DeKalb County Jury Awards $140 Million to the Estate of a 63-Year-Old Tenant Who Burned to Death in a Fire at Venetian Hills Apartments, a Judgment the Georgia Court of Appeals Has Since Thrown Out, Sending the Case Back for a Full Retrial

In March 2017, a fire broke out at the Venetian Hills Apartments on Campbellton Road in southwest Atlanta. According to the appellate record, a guest set a sock on fire in a downstairs closet after a violent struggle with a man who lived in the unit, then fled. The flames spread upward through the building. George Hughes, 63, who rented a room and shared interior hallways with three other tenants, was found burned to death. The fire left more than 30 residents without a home.

Marie Hughes, as administrator of his estate, brought a wrongful death suit against Venetian Hills Apartments, LLC in DeKalb County State Court. The theory was straightforward: the building lacked fire alarms, sprinklers, and working smoke detectors, in violation of fire safety statutes and regulations. The estate's expert testified that early detection and a sprinkler system would have kept the fire in check long enough for residents to get out. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the complex had drawn roughly 150 code enforcement complaints since 2017, covering broken windows, collapsed ceilings, leaks, roaches, and rats, and that police had documented 87 crimes there between 2017 and April 2023.

Jeff Shiver and Darrell Hinson of Shiver Hamilton Campbell tried the case for the estate. On December 20, 2023, the jury found the landlord negligent and returned a $140 million verdict: $75 million for the full value of George Hughes's life, $25 million for his pain and suffering before death, and $40 million in attorney's fees tied to bad faith findings.

The verdict did not survive appeal, and that is the first thing to know about this case. On October 31, 2025, the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated the judgment in Venetian Hills Apartments, LLC v. Hughes, case A25A1091, and remanded for a full retrial. The problem was the jury charge. The trial court had instructed jurors under both OCGA 44-7-14, the landlord-tenant statute that limits an out-of-possession landlord's liability to defective construction and failure to repair, and OCGA 51-3-1, the broader premises liability statute requiring ordinary care to keep premises safe. The panel held that because the fire started in a closet inside a tenant-occupied unit rather than a common area, only the narrower landlord-tenant statute applied. Charging the jury on general premises liability gave it an unauthorized, harsher basis for holding the landlord responsible. Because the verdict was general, the court could not tell which standard the jury actually used, so the error was presumed harmful. Judge Davis wrote the opinion, with Presiding Judge Rickman and Judge Gobeil concurring, and the court ordered that the derivative claims for punitive damages and attorney's fees be retried as well.

The appellate ruling decided nothing about whether the landlord's fire safety failures killed George Hughes. That question now goes to a second jury under the correct legal standard. As of this writing, the retrial is pending in DeKalb County State Court.