Medical Error And Cause For Action

Allen Turner was a 69-year-old patient, who underwent surgery at the Medical Center of Central Georgia to remove a polyp in his small intestine. During the operation, the surgeons encountered a large, pulsing vessel near the aorta, which they mistakenly identified as an ordinary blood vessel. In reality, the vessel was the superior mesenteric artery (SMA)—a critical artery supplying blood to the intestines. The surgeons unknowingly clamped and cut the SMA, leading to severe complications. Despite multiple additional surgeries, Allen ultimately died from multi-system organ failure.[i]

As a result, Mr. Turner’s daughter, Norkesia Turner, brought a medical malpractice claim in her capacity as administrator of her father’s estate and a wrongful death claim in her personal capacity as her father’s surviving next of kin against the surgeons, William Thompson and Heather Nolan, as well as their employer, the Medical Center of Central Georgia, Inc. (collectively, “MCCG”). [ii]

Trial And Appeal

When the case went to trial in Bibb County State Court, the jury found in favor of Turner, awarding a total of approximately $9.2 million in damages, including:

• $618,853.59 for medical and funeral expenses,
• $1,443,300 for Allen’s pain and suffering, and
• $7,216,500 in non-economic damages for wrongful death. [iii]

After the verdicts, but before entry of final judgment, MCCG moved the trial court to reduce the $7.2 million non-economic damages award to the maximum amount allowable under OCGA § 51-13-1 (b) and (c).[iv] However, Bibb County State Court and ultimately the Court of Appeals denied the MCCG’s request to reduce the award, relying on the high court’s Nestlehutt decision, which could be interpreted to hold the statutory caps unconstitutional as applied to a common-law medical malpractice claim for pain and suffering.[v]

MCCG then petitioned the Georgia Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, which was granted to determine whether the Court of Appeals properly applied precedent for determining whether the legislative enactment violates Georgia’s constitutional right to a trial by jury.[vi]

Supreme Court Ruling

On June 24, 2025, after a thorough review of this issue, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed and remanded, but they never addressed any constitutional issues of a trial by jury, instead determining that the lower courts did not apply the appropriate analytical framework established by existing precedent for “value of the life” damages in a wrongful death claim. [vii] Pointing to OCGA §§ 51-4-1 and 51-4-2 (a), the Court concluded that both lower courts misconstrued the breadth of its prior decision in Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery, P.C. v. Nestlehutt.[viii]

In the remand opinion, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that “the Courts must take care not to apply a given judicial decision by simply parsing or interpreting the language of that decision, like we might construe a statute. Instead, ascertaining “whether a precedent controls a decision in a later case turns on the scope of the relevant holding of that precedent.” [ix]

As a general matter, the “holding” of a judicial decision includes, to some degree, reasoning or principles that were necessary to that decision. If a court did not reach a decision on a particular issue, it necessarily issued no holding on that issue, and a court cannot reach a decision on a particular issue when that issue is not presented or implicated by factual context of case being decided.[x] The Georgia Supreme Court further stated that “language that sounds like a holding, but actually exceeds scope of case’s factual context, is not a “holding” no matter how much it sounds like one”.[xi] The Georgia Supreme Court clarified and held that the language relied upon by the lower courts in Nestlehutt was not a holding that controls the outcome of this case.[xii]

The Statute and its History

OCGA 51-13-1 reads in relevant part:

(b) In any verdict returned or judgment entered in a medical malpractice action, including an action for wrongful death, against one or more health care providers, the total amount recoverable by a claimant for non-economic damages in such action shall be limited to an amount not to exceed $350,000.00, regardless of the number of defendant health care providers against whom the claim is asserted or the number of separate causes of action on which the claim is based.

(c) In any verdict returned or judgment entered in a medical malpractice action, including an action for wrongful death, against a single medical facility, inclusive of all persons and entities for which vicarious liability theories may apply, the total amount recoverable by a claimant for non-economic damages in such action shall be limited to an amount not to exceed $350,000.00, regardless of the number of separate causes of action on which the claim is based.[xiii]

The economic damages cap was enacted as part of a legislative package known as the Tort Reform Act of 2005. The cap was intended to help address what the Georgia Legislature defined as a “crisis affecting the provision and quality of health care services in this state.”[xiv] Specifically, the Legislature found that health care providers and facilities were being negatively affected by diminishing access to and increasing costs of procuring liability insurance, and that “these problems in the liability insurance market bore the potential to reduce Georgia citizens’ access to health care services, thus degrading their health and well-being”.[xv]

Legal Analysis

The Georgia Supreme Court made it clear that the Nestlehutt ruling does not control in this case, but the analysis does apply. The Court’s ruling in Nestlehutt took into consideration whether common law existed for a type of cause of action and claims made and concluded in Turner that the same analysis should be applied.

The Court took into consideration and explained that, for the Nestlehutt claims, common law existed, and the Court silently determined that the wrongful death cause of action did not exist at common law. There was no common law right to file a claim for wrongful death; the claim was entirely a statutory creation.[xvi] Wrongful death laws first began in 1846 when the British Parliament enacted Lord Campbell’s Act, which created a statutory cause of action for wrongful death. Prior to then, there was no common law or statutory cause of action that arose from the death of another. In 1850, Georgia patterned its first wrongful death statute after Lord Campbell’s Act. In 1933, the Georgia legislature enacted Code Ann. § 105–1309, which “created and established a new property cause of action in favor of the next of kin of the deceased, which had not previously existed.”[xvii]

According to the Court’s analysis in Turner, the lower courts should focus their analytic framework on the caselaw and the statutes concerning “full value of life” claims in wrongful death cases.

In relevant part, OCGA §§ 51-4-1 and 51-4-2 (a), states the following:

OCGA §51-4-1

As used in this chapter, the term:

(1) “Full value of the life of the decedent, as shown by the evidence” means the full value of the life of the decedent without deducting for any of the necessary or personal expenses of the decedent had he lived.

(2) “Homicide” includes all cases in which the death of a human being results from a crime, from criminal or other negligence, or from property which has been defectively manufactured, whether or not as the result of negligence.[xviii]

OCGA §51-4-2 (a)

(a) The surviving spouse or, if there is no surviving spouse, a child or children, either minor or sui juris, may recover for the homicide of the spouse or parent the full value of the life of the decedent, as shown by the evidence.[xix]

Caselaw explains that the measure of damages for wrongful death is the full value of the life of the decedent, as shown by the evidence. This value consists of both the economic value of the deceased’s normal life expectancy as determined by his expected lifetime earnings, and the intangible element incapable of exact proof.[xx] Based on the facts, the plaintiff, Turner, may have had a right to bring her claims; however, the question unanswered is: were these claims worth $7.2 million based on the evidence submitted to the jury on the “full value of the life” of her father?

Conclusion

With its ruling in Turner, the Georgia Supreme Court has spoken loudly on the long-standing issue in our judicial system, concluding that precedents should be applied to the facts, causes of action, and claims on a case-by-case basis, instead of generalizations and piecemeal applications of the law. The lower courts will have to go back to the drawing board and make decisions based on the current precedent, which is not a simple application of the ruling in Nestlehutt but, instead, a nuanced application of the legal framework defined in Nestlehutt. Based on this new framework, the cap on non-economic damages still stands, particularly for wrongful death claims based on “full value of life” damages.

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Sources

[i]     Med. Ctr. of Cent. Georgia, Inc. v. Turner, 917 S.E.2d 697 (Ga. 2025); see also Georgia Tort Law, October 25, 2025, https://www.georgiatortlaw.com/cases/med-mal-statutory-caps-noneconomic-damages-unconstitutional/

[ii]     Id. at 698.

[iii]    Med. Ctr. of Cent. Georgia, Inc. v. Turner, 372 Ga. App. 644, 905 S.E.2d 858 (2024), cert. granted (Jan. 14, 2025), vacated, 917 S.E.2d 697 (Ga. 2025); see also, The Medical Center of Central Georgia v. Turner, October 25, 2025, https://www.georgiatortlaw.com/cases/med-mal-statutory-caps-noneconomic-damages-unconstitutional/

[iv]    Id.

[v]     Id.

[vi]    Id.

[vii]   See, generally, Med. Ctr. of Cent. Georgia, Inc. v. Turner, 917 S.E.2d 697 (Ga. 2025).

[viii]   Id.; see also, Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery, P.C. v. Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. 731, 691 S.E.2d 218 (2010).

[ix]    Turner, 917 S.E.2d at 700; see also, “Wrongful Death Damages Cap Case Remanded to Trial Court,” October 2, 2025, https://www.law360.com/articles/2395485/wrongful-death-damages-cap-case-remanded-to-trial-court

[x]     Turner, 917 S.E.2d at 700.

[xi]    Id.

[xii]   Id.; Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. at 221.

[xiii]   Ga. Code Ann. § 51-13-1 (West).

[xiv]      Ga. L., 2005, pp. 1-2, Act 1, § 1.

[xv]   Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. at 221.

[xvi]   O.C.G.A. § 51-4-1 et seq.; Tolbert v. Maner, 271 Ga. 207, 518 S.E.2d 423 (1999).

[xvii]  Stewart v. Bourn, 250 Ga. App. 755, 756–57, 552 S.E.2d 450, 451–52 (2001).

[xviii] Ga. Code Ann. § 51-4-1 (West)

[xix]   Id.

[xx]   United Obstetrics & Gynecology, P.C. v. Robinson, 376 Ga. App. 198, 918 S.E.2d 365 (2025).