Peter Law

A DeKalb County jury awarded $81 million in total damages to LaQuan Taylor, a Navy veteran shot at least 11 times during a robbery in a Kroger parking lot. After apportioning 14 percent of the fault to the two assailants, the judgment against Kroger came to $69,660,000.

A Schneider National Carriers truck driver who had gone roughly 22 hours without consistent sleep swerved across multiple lanes of Interstate 285 in Atlanta before dawn on August 17, 2017, forcing a pickup into the left lane and onto the emergency lane, where it struck and killed Jarvis Nance Sr., a 35-year-old owner-operator standing beside his own disabled tractor. Nance's widow sued Schneider and the driver in Cherokee County State Court, and on June 7, 2024, after a five-day trial, the jury awarded $47 million in compensatory damages and assigned 100 percent of the fault to the defendants. Schneider has appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which heard oral argument in June 2026 on a cross-examination ruling, the jury instructions, and closing argument conduct. No decision has issued.

Stephen Wells was engulfed in flames on Memorial Day weekend 2010 when gas from an uncapped line in the Sandy Springs apartment he was moving into ignited as he stepped inside. He suffered burns covering more than half his body and was treated in the burn unit at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. A Fulton County jury found the complex's owner, Aslan Commons, LLC, and its manager, WSE LLC, fully responsible and awarded $17.9 million in compensatory damages, $7.16 million in attorney's fees, and $47.9 million in punitive damages, a total of about $73 million. The trial judge then applied Georgia's statutory cap to reduce the punitive award to $250,000, bringing the enforceable judgment to about $25.4 million.

Donald Monroe lost his left leg below the knee when a pickup truck swerving to avoid a tractor-trailer that had blocked a North Georgia highway struck him instead. A Whitfield County jury found the trucking company and its driver 99.99 percent at fault and awarded Monroe $20 million and his wife, Rhonda, $1.6 million, for a total verdict of $21.6 million. The jury rejected the family's claims for punitive damages and attorney fees. The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment, and the Georgia Supreme Court denied certiorari in 2022, leaving the verdict final.

A Gwinnett County jury awarded $8.6 million to the mother of stuntman John Bernecker, who died in July 2017 after falling 22 feet from a balcony on a 'Walking Dead' set when he missed his landing pad by inches; the Georgia Court of Appeals later reversed the verdict on the ground that the Workers' Compensation Act barred the family's civil claims.