Last week, Sen. Steve Gooch (R– Dahlonega), along with 22 Georgia State Senators, introduced Senate Bill 415 to repair the state’s problematic lawsuit climate by reducing the financial burden of out of control legal costs faced by Georgia’s small businesses. Many of these senators will hold a press conference on Thursday, February 27, 2020, to discuss SB 415 and describe the impact it will have on Georgia’s farmers, truck drivers, doctors and small businesses.

In order to help keep costs down for families, businesses, and communities across the state, we need your support in the Georgia General Assembly to help pass SB 415 and other legal reform measures. We need to stand with everyday Georgians who deserve a better, fairer, and more equitable system than we have today.

Georgia has earned a new distinction, and it’s not a good one. For the first time, our state is listed among the nation’s “Judicial Hellholes” by the American Tort Reform Foundation.The group’s latest report describes places where defendants in civil lawsuits are treated “in an unfair and unbalanced manner.” Those defendants most often are businesses targeted for various types of liability and doctors sued for medical malpractice.Given Georgia’s efforts to be the best state for doing business, it’s surely unwelcome to be ranked as the sixth-worst “judicial hellhole” – better than only (in ascending order) St. Louis, Louisiana, New York City, California and the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas. That’s bad company to keep.

Four business attorneys told members of a Georgia Senate committee focused on the cost of doing business in the state that capping monetary legal penalties and liability for business owners in civil cases could lead to a boost in the state's economy. William Custer, an attorney for Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner LLP who specializes in commercial litigation, said the biggest issue he has found within Georgia’s civil justice system is with negligence security cases. Business owners find themselves taking on most of the responsibility for crimes that lead to lawsuits.