Florida insurers will no doubt remember the time more than two years ago when one of the largest plaintiffs’ law firms in the state gave notice that it was planning to
file tens of thousands of claims lawsuits ahead of the 2023 tort-reform enactment.
Georgia plaintiffs’ firms appear to have followed the same scri
pt in 2024 and this year – before two significant litigation-limiting legislative packages took effect.
A report from Lex Machina, the analytics arm of LexisNexis, a legal data firm, shows that civil litigation jump
ed sharply in the Atlanta area in 2024. Some 43,000 suits were filed in 2024 in seven courts in four north Georgia
counties. That was almost 9,000 more suits than in any year in the last decade, the report’s authors noted.
“Data from the Lex Machina platform for January through September 2025 show that the civil case burden on Atlanta’s sta
te courts has continued to grow, with 2025 on track for more lawsuits to launch in these courts than any year since at least 2016,” the report said.
Levinson
Georgia insurance defense lawyers said the 2024 increase likely had to do with the passage of changes to Georgia’s century-old statutes that allowed parties injure
d in truck accidents to sue the motor carriers’ insurance companies directly, even without naming the trucking fi
rm. Georgia was one of just a few states that had allowed direct-action suits against insurers, and that law was revised in 2024.
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“I do think that at least some members of the plaintiffs’ bar were rushing to file commercial auto claims befor
e the direct-action statute law that was amended passedin 2024,” said Martin Levinson, a partner with the Hawkins Parnell firm in Atlanta.
Levinson, the incoming president of the Georgia Defense Lawyers Asso
ciation, said his firm saw a big increase in commercial auto suits in 2024, ahead of the direct-action legislation taking effect.
Others said the rush to the courthouse was expected after widespread publicity about the 2024 changes and th
e buildup to the sweeping tort-reform package championed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in 2025.
“When you have the tide going out, plaintiffs see that and react to that,” said Mike Nelson, an Atlanta attorney who practices insurance defense in auto claims.
He noted that a similar rush to file was seen in Missouri in 2019 before the governor there signed a four-bill package of tort reform designed to limit litigation and damage awards.
The Lex Machina analysts, Adam Mills Masarek and Chuan Qin, suggested that other factors may have had an impact
on the lawsuit numbers, including massive verdicts in some recent injury cases and the increased prevalence of attorney advertising, which nationwide trends.
Nelson
“Knowing of such potentially large awards has perhaps led more injury claimants to file lawsuits rather than agree to pre-suit resolutions,” said the report, which was first noted by Law.com.
The report also suggested that the rising caseloads have slowed resolution of lawsuits. The median time fro
m filing a complaint to decisions in limine (at the beginning of a trial) was about 2.5 times longer in 2022 to 2024 as it was from 2016 to 2018.
But Levinson said that in limine marker may be a misleading bookend to judge cases by. Some cases may resolve even after such a ruling. And a two-year window won’t include all suits.
“It’s really too early to tell if newly filed litigation is down” after the passage of the tort-reform legislation, Levinson said.
The statute of limitations on bodily injury claims torts is two years. Then it usually takes more than two years for suits to reach trial, he explained.