim is a tort claim. The civil justice system exists to compensate people who've been harmed by someone else's negligence. Tort reform, then, refers to changes that limit either the ability of injured people to bring those claims or the amount of money they can receive when they do.
The Promise: Lower Insurance Rates
The headline argument for SB 68 and 69 was straightforward: Georgia was becoming an expensive and unpredictable state for insurers, and those costs were being passed on to you in the form of higher premiums. There were real concerns behind this argument. Nationwide Insurance, for example, effectively paused writing new business in Georgia due to what it called "profitability issues," and its Excess & Surplus division exited the commercial auto market entirely in 2023.
One year later, there are some early signs the reform is having its intended financial effect. Liberty Mutual and its subsidiary Safeco announced nearly a 6% rate reduction in late 2025, and State Farm has reportedly implemented a rate reduction as of November 2025, though official figures haven't been released. In February, Georgia's Insurance Commissioner John King posted that "Four rate cuts in less than three months shows that our approach is working." With over 200 companies actively competing for automobile insurance business in Georgia, increased competition can only help consumers, if the savings actually materialize in your premium bill.
What the Law Actually Changed
The reform touched several major areas of civil litigation. Here's what each one means in plain terms. Phantom Damages. Before SB 68, a plaintiff injured in an auto accident could seek recovery based on the full "sticker price" billed by a hospital which is sometimes dramatically higher than what insurance actually pays. Under the new law, plaintiffs can only recover the "reasonable value" of medical care, meaning what was actually paid or expected to be paid. Juries now hear both the billed amount and the actual paid amount and weigh them together. Insurers argued the old system allowed inflated recoveries; plaintiff attorneys argue it deprived injured people of fair compensation for the true cost of their care.
Anchoring and Noneconomic Damages. When a jury is deciding how much to award for pain and suffering (losses that have no price tag) the first number they hear tends to influence their final decision. This psychological effect is called "anchoring." Under SB 68, attorneys can no longer suggest a specific dollar figure for noneconomic damages unless it's supported by evidence. The law also restricts "per diem" arguments, the technique of saying something like, "My client will suffer for 30 years. Isn't that worth $100 an hour?" Judges must now instruct juries that any dollar amounts mentioned by attorneys are not evidence. The practical effect is that it becomes much harder to recover large awards for pain and suffering, even in cases of genuine and lasting injury.
Trial Bifurcation. Either party can now demand that a trial be split into separate phases: liability is decided first, then damages. The idea is to make sure a jury decides whether a defendant is actually at fault before they hear potentially emotional testimony about the extent of a plaintiff's suffering. This may lead to fairer verdicts in some cases, but it also separates the human story of an injury from the question of accountability.
Seat Belt Admissibility. Previously, whether a plaintiff was wearing a seat belt at the time of an accident couldn't be used against them. Under SB 68, that information is now admissible and can be used to reduce a plaintiff's recovery. If you weren't buckled up, that fact can now shift some of the blame, and the financial burden, back onto you.
Negligent Security. This is perhaps the most nuanced change. Under Georgia law, a business or property owner can be held liable if a criminal act against a customer was foreseeable. Foreseeability exists, for example, if the property was in a documented high-crime area or the owner had ignored repeated safety complaints. The logic was sound: legal liability gives property owners a financial incentive to take proactive steps to protect the people on their premises.
SB 68 changed the fault-sharing rules significantly. Now, if a criminal is involved, there's a legal presumption that the criminal must bear at least 50% of the fault. If a jury awards $1 million and splits fault 50/50, the property owner only pays $500,000. Because criminals typically have no money to collect from, the injured victim is left with half the compensation they were awarded.
A Fair Assessment
It's genuinely too early to know the full impact of these reforms. If insurance rates meaningfully drop for East Cobb families and small businesses, that's a real and tangible benefit. Competition among insurers is healthy, and if the reforms helped stabilize that market, credit is due.
But Georgia consumers should understand the tradeoff clearly. This legislation reduced the ability of injured Georgians to access the courts and recover fair compensation. The rules around anchoring, phantom damages, and negligent security don't just trim excessive verdicts, they are meant to reduce all claim values. The civil justice system exists to make injured people whole after an injury. When the rules change in ways that primarily benefit insurers and defendants, it's worth asking whether the savings will genuinely reach policyholders or simply improve corporate bottom lines.
As Georgia State Senator Josh McLaurin put it before tort reform passed last year, what he would have preferred to see was "insurance reform, where we hold the insurance companies accountable" to provide the benefits their customers have paid for instead of making it harder for injured Georgians to be made whole. The next few years will tell the story. Watch your premiums and pay attention to what happens when someone you know gets hurt.
The Auto Accident Attorneys Group has spent over three decades doing one thing: taking care of people. With its flagship East Cobb office serving the community since 2018, the firm's attorneys handle auto, truck, and motorcycle accident cases from start to finish. Representation includes professional investigation, health insurance advocacy, reimbursement negotiations, and connections to specialized medical and wellness resources. Consultations are always free, and representation is fully contingency-based, so clients never have to choose between getting help and getting better. In a legal landscape reshaped by Georgia's tort reform, having an experienced, full-service advocate in your corner matters more than ever. The firm also hosts The Auto Accident Attorneys Podcast on the 3A Network covering the things people wish they'd known before something happened. Because whether it's in the courtroom, the recovery room, or your earbuds, The Auto Accident Attorneys Group lives by a simple promise: We take care of you. theaaagroup.com
The author is a plaintiff's personal injury attorney. This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Georgia's Insurance Commissioner John King said, "Four rate cuts in less than three months shows that our approach is working."