When a medical malpractice claim results in a verdict or settlement for the plaintiff, the damages awarded are intended to compensate the injured patient for the harm caused by the provider’s negligence. Georgia law recognizes multiple categories of compensable loss in malpractice cases involving surviving patients, each addressing a different dimension of the injury’s impact. This blueprint addresses the damages framework for injury-based claims, meaning claims brought by patients who survived the alleged malpractice. Wrongful death damages categories and the standing analysis for death-based claims are distinct subjects addressed elsewhere.
Economic Damages
Economic damages compensate the plaintiff for quantifiable financial losses that resulted from the malpractice. These losses are susceptible to calculation because they are tied to documented expenditures, lost income, and projected future costs supported by evidence.
Medical expenses constitute the most immediate category of economic damages. These include the costs of treatment required to address the injury caused by the malpractice, both past expenses already incurred and future expenses reasonably anticipated. Past medical expenses are typically established through billing records, payment documentation, and testimony regarding the treatment provided. Future medical expenses require evidence, often in the form of expert testimony, establishing what additional care the plaintiff will need and what that care is projected to cost over the plaintiff’s remaining lifetime.
The 2025 Georgia tort reform legislation (SB 68), signed into law on April 21, 2025, introduced a new provision under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-1.1 that limits special damages for medical and healthcare expenses to the “reasonable value of medically necessary care, treatment, or services,” as determined by the trier of fact. This provision allows juries to consider both the amounts charged for medical care and the amounts actually necessary to satisfy those charges under the plaintiff’s public or private health insurance or applicable workers’ compensation program. This change was designed to address what had been characterized as “phantom damages,” where plaintiffs recovered based on billed amounts that substantially exceeded the amounts health care providers actually accepted as payment. The full impact of this provision on medical malpractice damages calculations should be verified at the time of publication, as judicial interpretation of the new statute is in its early stages.
Lost wages and lost earning capacity represent the second major category of economic damages. Lost wages compensate for income the plaintiff was unable to earn during the period of recovery from the malpractice-related injury. Lost earning capacity looks forward, compensating for the reduction in the plaintiff’s ability to earn income over the remainder of their working life. The distinction matters: a plaintiff who was unemployed at the time of the injury may still have a lost-earning-capacity claim if the injury diminished their future ability to work.
Other economic damages may include costs for necessary modifications to the plaintiff’s living environment, ongoing rehabilitation expenses, home health care, assistive devices, and transportation costs associated with continuing medical treatment. In pediatric cases, lifetime care costs for a surviving child who requires ongoing medical support can constitute a substantial portion of the economic damages claim.
Noneconomic Damages
Noneconomic damages compensate the plaintiff for losses that are real but not reducible to a specific dollar amount through financial records or market calculations. These include physical pain, emotional suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, physical impairment, and loss of consortium (a claim typically brought by the plaintiff’s spouse for the loss of companionship and relational benefits resulting from the plaintiff’s injury).
The quantification of noneconomic damages is inherently subjective and is entrusted to the jury’s judgment. There is no mathematical formula that converts pain, suffering, or diminished quality of life into a dollar figure. The jury hears evidence about the nature and severity of the plaintiff’s injuries, the impact of those injuries on the plaintiff’s daily life, and the expected duration of the plaintiff’s impairments, and then assigns a value based on its collective assessment of what is fair and reasonable.
The constitutional status of noneconomic damage caps in Georgia medical malpractice cases requires careful current-law verification. In 2005, the General Assembly enacted O.C.G.A. § 51-13-1, which capped noneconomic damages in medical malpractice actions at $350,000 per claimant against health care providers. In 2010, the Georgia Supreme Court held in Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery, P.C. v. Nestlehutt (286 Ga. 731) that this cap was unconstitutional as applied to medical malpractice injury claims, on the ground that it violated the Georgia Constitution’s guarantee that the right to trial by jury shall remain inviolate. That holding applied specifically to noneconomic damages for pain and suffering and loss of consortium in common law medical malpractice cases.
Whether the same reasoning extends to wrongful death claims remains an unresolved question. In June 2025, the Georgia Supreme Court’s decision in Medical Center of Central Georgia, Inc. v. Turner (917 S.E.2d 697) addressed a $7.2 million noneconomic damages award in a wrongful death case. The Court vacated the lower court’s decision and remanded, holding that the lower courts had incorrectly treated the Nestlehutt holding as controlling the wrongful death context. The Court clarified that Nestlehutt’s analytical framework was “claim- and remedy-specific,” and that because wrongful death is a statutory creation (not a common law cause of action), the constitutional analysis applicable to wrongful death caps requires independent examination on remand. The Court did not resolve the constitutional question for wrongful death caps. As of the date of this writing, this area of law is actively evolving, and the status of noneconomic damage caps for both injury and wrongful death claims should be verified at the time of publication.
Additionally, the 2025 tort reform legislation (SB 68) introduced restrictions on how noneconomic damages may be argued at trial. Under the new O.C.G.A. § 9-10-184(b), counsel may not argue the monetary value of noneconomic damages unless the argument is “rationally related to the evidence,” and any specific dollar figure suggested in closing argument must have been introduced during opening argument. These provisions were designed to limit the practice of “anchoring,” where attorneys suggest specific, often large, dollar amounts for pain and suffering without a demonstrated connection to the evidence.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages serve a different function from compensatory damages. They are not intended to compensate the plaintiff for a loss suffered but to punish the defendant for particularly egregious conduct and to deter similar conduct in the future. Under Georgia law, punitive damages are available in medical malpractice cases only when the plaintiff demonstrates that the defendant’s actions showed willful misconduct, malice, fraud, wantonness, oppression, or an entire want of care that would raise a presumption of conscious indifference to consequences. The threshold for punitive damages is substantially higher than the threshold for compensatory damages, and they are not available in every case where malpractice is established.
Consider a scenario where a patient suffers an injury as a result of medical malpractice and survives. The patient incurs medical expenses for corrective treatment and ongoing rehabilitation. The patient also loses income during the recovery period and faces a diminished capacity to earn income in future years due to the lasting effects of the injury. In addition to these economic losses, the patient experiences chronic pain and a reduced ability to participate in activities that were central to the patient’s quality of life before the injury. The damages claim would encompass the documented medical costs and income losses (economic damages), the pain, suffering, and diminished quality of life (noneconomic damages), and, if the provider’s conduct met the heightened threshold, potentially punitive damages.
Verify current status of all statutes, rules, and judicial holdings at time of publication; legislative or judicial changes may have occurred.
Disclaimer
This content is produced exclusively for general informational and educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and should not be relied upon as a substitute for professional legal counsel tailored to specific facts and circumstances.
No reader should act or refrain from acting on the basis of this content without first seeking qualified legal advice from a licensed attorney admitted to practice in the relevant jurisdiction. Medical malpractice law involves complex, fact-intensive analysis that varies significantly depending on the specific clinical context, the parties involved, the applicable procedural rules, and the current state of statutory and case law at the time of the claim.
The statutes, rules, judicial holdings, and legal principles referenced in this content reflect the law as understood at the time of writing. Georgia law is subject to legislative amendment, judicial reinterpretation, and regulatory change at any time. Specific provisions discussed herein, including but not limited to damage cap rulings, tort reform legislation, statutes of limitation and repose, expert qualification standards, and procedural filing requirements, may have been modified, superseded, or reinterpreted after the date of publication. Readers must independently verify the current status of all legal authorities cited before relying on any information contained in this content.
This content does not cover every aspect of Georgia medical malpractice law. Certain topics have been intentionally excluded from the scope of this publication, and the inclusion or omission of any particular subject should not be interpreted as a statement about its legal significance or relevance to any specific case.
The examples and scenarios presented throughout this content are hypothetical illustrations designed to clarify legal concepts. They do not represent actual cases, real parties, or guaranteed legal outcomes. The outcome of any medical malpractice claim depends on the unique facts of that case and the professional judgment of the attorneys and experts involved.
Nothing in this content should be construed as an opinion regarding the merits of any potential or pending claim, as a prediction of any legal outcome, or as an endorsement of any particular litigation strategy.