Georgia's 2025 tort reform law changed the shape of a personal injury trial. Under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-15, any party in a bodily injury or wrongful death case can now demand, in writing before the pretrial order, a trial in three phases: fault first, compensatory damages second, and punitive damages and attorney's fees third. The court must honor the demand unless the amount in controversy is under $150,000 or a sexual-offense victim would suffer serious distress from testifying twice.
The statute says the first phase "shall be limited to" fault. So may the plaintiff tell the jury what injuries he sustained in phase one, or must that wait for the damages phase? On September 9, 2026, the Georgia Court of Appeals issued the first published opinion on that issue in Transcontinental Carriers, Inc. v. Bennett.
The collision and the causation dispute
In July 2020, Lewis Bennett drove a tractor-trailer north on I-75 in Houston County. A Transcontinental Carriers truck driven by James Evans drifted into his lane and forced him into a guardrail. Evans, a Type 1 diabetic, had skipped insulin for at least two days and was in diabetic shock. Multiple 911 callers had already reported his truck weaving.
Bennett reported no injuries at the scene. Within days, however, he was in surgery for a spinal cord injury that left him with permanent damage, bladder dysfunction, and a walker.
The case went to trial in June 2025, two months after § 51-12-15 took effect, and the court trifurcated it. The defense argued that the guardrail impact was too minor to have caused a spinal cord injury. Over objection, the trial court let Bennett describe the development, effects, and persistence of his injuries in phase one, while reserving all evidence of the amount of compensation for phase two.
The Spalding County jury found Transcontinental 70% and Evans 30% at fault, awarded $7 million in damages, and added $1,546,500 in bad-faith attorney's fees under O.C.G.A. § 13-6-11.
Why injury evidence belongs in phase one
The Court of Appeals affirmed. Presiding Judge Barnes, writing for a unanimous panel, explained that "fault" under Georgia's apportionment statute, O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, has a settled meaning: a breach of duty that proximately caused the plaintiff's injury. A jury cannot decide whether a defendant proximately caused the plaintiff's injuries without knowing what those injuries are. The defense's own "too minor" theory was a causation argument, and the jury could not decide it without the challenged injury evidence.
The court rejected the argument that allowing injury evidence in phase one "eviscerates" the statute. The Bennett court drew a purpose-based line: evidence offered to prove the existence and cause of an injury may be relevant to fault, while evidence offered to value compensatory damages belongs in phase two. The trial court properly kept the amount of compensation out of phase one, so the jury weighed fault "without any foreknowledge of the extent of the compensation sought." That was consistent with the statute.
The panel also upheld the fee award, concluding that Evans’s history of consciously disregarding medical instructions supported the jury’s bad-faith finding. It further held that, under respondeat superior, Transcontinental could not reduce its damages exposure to 70% by treating Evans’s 30% as a separate share of fault.
What Bennett changes for trial planning
When O.C.G.A. § 51-12-15 was enacted, many defense-oriented summaries described trifurcation as a way to keep prejudicial damages evidence out of the liability phase. Bennett preserves that aim but rejects a broader rule that would prevent a plaintiff from providing what injury a defendant’s alleged negligence caused.
For plaintiffs, Bennett confirms that trifurcation does not force them to prove causation in the abstract. Injury evidence that bears on whether the defendant caused the harm may be presented in phase one when it is relevant to that question.
For defendants, the decision narrows what trifurcation can accomplish. It keeps evidence offered to value compensatory damages out of phase one, but it does not categorically exclude descriptions of the plaintiff’s injuries.
Before trial, counsel should identify the purpose of each disputed exhibit and witness. Plaintiffs should connect injury evidence to causation without arguing monetary value; defendants should use motions in limine and contemporaneous objections to separate causation proof from compensation proof and preserve the issue for appeal.
The defense bar has criticized the ruling as contrary to legislative intent, and Supreme Court of Georgia review remains possible. For now, however, Bennett is the controlling word on how Georgia's three-phase trial works.
This post is for general information only and not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.