It was the night of the Georgia-Alabama game. Two UGA students had left a tailgate and were heading to downtown Athens to watch the game. They were crossing the street in a crosswalk when a careless driver hit them. We secured settlements of $40,000 each, for a total recovery of $80,000. We obtained these settlements despite a 2025 Georgia law that made it easier for the insurance company to challenge the amount of the students’ medical expenses.
Case Summary
Settlement: $80,000 total — $40,000 for each student
Location: South Jackson Street on the University of Georgia campus in Athens,
Type of Case: Pedestrian accident / crosswalk collision
Injuries: Concussion and scalp laceration requiring staples; neck, back, leg, knee and hand injuries
Medical Bills: $23,000 / $34,000
Key Issue: 2025 changes to Georgia personal injury law let the insurer argue the “reasonable value” of medical bills was closer to the $1,000–$3,000 health insurance paid, not the billed amounts of $23,000 and $34,000
What Our Clients Said
Car Hit Pedestrians in Crosswalk on UGA Campus
The students were crossing Jackson Street in the crosswalk near Peabody Hall and the Jackson Street building. A driver was traveling north on Jackson Street towards downtown. He wasn’t paying attention and hit them. The impact knocked both to the ground and injured them. UGA police responded to the wreck and cited the driver for violating O.C.G.A. 40-6-91, failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.
The Injuries
National EMS transported both students to Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center.
The first student was diagnosed with a deep cut to her scalp requiring two staples to close, bruising and swelling around her eye and a concussion. Over the next several weeks, the concussion caused her headaches, brain fog, nausea, dizziness and difficulty concentrating. She treated at UGA’s Concussion Center, which prescribed her prescription medication and referred her for specialized physical therapy for her vision and balance. With time and several weeks of treatment, she made a good recovery and has no lingering effects.
The second student had cuts and bruises to his leg and hand and his back and neck hurt. Doctors ordered CT scans to make sure he didn’t have any broken bones or internal injuries and treated him for injuries to his neck, back, leg, knee and hand. Over the next several weeks, he developed a large swollen mass on his middle finger, which had been injured when the car knocked him to the ground. Doctors ordered an MRI of it and recommended surgery to remove the mass.
How 2025 Changes to Georgia Personal Injury Law Affected the Settlements
These cases are good examples of how a 2025 change to Georgia personal injury law can affect the value of a personal injury case.
Before 2025, an injured person could claim their medical bills in a personal injury lawsuit and the jury would not hear evidence of whether the person had health insurance and whether it paid those bills. This was called the “collateral source rule.”
However, in 2025 the Georgia legislature passed O.C.G.A. 51-12-1.1. It got rid of the collateral source rule and allows the jury to consider both the amount charged by the doctor / hospital and the amount paid by health insurance. The jury hears that evidence and then determines the reasonable value of the medical bills.
The practical effect of this is that the jury is likely to return a lower verdict for the injured person’s medical bills than it would have under the old law.
Here’s how it affected our case. The first student’s medical bills were approximately $23,000 and the second student’s bills were $34,000. The first student’s health insurance paid $1,000 for their bills and the second student’s health insurance paid $3,000.
The other driver had insurance policy limits of $50,000 per person / $100,000 per accident. This means that each student could make a claim for $50,000 each.
Before the new law, the jury would have heard that the students’ medical bills were $23,000 and $34,000 each and would not have heard that they had health insurance. Jury verdicts in the case likely would have exceeded the $50,000 / $100,000 policy limits. The insurance company probably would have agreed to pay each student the $50,000 policy limits rather than risk a verdict for more than their policy limits.
However, under the new law, the insurance company would have been able to show the jury that health insurance paid $1,000 and $3,000. The insurance company could argue that those were the reasonable amount of their medical bills, not $23,000 and $34,000. Given that, it would have been much harder to get a jury verdict exceeding the $50,000 / $100,000 policy limits.
The insurance company’s top offer was $40,000 each. They each decided to accept rather than go through the time and expense of trial.
What Georgia’s New Law Means For Personal Injury Cases
Personal injury cases still have value after the new law. However, lawyers can no longer evaluate the client’s claim for medical bills based on the total amount of the bills, which we’ve done for decades. Now we must consider what evidence the defense will be able to present at trial of how much health insurance paid for the bills. To get a good result in a personal injury case, it has always been important to focus on how the injuries affected the client’s life: the pain, limitations, inconvenience and disruption. Now, it is even more important to do so.
