How Specific are the Dollar Amount Requirements in an Ante Litem Notice?
This case involves an automobile collision involving a City of Atlanta employee in which the plaintiff was injured and, filed a lawsuit against the City. The City moved to dismiss her complaint for failure to comply with the ante litem notice requirements in O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5 (e) — specifically for failure to include a specific amount of monetary damages being sought. The trial court granted the motion, and the plaintiff appealed, arguing that the trial court erred by dismissing her case because her notice requesting to settle for either the City’s “liability policy limits or $250,000.00, whichever is greater,” met the statutory requirement.
Background
On January 22, 2023, the plaintiff was traveling on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway when a City police officer driving a patrol car tried to turn left across the road. The police vehicle collided with the plaintiff’s vehicle and caused it to flip over and land on its roof. As a result of the accident, which the plaintiff alleged occurred due to the officer’s negligence, her vehicle was damaged, and she was physically injured.
On March 12, 2023, the plaintiff sent a notice of claim to the City, providing these facts and noting that the amount of loss was yet to be determined. The plaintiff sent a second notice of claim to the City on June 22, 2023, in which notice she offered to settle her claims for the City’s “liability policy limits or $250,000, whichever is greater.”
The City answered and moved to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the plaintiff failed to comply with O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5(e) because her June ante litem notice did not provide an exact amount for which she would settle her claim.
The plaintiff responded, arguing that the language of her June notice was sufficiently clear and definite to enable the City to settle her claim for either the amount of its insurance policy limits or $250,000, depending on which amount was greater. Nevertheless, the trial court accepted the City’s argument and granted its motion to dismiss, finding that the notice wasn’t sufficient to meet the requirements of O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5 (e) because it didn’t include a specific settlement amount.
The plaintiff appealed, asserting that her June notice was sufficient to satisfy O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5(e) and that the trial court erred by granting the City’s motion to dismiss based on its purported insufficiency.
The Court of Appeals Reverses
Presiding Judge Sara L. Doyle wrote that first the Court would review the statutory language of O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5(e) “focusing on the plain and ordinary meaning of legal text rather than its literal or hyper-technical meaning.” Notably, the Georgia Supreme Court recently clarified that “substantial compliance with the municipal ante litem notice statute is all that is required.”
O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5 requires that when filing suit against a municipality, a plaintiff must present an ante litem notice to the governing authority within six months of the event stating the time, place, extent of the injury, and the negligence that caused the plaintiff’s injury. Subsection (e) of the statute requires that the plaintiff include in the notice “the specific amount of monetary damages being sought from the municipal corporation.” The subsection goes on to explain that “[t]he amount of monetary damages set forth in such claim shall constitute an offer of compromise.” The Court of Appeals has explained that “when our ante litem cases refer to an offer that could be accepted by the municipality or an offer of compromise, they simply mean an offer sufficiently definite that acceptance would create a binding settlement agreement.”
Judge Doyle found that despite the fact that the plaintiff’s notice provided two possible amounts for which she would settle ($250,000 or policy limits), her use of a restrictive clause indicated that she sought to settle for only one of those amounts — the greater of the two. This is a clear, unambiguous, identifiable, finite settlement amount constituting an offer of compromise, the judge said.
There was no evidence of the policy limits. In its brief, the City stated that its policy limits were $500,000, citing to O.C.G.A. § 36-92-2, but that statute concerns the amount for which a municipal corporation has been deemed to have waived sovereign immunity regardless of whether any applicable insurance policy has been purchased.
Moreover, the City could have purchased additional applicable insurance, in which case its sovereign immunity would be deemed waived to the limits of that policy.
Judge Doyle concluded that because the City knew the amount of its own liability insurance policy limits, it had no need to speculate as to whether its policy limits were greater than or less than $250,000. Moreover, the plaintiff provided various evidence of her losses to her property and person in her notices, so the City had the information necessary to decide whether to settle for the amount sought in the plaintiff’s ante litem notice.
As such, the Court of Appeals held that the plaintiff’s notices substantially complied with the requirements of O.C.G.A. § 36-33-5, and therefore, the trial court erred by granting the City’s motion to dismiss on this basis. The judgment was reversed. Burts v. City of Atlanta, 2025 Ga. App. LEXIS 358 *; 2025 LX 378797; 2025 WL 2527615 (Ga. App. September 3, 2025).
Experience with City Cases and Ante Litem Notices
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