Georgia Supreme Court Extends the Time to File Lawsuits For Personal Injuries Arising out of Motor Vehicle Accidents
The Georgia Supreme Court issued an opinion today having a tremendous impact on personal injury cases, especially automobile accident, trucking and other road wreck cases. Until today, with very few exceptions, negligently injured individuals and the families of loved ones wrongfully killed on the roads of Georgia had 2 years to the day of the wreck to file a lawsuit. In Beneke v. Parker, S08G2078 S08G2082 (9/28/09), the Supreme Court held that in situations where the at-fault driver receives a citation for violating the rules of the road, the two-year statute of limitations is tolled (does not begin to run), until the citation is disposed of. This is a huge.
The facts of the case are straightforward. Ms. Parker was injured in a car accident on April 27, 2005, when she was a passenger in a vehicle which was struck from the rear by Mr. Beneke. Beneke was cited for following too closely. Parker filed a lawsuit against Beneke on May 11, 2007. On motion by Beneke, the trial court first dismissed the lawsuit because it was not filed within the two-year statute of limitations. On reconsideration, however, the trial court vacated it previous order and allowed the case to move forward. The case was appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals and ultimately to the Supreme Court. Construing Georgia law, the Supreme Court agreed with the trial court and found the complaint was timely filed because the statute of limitations did not begin to run until the traffic citation was disposed of on May 19, 2005.
The Court recognized that its holding would have significant impact on personal injury lawsuits arising out of vehicle accidents by tolling the statute of limitations, but the Court felt that it had no choice but to reach the result it did because of the way the relevant statute (OCGA ยง 9-3-99) was written. The Court noted that if the legislature did not want the statute to be construed in this way, it certainly could have written it differently. Because it did not, the court reasoned that any undesirable result was a matter properly addressed by the General Assembly rather than the courts. My guess is that when the General Assembly meets next year, it will change the language of the statute to undo the ruling in this case. Until that happens, however, the statute of limitations should be extended in most road wreck cases, giving additional time for the filing of a complaint, because the at-fault party is almost always given a citation for causing the accident by violating the rules of the road.
