(Writer’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series about how Georgia’s lack of tort reform has affected the real estate industry)
In Georgia, you can be held civilly liable if a criminal harms another person in your place of business and a court rules that you didn’t implement adequate measures for security.
That, right now, is legal precedent, at least in Georgia. This was established by the Georgia Supreme Court when a shooting victim filed a case against CVS after being shot on their property.
Nevertheless, three people who hold high-ranking positions in Georgia’s corporate real estate industry said that taking reasonable security measures on their property still isn’t enough to shield them from a costly lawsuit. They’re urging Georgia state legislators to implement meaningful tort reform laws this year.
One of those three people is Laurel Hart. She has worked in this business for 25 years and once directed Housing Finance and Development for the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
“A lot of people are portraying tort reform as some fight between businesses and individuals, but to me, the system in Georgia is broken. It is not working for individuals, and it is not working for the property owners,” Hart said.
“Unless changes are made, it will have a significant impact on a lot of areas of economic development throughout Georgia, including our ability to continue to manage and operate the affordable housing that has been built here.”
HAMSTRUNG BY THE LAW
Hart said that providing security at an affordable housing complex, which she helps oversee in Atlanta, is difficult enough without the local county government making matters worse.
“We do a background check of everybody who comes into our property, and we have really strong community rules,” Hart said of her company’s 6,000 housing units.
“If you violate those rules then we file an eviction, but since the pandemic, especially in Fulton County, it’s a two-year process to evict someone from a unit. So you can get people who come to your property [who cause problems], and you have no legal recourse to get them out… no matter how much you try.”
In addition to that, Hart said law enforcement officers may not provide enough help.
“If I call the police and say ‘Hey, I see someone walking inside the perimeter of a fence [on our property] with one of those banned assault rifles then they won’t come because [they say what that person is doing] is legal,” Hart said.
“They will say ‘Call us back if they point it at somebody.’”
Kevin Carr works for a nationwide third-party management company. He said his properties in Atlanta are especially prone to crime.
“We have drug deals where someone comes to our property. That person is clearly not even a guest and is shot in the midst of trying to sell drugs. This victim claims he knew ‘Joey,’ who lives on the property, and that’s some name that no one knows of, but it’s strong enough to gather momentum [and a belief] that we should have protected this individual. That’s because he supposedly knew someone on the property, some friend whose name he really couldn’t even disclose,” Carr said.
“Ultimately that person is severely injured. Because the statutory law is so vague, trial lawyers have us up against the wall because we know that a sympathetic jury will crucify us.”
SHADES OF CVS
Among members of the business community, Georgia’s CVS case is infamous. A man was shot outside a CVS pharmacy in Atlanta during an attempted robbery. The victim had more than $700,000 in medical bills. He blamed CVS “for failing to implement simple security measures to protect customers like adequate lighting or security guards.” He sued.
In that trial, jurors were asked only to consider the negligence of third parties.
Jurors did not blame the unknown shooter. They awarded the victim nearly $43 million. The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict and said that the crime was foreseeable because it was in a high-crime area.
At the Georgia Supreme Court, CVS fared no better. Justices wrote that they are “bound by what the law is and not what the parties of the members of this Court think it should be.”
Avi Wolf, president of a Dunwoody-based property-management company, spoke in late February of one incident that occurred on one of his properties in Atlanta in the fall of 2022.
According to an Atlanta Police Department report, someone entered one of Wolf’s properties and shot a woman multiple times in her left arm and stomach.
According to the report, each end of the apartment complex has cameras.
“A few people entered our property in the middle of the night. They jumped over our full-perimeter fence, although they are contesting that they didn’t,” Wolf said, adding that only residents with keycard access can enter through a gate.
The victim survived and sued Wolf’s company.
“The attorney that was in the mediation yesterday representing the person who was hurt on my property is telling my team that if we don’t settle it, he will send in the lawyer who won the $45 million lawsuit on CVS,” Wolf said.
“He says ‘I see so many similarities to this case. You don’t want to try it in Fulton County.’ I am in touch with other people on both sides of the [political] aisle who tell me that I should be protected based on the law because I have lights and security cameras, and I have a fence, but, nonetheless, my lawyer is telling me not to take that chance of going to court.”
The attorney, Wolf said, threatened to take away his property unless he settled.
“This was a targeted shooting at 2 a.m. I have reasonable and adequate security based on the law. Why am I on the hook defending this case?” Wolf asked.
“To make matters worse, the plaintiffs filed this lawsuit at the 11th hour. The statute of limitations is less than 12 months. Eleven months after the incident took place I got a letter from their attorney telling me that I am being sued over it.”
Wolf said he notified his insurance company immediately.
“My insurance tells me ‘Oh, you are notifying us 11 months too late. You have to notify us the next day if this happened in order for your coverage to work.’ So now I am fighting my insurance on one side of the case to give me my coverage that I paid for at the time of the event, and they are trying to get out on a technicality saying that I didn’t notify them right away, that I am not covered.”
Wolf said it’s ironic that this matter played out in court the same week that state legislators debated tort reform.
“If this is not a real case of good evidence as to why we need to have this reform to protect landlords then I am not sure you can get a better case right here than that,” Wolf said.
Fighting these lawsuits, Wolf added, takes up entirely too much of his time and, ultimately, hurts his tenants.
“If I didn’t have all of this tying up my time then I would focus on what my colleagues and I do best, which is making sure we give residents of Atlanta the best affordable quality and safe home instead of defending myself from problems I shouldn’t have to deal with,” Wolf said.
“If that were the case, I could give 100 percent to my property and my residents.”
Add your name: Georgia needs tort reform!
Georgia’s legal environment has deteriorated to the point that it threatens all the other good work policy makers have done over the decades. This can be fixed!
