What is the Sudden Emergency Doctrine?
After a jury trial in a recent personal injury action arising out of motor vehicle collision, a plaintiff appealed the judgment entered in favor of the defendant. Among other things, he argued that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the doctrine of sudden emergency.
The accident on Interstate 75 in Morrow, Georgia
The evidence showed that on February 13, 2019, at approximately 9:00PM, the plaintiff was in the front passenger seat of a Ford Taurus traveling in the far left northbound lane of Interstate 75 in Morrow, Georgia, when another vehicle struck the side of the Taurus, causing it to spin and strike the left-side median wall before coming to a rest in the middle lane of five northbound lanes, facing southbound with its headlights out. The vehicle that hit the Taurus ended up on the right-side shoulder of the highway.
Around the same time, the defendant was driving a Ford F-150 north on Interstate 75, approaching Morrow in the far left lane. He moved from the far left lane into the second-most left lane, and then from the second lane to the third or middle of the five lanes. When he entered the third lane, he was directly behind a semi-truck. The truck braked, turned on its flashing hazard lights, and moved one lane over to the right. As the semi was changing lanes, the defendant noticed another vehicle on the right-side shoulder with its hazard lights on that appeared to have been in an accident. Once the semi completed its lane change and the defendant turned his attention back to his lane of travel, the defendant’s headlights illuminated the disabled Taurus. He said that he tried to slam on the brakes, but it was too late, and he “just hit” the Taurus.
The defendant testified at trial that “by the time he saw the Ford Taurus, it was so fast that, he just couldn’t do anything,” and that he “didn’t think about going to the right or going to the left or braking, he just did what he did.”
The evidence also showed that five seconds before the defendant’s F-150 made impact with the Taurus, it was traveling 85 miles per hour in a 65 mile-per-hour zone. Evidence from the F-150’s event data recorder established that 1.1 seconds before impact, the defendant took his foot off the accelerator and hit the brake. The data also showed that a tenth of a second before impact, the defendant made a 15-degree rightward steering input, resulting in a one-degree change in tire direction. The defendant testified that he didn’t realize he made the steering input, and testimony from an accident reconstructionist established that the change in steering didn’t really take effect before impact.
The plaintiff sued the defendant, alleging he was negligent in, among other things, operating his vehicle at a rate of speed in excess of the posted speed limit, operating his vehicle at a speed that was too fast for conditions, and in failing to keep a proper lookout and pay proper attention to the roadway. The defendant denied liability and asserted that if he’d been exceeding the speed limit, he did so unintentionally and without want of ordinary care, and that his actions were reasonable in light of the sudden emergency that transpired.
At trial, at the close of evidence, the plaintiff moved for a directed verdict on the issue of sudden emergency, which the trial court denied. The trial court then instructed the jury on the defendant’s defense of sudden emergency, to which the plaintiff objected, arguing that the evidence didn’t support the charge. The jury subsequently returned a verdict in favor of the defendant. The plaintiff filed a motion for new trial, which the trial court denied. This appeal followed.
Court of Appeals
The plaintiff contended that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on the defendant’s affirmative defense of sudden emergency. On that the Court of Appeals agreed. Judge J. Wade Padgett wrote that because the evidence didn’t authorize such an instruction, the trial court erred in giving it and that error was not harmless as it provided the defendant a defense to which he was not entitled. As a consequence, the Court reversed the judgment of the trial court and remanded the case for a new trial.
“A jury charge on the sudden emergency defense is authorized if the defendant presents any evidence, however slight, to support such a defense,” and “whether there was slight evidence authorizing a charge on the sudden emergency doctrine…”
The sudden emergency defense provides that “if a defendant is confronted with a sudden emergency without sufficient time to determine with certainty the best course to pursue, he is not held to the same accuracy of judgment as would be required of him if he had time for deliberation,” and as a result, the jury may take the existence of the emergency into account in deciding whether the defendant exercised ordinary care.
“The sudden emergency defense is available where the evidence shows that there has been a sudden peril caused by circumstances in which the defendant did not participate and which offered him a choice of conduct without time for thought” a recent decision stated. Thus, central to the sudden emergency doctrine is that “the defendant have a choice of conduct.” As this Court summarized in a 2025 decision, the sudden emergency:
defense is not available unless the evidence shows that the sudden peril offered the defendant a choice of conduct without time for thought, so that any negligence in the defendant’s choice may be attributed to lack of time to assess the situation rather than lack of due care. The doctrine requires that the person confronted by the emergency have the opportunity to exercise one of several reasonable alternative courses of action. In the absence of such factors, there can be no conduct to which to apply the standard and the doctrine is inapplicable.
The doctrine is properly applied where, in addition to the defendant not participating in creation of the sudden peril, the evidence showed that the defendant had the opportunity to exercise one of two or more reasonable alternative courses of action and the defendant contends he was not negligent for failing to choose a course of action that allegedly would have prevented the plaintiff’s injury. The defendant’s position that he wasn’t negligent in his choice is rooted in the fact that he didn’t have enough time to evaluate the likely efficacy of his available choices in preventing injury and make an arguably better decision. In essence, the doctrine is a policy-based defense that, in limited circumstances, cautions a jury against playing “Monday-morning quarterback” as it determines whether a defendant was negligent or simply made the wrong guess when confronted with a sudden peril.
Judge Padgett and the panel found that because there was no evidence that the defendant had alternative courses of action from which to choose and that his alleged negligence arose out of the choice he made, it was error for the trial court to instruct the jury on the defense of sudden emergency. The Court of Appeals disagreed with the defendant’s unsupported assertion on appeal that he “clearly made a choice” or that evidence that the semi-truck changed lanes and didn’t collide with the Taurus established that the defendant had reasonable, alternative courses of action from which he chose, such that application of the doctrine was warranted.
The Court also didn’t agree that testimony of the accident reconstructionist in response to a hypothetical question not premised on pre-accident facts or any purported choices actually considered by the defendant established that the defendant had the opportunity to exercise one reasonable choice over another, alternative reasonable choice. The doctrine applies where the negligence (and causation) alleged by the plaintiff arises from, or is “in” the defendant’s choice. Again, the doctrine is designed to inform juries that where a defendant has little to no time to assess which course of action is more prudent and the course of action he took indisputably led to injury, it didn’t necessarily follow that he was negligent in failing to take a different course of action. Accordingly, the judgment was reversed, and the case was remanded for a new trial. Pepper v. Thelen, 2026 Ga. App. LEXIS 255, 2026 LX 294275 (Ga. App. May 26, 2026).
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