Best Lawyers published an 18-month retrospective on Georgia’s tort reform package on October 19, 2026, and the headline finding is not about dollars. It is about timing. SB 68, effective April 2025, curbed phantom damages, restricted anchoring in closing arguments, and let either party demand a bifurcated trial in bodily injury or wrongful death cases over $150,000. SB 69, effective January 1, 2026, added registration and discovery requirements for third-party litigation funders, with felony exposure for violations.
The retrospective’s clearest data point: Georgia came off the American Tort Reform Foundation’s Judicial Hellholes list in December 2025 after six straight years on it, though it landed on a watch list rather than a clean exit. The retrospective is also explicit about what it cannot show. Neither insurers nor plaintiffs’ firms have published data proving the reforms lowered premiums or loss costs. Eighteen months in, the measurable effect is procedural: cases are settling at a different point in the litigation timeline, not necessarily for different amounts.
The mechanism. Bifurcation splits trial into a liability phase and a damages phase. Once a jury returns a liability verdict, both sides have new information: who the jury believed, before any dollar figure is on the table. That is pushing the settlement moment from the courthouse steps (the traditional pre-trial window) to the post-liability-verdict window instead. A claim that once closed inside 18 to 24 months under Georgia’s old settlement rhythm can now sit open through a full liability-phase trial before either side has a number to negotiate against, per Thompson Hine’s analysis of the law.
Who it affects. Self-insured trucking fleets, general liability programs, and premises carriers with Georgia-domiciled claims under reserve, particularly any claim over the $150,000 bifurcation threshold where either party can elect the split. Programs with meaningful Atlanta-metro exposure should pay closest attention, since several of those courts remain on the watch list despite the statewide delisting.
The reserve angle. This is a development pattern problem, not a severity problem, at least on the evidence so far. Georgia claims arising on or after April 2025 are resolving later in their life cycle than the historical triangle assumes, which means age-to-age factors built on pre-reform Georgia experience will understate how long these claims stay open. A case reserve set early under the old settle-before-trial norm may also understate the cost of actually carrying a claim through a full liability-phase trial, since that case reserve was priced for a different negotiating moment. Ultimate severity may land unchanged, as the retrospective itself concedes, but a triangle that assumes the old timing will produce a reserve that is adequate in aggregate and wrong in its timing, which shows up as unfavorable development exactly when a CFO is least expecting it.
What this means for your next review. Ask whether your actuary has segregated Georgia accident years 2025 and later from the pre-reform tail in the development triangle, and whether any open claims over $150,000 have elected bifurcation. If your TPA’s data extract does not flag bifurcation election at the claim level, that is a gap to close before year-end reserve review, not after. Until a full cohort of bifurcated Georgia trials reaches final verdict, probably not before 2027, the safer assumption is a longer time-to-resolution, not a lower ultimate.
For background on how a shift like this flows through the math, see our explainer on the chain ladder method and our analysis of Louisiana’s auto reform and the geographic concentration data in five states’ nuclear verdict exposure.
Sources
- Best Lawyers, “Georgia Tort Reform 18 Months In: What SB 68 and 69 Changed,” October 19, 2026: https://www.bestlawyers.com/article/georgia-tort-reform-sb-68-69-results/8555
- Thompson Hine, “Georgia Tort Reform, Major Litigation Shifts with the Implementation of SB68”: https://www.thompsonhine.com/insights/georgia-tort-reform-major-litigation-shifts-with-the-implementation-of-sb68/
- Georgia General Assembly, SB 68 and SB 69 bill text: https://www.legis.ga.gov/