What is a Jury Charge in a Georgia Auto Accident Case?
Right before a jury trial was set to begin in a case stemming from a fatal collision on Interstate 285, the trial court entered an order denying the defendant’s request to charge the jury on the principle that awarded damages must be fair to both parties. The Court of Appeals granted the defendant’s application for interlocutory appeal from this ruling.
Background
A car being driven by a third party stopped in a middle lane of Interstate 285 because of mechanical problems. The plaintiff’s deceased husband stopped behind the disabled car, got out of his car, and walked to the disabled car. The defendant was driving in the same lane as the other two vehicles. He began moving his truck to an another lane when he struck the victim, who died from his injuries.
The victim’s widow and his estate (the plaintiff) sued the defendant for wrongful death based on claims of negligence and negligence per se. The plaintiff sought general and special damages, including damages for pain and suffering, funeral expenses, medical expenses and lost wages, as well as damages for the full value of the victim’s life.
Three weeks before the trial was set to begin, the plaintiff moved to prevent the defendant from arguing to the jury that damages should be fair to both sides, because “fairness to both parties is not the legal principle by which damages for injury and death are determined under Georgia law.” The trial court granted the motion.
The defendant’s request to charge the jury on fairness to both parties came from the Suggested Pattern Jury Instructions: Civil, Tort Damages; Preliminary Instructions. That instruction includes the sentence, “When one party is required to pay damages to another, the law seeks to ensure that the damages awarded are fair to both parties.” The trial court held that it wouldn’t include that sentence in the charge.
Jury Charge on Appeal
Presiding Judge Christopher J. McFadden explained that a requested charge should be delivered if it’s a correct statement of law that’s pertinent and material to an issue in the case and not substantially covered by the charge actually given. The issue, then, was whether the trial court erred in holding that the principle in the sentence “when one party is required to pay damages to another, the law seeks to ensure that the damages awarded are fair to both parties,” wasn’t a correct statement of the law. The presiding judge noted that binding precedent from the Georgia Supreme Court demonstrates that it is. The Georgia Supreme Court addressed the proper measure of damages for permanent injury in a personal injury action in 1890:
We therefore think that it is better for both parties to let the jury look at these things as a whole, in the light of common sense and their own experience, and let them make such a compensation in their verdict as would be reasonable and just to both parties, not giving to the plaintiff a large sum with the purpose of enriching him, but compensating him for the loss of money which he would probably earn had he not been injured, and thereby prevented by the negligence of the defendant.
The law hasn’t changed, Judge McFadden said. In 2008, the Court held that “the method of calculating damages should be flexible so as to reasonably compensate the injured party, and at the same time, be fair to all litigants.”
Likewise, the Court of Appeals has held that the principle embodied in the sentence “when one party is required to pay damages to another, the law seeks to ensure that the damages awarded are fair to both parties” is a correct statement of law.
In Shepherd Constr. Co. v. Vaughn (1953), the plaintiff filed a nuisance action seeking recovery of damages for injury to real and personal property as well as for pain and suffering. The trial court instructed the jury that the guide for the jury in determining compensation for mental and physical pain and suffering is the enlightened conscience of impartial jurors, acting under the sanctity of their oath to compensate the plaintiff with fairness to the defendant.
The plaintiff also argued that the requested charge misstated the measure of wrongful death damages, and that it improperly substitutes fairness to the defendant as the measure of wrongful death damages instead of the full value of the victim’s life from the victim’s perspective. But those two principles weren’t in conflict. Charging the jury on fairness to both parties doesn’t mean that the court wouldn’t also charge the jury on the appropriate statutory measures of damages, the judge opined. And charging both the fair-to-both parties language and the statutory measures of damages is in accordance with the basic tenet under Georgia law that compensation, not enrichment, is the basis for the award of damages.
Thus, the Court of Appeals held that trial court erred by holding that the fair-to-both-parties principle violates the Georgia law on damages. Having relied on that holding, the trial court failed to exercise its discretion with respect to whether that principle would be “substantially covered” by other parts of the charge. The Court of Appeals vacated the court’s denial of the defendant’s request to charge the jury on this principle and remand for consideration of whether it would otherwise be substantially covered. Harris v. Grant-Malcolm, 2026 Ga. App. LEXIS 170, 2026 LX 160420 (Ga. App. March 13, 2026).
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