Can the DOT be Found Liable for Overgrown Brush at the Intersection of a Tractor-Trailer Accident?
A girl was killed when the car in which she riding collided with a tractor-trailer at an intersection of in Colquitt County in the southern part of the state. Her parents brought a wrongful death action against the Georgia Department of Transportation (“the DOT”). Key to the case was the issue of negligent inspection.
The plaintiffs alleged that the intersection was negligently designed because the angle of the intersecting roads was 60 degrees. Their engineering expert opined that the intersection was skewed at angles that created significant safety issues. The expert said:
- Vehicles are exposed to conflicting traffic for a longer time span;
- Drivers must turn their heads dramatically to see across the entire sight triangle; and
- Lateral sight lines are frequently obstructed by the vehicle body.
The DOT moved for summary judgment on the negligent inspection claim, and the trial court granted the motion. The plaintiffs appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in granting the DOT’s motion because the evidence presented a fact issue as to whether the DOT’s failure to inspect and maintain the brush at the intersection obstructed the drivers’ visibility and contributed to the collision.
Background
On the afternoon of November 10, 2017, the plaintiffs’ daughter was a passenger in a Toyota driving southbound on Thigpen Trail in Colquitt County, at the intersection of State Route 37. The road was dry and the weather was clear. The driver of the Toyota, who didn’t recall anything about the accident, acknowledged that she may not have stopped at the stop bar at the intersection—or at a minimum, she didn’t come to a complete stop. As they entered the intersection, a tractor-trailer driving eastbound on State Route 37 was also crossing the intersection, and the vehicles collided. The girl died as a result of the injuries she sustained in the collision.
The plaintiffs alleged that overgrown vegetation on the north side of State Route 37’s intersection with Thigpen Trail obstructed visibility, creating a dangerous condition for motorists, and that the DOT was liable for the negligent inspection and maintenance of the area.
The DOT moved for summary judgment on this claim, and in a brief court order without any findings of fact, the trial court granted the DOT’s motion. The court concluded that there were no genuine issues of material fact and that the undisputed facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, warranted judgment for the DOT as a matter of law on the plaintiffs’ claim for negligent inspection or maintenance. This appeal followed.
The Court of Appeals Reverses
Chief Judge E. Trenton Brown, III wrote that to prove negligence, a plaintiff must establish four elements: duty, breach of that duty, causation, and damages. Negligence isn’t susceptible to summary adjudication, the judge explained, unless the evidence is plain, palpable, and indisputable that the non-moving party can’t present any slight evidence on each essential element of the action in response to create a jury issue.
The judge explained that questions of negligence, diligence, contributory negligence, and proximate cause are matters for the jury, and a court shouldn’t take the place of the jury in solving them, except in plain and indisputable cases.
Here, the DOT contended that the plaintiffs’ theory of causation was nothing but pure speculation, which is insufficient to overcome summary judgment. The DOT based this contention on three pieces of evidence:
- The driver of the Toyota had no memory of the accident;
- The tractor-trailer driver testified that he wasn’t sure if any vegetation blocked his view; and
- The accident reconstruction experts agreed that, although vegetation may have blocked the drivers’ view before they neared the intersection, the driver of the Toyota would’ve had a clear view of the oncoming tractor-trailer if she’d stopped at the stop sign and looked to her right—the semi would’ve been able to see vehicles entering the intersection from at least 1,000 feet away.
But Judge Brown and the panel of the Court of Appeals said that the DOT overlooked other evidence in the record from which a jury could conclude that both drivers had reduced visibility from the overgrown vegetation at the intersection, contributing to the collision. As such, the Court couldn’t agree with the DOT that the evidence was speculative or that the testimony upon which it relied warranted summary judgment in its favor.
The tractor-trailer driver testified that it was the first time he’d driven through the intersection and agreed that he was traveling over the speed limit. He confirmed that he saw an intersection sign on State Route 37 at some point on the right-side of the highway before the intersection and that there were no buildings on the left side of the roadway, Nor were there any other vehicles coming toward him in the westbound lane of State Route 37 that would have blocked his view.
According to the truck driver, as he was approaching the intersection, there were some bushes on his left, but he wasn’t sure if they blocked his view or not, saying that he couldn’t remember… “It was mainly just a field on both sides of me.” As he neared the intersection, he didn’t see any cars or anything across the field, but just as he came to the intersection, the Toyota “was there. … It popped out of damn nowhere.”
He said that he never even saw the Toyota before impact and confirmed that he wasn’t able to hit his horn or brakes before the crash, remarking, “The only thing I did is grab the steering wheel, both feet on the brakes.”
A witness to the accident, who’d been driving directly behind the tractor-trailer for some time, testified:
I was following the semi-truck and approaching Thigpen Trail and in a flash, the Toyota just came across and then the truck hit it. … It took the car that had ran the red — stop sign was completely just covered by the truck in front of me. I don’t know, I couldn’t tell if the car ran the stop sign or was already stopped and pulled out. I can’t swear to that because the weeds on the left (north) side, off the shoulder of State Route 37 westbound near the stop sign were too high. … I’m not sure if the Toyota was stopped at the stop sign and then pulled out, or if it ran through because the weeds were too high at the intersection. The weeds were too high for me to tell if that car was stopped or if it ran the stop sign.
Photos from the vantage point of the tractor-trailer driver as well as the Toyota driver hours after the accident showed vegetation blocking the view of both drivers upon their respective approaches. Also, the plaintiffs’ expert testified that because there was a sight-distance problem resulting from the angle of the intersection, it was imperative for the DOT to keep the right-of-way clear and “kill the vegetation.” By the time the plaintiffs’ expert visited the scene, the brush had been cleared but was growing back. The expert also presented evidence that from 2017 to February 22, 2021, the rural intersection, which “averaged daily volumes of only 1600 to 2600 vehicles per day,” had experienced 27 angle-type crashes, resulting in 28 injuries and two fatalities.
An accident reconstructionist hired by defendants other than the DOT who visited the scene 11 days after the accident, opined that as the Toyota approached the stop bar at the intersection, the bushes and trees on the southwest corner of Thigpen Trail “looking west down 37” — in combination with a blind spot in the Toyota — “caused an obstruction for the Toyota driver’s field of view prior to reaching that stop bar.” A second accident reconstructionist opined that he would’ve expected the Toyota driver to be able to see the tractor trailer as she got up to the stop sign, but that the shrubbery and a fence on Thigpen Trail would’ve obstructed her view as she looked to her right/westbound “down Highway 37,” starting at 200 feet from the stop sign to approximately 55 feet from the stop sign.
Judge Brown wrote that, in this case — as in other vehicular accident cases where the Court has addressed similar sight-obstruction circumstances — although it’s possible that a jury could determine that several factors contributed to the accident, given the testimony and evidence recounted above, the Court couldn’t eliminate as a matter of law that the obstruction in line of sight caused by the overgrown vegetation as a proximate or concurring cause of the accident.
Accordingly, the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment to the DOT on the plaintiffs’ claim for negligent inspection or maintenance. Munro v. Ga. DOT, 2025 Ga. App. LEXIS 328, 2025 LX 245513 (Ga. App. July 28, 2025).
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