Atlanta Injury Lawyers Blog

One of the many bases for awarding punitive damages in Georgia is a conscience indifference to the welfare of others. I am hard-pressed to think of a more apt example than a hit-and-run driver leaving the scene of a serious accident. Yet, many Georgia lawyers mistakenly believe that hit-and-run conduct does not warrant the imposition of punitive damages.

A number of well-settled Georgia cases prove that leaving the scene of an accident is conduct that allows the judge or jury to award punitive damages in the right case. Battle v. Kilcrease, 54 Ga.App. 808, 189 S.E. 573 (1936), is a case decided over 70 years ago by the Georgia Court of Appeals. The Battle case essentially stands for the proposition that:

The conduct of a hit and run driver in failing to stop and
give his name and render assistance to the person injured, when taken
in connection with all the circumstances, may authorize a finding that the driver in causing the injury exhibited an entire want of care and conscious indifference to consequences, and therefore, such "aggravating circumstances in the act" as would authorize a recovery of punitive damages.

More recently in Langlois v. Woldford, 246 Ga. App. 209 (2000), the Georgia Court of Appeals has ruled that: where a person driving along a public highway and overtaking and passing another automobile, attempts to turn in front of the latter automobile and hits the front portion of the latter automobile and turns it over causing a wreck and does not stop to render assistance, the jury may consider the conduct as such aggravating circumstances as would authorize the award of punitive damages to the person injured.

Leaving the scene of an accident was criminalized in Georgia because "the public policy of this state mandates that a party to an accident must stop and render aid to those involved in the collision, no matter who caused the collision, and not leave them in a possibly disabled state without aid."