$7.8 Million in Attorney’s Fees and Prejudgment Interest Added to $28 Million Judgment in Gwinnett County Wrongful Death Case

The goal of a lawsuit is the fair resolution of a dispute.  To incentivize fair resolutions sooner than later, the General Assembly has equipped lawyers with several tools, including “offers of settlement” under Section 9-11-68(b) and prejudgment interest under the Unliquidated Damages and Interest Act (“UDIA”). In a recent case arising from a wrongful death car accident, we were able to successfully use these tools to add $7.8 million to a $28 million jury verdict.  The main tool we used (i.e., Rule 68) was passed as part of the Tort Reform Act in 2005.

Wrongful Death Verdict

Before you can collect fees, expenses, and interest, you have to win a verdict in an amount that exceeds the settlement offers that you made.  We did that by winning a $28,000,000 verdict for our clients.  As you can see, the jury returned a verdict of $26,500,000 for the full value of the decedent’s life (i.e., the wrongful death damages) and $1,500,000 for his pre-collision fright, shock, and terror.

Section 9-11-68 – Attorney Fees & Expenses

After the entry of a judgment, the Court added $6,326,057 of attorney’s fees and $92,850.34 for case expenses under section 9-11-68. 

Section 9-11-68 – referred to as the “offer of settlement” statute – is a Georgia law that encourages litigants to make good faith settlement proposals.  Specifically, Section 9-11-68(b)(2) allows a plaintiff to collect attorney’s fees and ligation expenses incurred from the time an offer is rejected through the entry of a judgment where the plaintiff obtains a judgment that exceeds an offer by 125 percent.  

In the early stages of the case, we sent an offer of settlement under section 9-11-68.  The amount of the offer was $6,326,057, which was based on the decedent’s lost earnings and household services according to our expert economist.  This amount only represented the economic aspect of wrongful-death damages.  We chose this amount because we were confident that a jury would award far more when considering both economic and non-economic damages. 

At trial, the jury’s verdict was in the amount of $28,000,000 – which exceeded our offer of settlement by more than 400 percent.  Under section 9-11-68, our clients were entitled to recover their attorney’s fees and expenses incurred from the rejection of the offer through the entry of the judgment.  The challenge was calculating the amount incurred after the rejection of the offer. 

Personal injury lawyers generally work on contingency-fee agreements.  In other words, we’re paid our fee as a percentage of the amount recovered.  Georgia courts routinely consider contingency-fee agreements when determining the amount of attorney’s fees.  The burden of the plaintiff is to show that the contingency fee is usual and customary and that the fee is a valid indicator of the services rendered.  To do this, we showed that our fee was normal and outlined the work we’d done on the case to get the result we did at trial.  

Prejudgment Interest in Personal Injury Cases

After the jury’s verdict, the Court added $1,252,397.26 for prejudgment interest under the UDIA.  

Section 51-12-14 is another statute that encourages litigants to make good faith settlement proposals.  Under this statute, if a defendant does not accept an offer and the plaintiff gets a judgment at or above the amount of the offer, the plaintiff is entitled to prejudgment interest on the amount demanded from the date of rejection. 

After our offer to settle pursuant to 9-11-68 was rejected, we sent an offer under section 51-12-14 for $25,000,000.  Because our verdict exceeded the amount offered, the Court added prejudgment interest at 11.5 percent from the time the offer was rejected through the entry of the judgment on May 14, 2024.    

At the end of the day, the defendant’s insurance company had multiple opportunities to settle this case for less than the jury’s verdict.  The experienced trial lawyers at Butler Kahn were able to leverage those reasonable settlement opportunities to add an additional $7.8 million to a $28 million jury verdict.