Three threads are pulling plaintiff PI practice in different directions this week: Georgia's first appellate test of its sweeping 2025 tort reform produced a ruling the defense bar says undercuts the law's purpose; New York's 50-percent modified comparative fault rule continues to reshape auto and premises litigation statewide; and a fresh industry data report on nuclear verdicts confirms that the trend is not a characterization but a measurement. Meanwhile, the post-Montgomery freight broker docket is accumulating at a pace that suggests the first wave of trials will land on early 2027 calendars. Our ongoing PI industry coverage will track each of these threads as they develop.
Georgia's SB 68 Hits Its First Appellate Wall
The Georgia Court of Appeals issued a ruling on September 9 in the first substantial appellate test of the 2025 tort-reform statute, and the outcome was not what the defense bar expected from a law that was sold partly on the promise of keeping damages evidence away from the liability phase of trial.
Georgia's SB 68 requires courts to trifurcate personal injury trials: in Phase 1, the jury determines the fault level of each defendant; in Phase 2, the jury determines compensatory damages; and if punitive damages are sought, Phase 3 addresses them separately. The law's supporters argued that the structure would prevent anchoring, the rhetorical strategy by which plaintiff counsel introduces a high damages number early to influence how jurors calibrate fault.
In the September 9 decision, the appellate panel held that evidence of the persistence and extent of a plaintiff's injuries is admissible in Phase 1 because it is relevant to whether a given impact was a proximate cause of those injuries at all. The panel relied on existing Georgia tort statutes, including O.C.G.A. § 51-12-15, which allow certain injury-related evidence to inform the causation question even before damages are formally at issue. The court explicitly rejected the insurer's argument that permitting this evidence eviscerated the reform statute, holding that the trifurcation excluded compensatory damages evidence from Phase 1, not evidence bearing on whether an injury was caused at all.
Defense counsel have characterized the ruling as contrary to legislative intent and expect it to be appealed or addressed by the Georgia Supreme Court. For plaintiff practitioners with Georgia cases in the pipeline, the immediate takeaway is that Phase 1 remains a venue where injury evidence has meaningful purchase. The interpretation of Phase 1 admissibility will be contested for years as trial courts grapple with the line between causation evidence and damages evidence in cases where those inquiries cannot be cleanly separated.
New York's 50-Percent Bar: Four Months In
Governor Hochul signed New York's 2026 tort reform package into law in May as part of the state's Fiscal Year 2027 Budget. The centerpiece change for PI practice is the move to a modified comparative fault rule barring recovery for any plaintiff found more than 50 percent at fault for an accident. New York had previously operated as a pure comparative fault state, permitting recovery even by a plaintiff bearing 99 percent of the fault.
Four months into implementation, defense carriers have recalibrated their evaluation frameworks for rear-end, intersection, and pedestrian cases. Cases that would previously have settled at a reduced value under pure comparative fault are now being evaluated as potential complete defenses if the carrier can develop a record showing the plaintiff bore the majority of fault. Dashcam footage, traffic-control violations, cell-phone records, and no-contact reports have taken on new valence in New York discovery.
For plaintiff practitioners, the adjustment requires earlier and more aggressive attention to fault evidence before the demand letter goes out. The cases most exposed are intersection collisions with no independent witnesses, pedestrian knockdowns where the plaintiff crossed outside a marked crosswalk, and lane-change cases where telematics data is in dispute. The comparative fault picture needs to be established before the demand, not assembled reactively after carrier denial.
Nuclear Verdict Data: 2026 Confirms the New Baseline
Sedgwick's annual Liability Litigation Commentary, incorporating data through 2024 with updated projections, reports that nuclear verdicts (awards exceeding $10 million) rose by 52 percent in 2024, verdicts exceeding $100 million surged by 81.5 percent, and the average jury award across tracked cases now exceeds $51 million. The data aligns with plaintiff-side reporting and reflects a court-calendar backlog effect: cases delayed by pandemic-era congestion have been tried by juries seasoned on years of corporate accountability coverage, and the result has been awards that consistently exceed pre-pandemic baselines in catastrophic injury and wrongful death categories.
Tort reform advocates in state legislatures point to the data as justification for damages caps and procedural restrictions. Plaintiff practitioners counter that the surge reflects genuine harm, particularly in catastrophic injury cases where life-care plans extending decades rationally support eight-figure awards under any reasonable present-value calculation. The debate is expected to drive legislative activity in 2027 in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and California, where MICRA cap increases have partially moderated the swing but have not reversed the upward trend in verdict size.
Notable Verdicts: A $104M Trucking Award and a $71M Fire Case
An El Paso jury returned a $104 million wrongful death verdict against a trucking company whose driver allegedly fell asleep and struck a parked tractor-trailer on Interstate 40 in Oklahoma, killing a driver sleeping in the sleeper berth. The verdict, if not substantially reduced on post-trial motion, would rank among the larger individual trucking fatality awards of the year. For the pattern of trucking verdicts and the discovery framework behind them, see our coverage of commercial vehicle cases.
In Prince George's County, Maryland, a jury returned a $71 million verdict for a plaintiff who suffered spinal fractures, broken ribs, and permanent chest-level paralysis after jumping from a second-story apartment during a nighttime fire. The plaintiff argued that the landlord and property management company failed to maintain adequate fire-safety equipment and egress routes that would have permitted an earlier, safer evacuation. The case continues the pattern of nine-figure premises awards in jurisdictions with no cap on non-economic recovery.
Post-Montgomery Broker Docket Fills In
The Supreme Court's ruling in Montgomery v. NSB Logistics (May 2026) eliminated the last significant interstate preemption barrier to negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers under state tort law. Four months into the decision, plaintiff firms that had been holding broker-liability cases pending the preemption question are now pressing those claims, with discovery focused on what safety information brokers had access to at dispatch, whether SAFER reports and BASIC percentile scores were reviewed, and whether internal vetting procedures existed at all.
The cases moving most quickly involve carriers with conditional safety ratings, elevated BASIC scores in the Unsafe Driving or Hours of Service categories, or operating authority less than 18 months old at the time of the crash. Plaintiff counsel assembling broker-liability cases should pull FMCSA safety data for the period before the crash rather than relying on the current snapshot, since carrier ratings and inspection histories change and a carrier that appears compliant today may have had a materially different safety profile at the time of the subject load.
Three Cases to Watch in the Next 30 Days
The California Court of Appeal has two PI cases scheduled for argument involving the scope of the collateral source rule in hospital lien disputes; a ruling in either could affect how trial courts handle Howell-Hamilton objections in cases where both private-pay and Medi-Cal billing are present. In the Eighth Circuit, oral argument is set in a freight broker indemnification case that may clarify how post-Montgomery broker claims interact with carrier-broker contractual indemnification clauses. For case law and significant verdicts across practice areas, our ongoing coverage tracks the decisions that move plaintiff PI practice.