Steve Ellis, the vice president of liability practices at the consulting firm Sedgwick, said during a June 7 episode of Sedgwick’s podcast that when plaintiff attorneys appeal to jurors’ emotions rather than focusing on "actual medicals," they can win large verdicts.
"I think the last thing that I've seen from a plaintiff bar tactic that's really changed is this focus on the impact to the person's life versus the actual medicals," said Ellis. "And as an example, there was a case earlier in the year in Georgia where a jury returned a verdict of about 1.6 million on a bicyclist versus bicyclist accident. But the interesting thing was the plaintiff attorneys actually submitted no medicals whatsoever. There were about 160 that the plaintiff had, but they presented none of them into evidence, and they focused solely on the impact to the person's life and the pain that they experienced and the jury returned, again, a $1.6 million verdict."
The $1.6 million verdict in Georgia was the result of a 2021 accident in Atlanta in which two bicyclists collided in the bike lane, according to Tobin Injury Law, which represented the plaintiff. The plaintiff injured his hands and wrists and "aggravated" an existing knee injury. Tobin Injury Law stated its attorneys did not "ask for reimbursement of any of his medical expenses. Instead, we focused our entire case on the pain he feels in his hands and wrists."
Ellis said the plaintiff bar has been engaging in "emotional appeals" and using "cognitive bias" to secure larger verdicts, according to the podcast. These tactics have resulted in a growing number of "nuclear" verdicts, or verdicts larger than $10 million.
According to a report from Marathon Strategies, Georgia’s total sum of nuclear verdicts in 2023 was the ninth largest in the country. Georgia also ranked ninth for the largest sum of nuclear verdicts between 2009 and 2023, with 34 verdicts totaling $4.8 billion. Marathon found that states that have implemented tort reform measures, such as Florida, are seeing a decrease in nuclear verdicts. Last year, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis enacted comprehensive tort reforms, and as a result, Florida dropped from second place in 2022 to seventh place in 2023 in terms of the sum of its nuclear verdicts. Florida’s tort reforms included eliminating attorney’s fee multipliers, standardizing the calculation of damages in personal injury and wrongful death cases, and shortening the statute of limitations to two years for general negligence cases.
In August, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp called for tort reform to be a priority of his state legislature, saying that excessive lawsuits are driving up insurance costs in Georgia, WABE reported. He said that rising car insurance rates are one of the results of these excessive lawsuits. Georgia has some of the highest car insurance costs in the country. "The laws on our books make it too easy to bring frivolous lawsuits against Georgia business owners which drive up the price of insurance and stop new, good-paying jobs from ever coming to communities that need them the most," Kemp said to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
Before joining Sedgwick, Ellis spent seven years on the faculty of The University of Olivet, according to LinkedIn. He also worked for Liberty Mutual Insurance for 30 years, where he held various roles including senior director of claims operations and director of business intelligence.