Why More Georgia Injury Cases Are Going to Trial

For years, personal injury cases in Georgia followed a pattern that almost everyone in the industry understood and almost no one explained to clients.

You got hurt. You hired an attorney. Your attorney referred you to a medical provider who treated you on a lien, meaning the provider agreed to get paid later from your settlement rather than billing your health insurance now. Treatment costs were billed at full rates. Those rates were high. When your attorney sent a demand to the insurance company, the medical bills were the anchor. A $60,000 demand looks different than a $15,000 one. The big number created leverage. The adjuster negotiated against it. The case settled.

The client usually didn't know what was happening behind that math. They heard a settlement number. They signed a release. Then the lien balances came out, and the attorney's fee came out, and what was left was significantly less than what the number sounded like over the phone.

The system worked. Not for the client, necessarily. But it worked.

Insurance companies lobbied for legislation that changed what juries are allowed to see when evaluating medical expenses. In Georgia, that legislation is known as Senate Bill 68. What it did, in practical terms, was shift the evidence from what was billed to what was actually paid.

Source: Georgia Senate Bill 68 (2025 Session), as passed by the Georgia General Assembly.

Under the old rules, if a provider billed $60,000 for your treatment, the jury saw $60,000. Under the new rules, if your health insurance negotiated that same treatment down to $8,000, the jury may see $8,000. The number that anchored the entire case just shrank by 85 percent.

Insurance carriers lobbied for this change because it works in their favor. Lower numbers in front of juries mean lower verdicts. Lower verdicts mean lower settlement benchmarks. The math cascades.

But the shift goes further than most clients realize. If you have health insurance, the defense can introduce your insurer's negotiated rate as evidence, even if your attorney never used it. Even if you were treated on a lien at full billed rates. The jury sees what your insurance would have paid, not what you were actually billed.

This is where it gets dangerous. If you have Medicare or Medicaid, which negotiate some of the lowest rates in the system, a jury may award damages based on those rates. Your lien provider billed $60,000. Medicare's rate for the same treatment might be $9,000. The jury awards $9,000. But you still owe the lien provider $60,000.

The client didn't make the billing decision. Their attorney did. And now that decision is being used against them by the insurance company that lobbied for the rule change in the first place.

Many firms have not changed how they operate. They still refer clients to lien providers. They still build demands around high billed amounts. But now the insurance company knows those numbers won't hold up in front of a jury. So the offers come in lower.

The firm is stuck. They can accept the lower offer and close the file. Or they can take the case to trial. But at trial, the billing looks inflated. A jury that sees a $60,000 lien bill next to an $8,000 insurance rate starts asking questions the firm doesn't want to answer. The very number that was supposed to create leverage now creates doubt.

The firms that built their entire practice around the old model are being squeezed from both sides. They can't settle for what they used to get. And they can't go to trial with the billing structure they created.

The client in the middle of this has no idea it's happening.

Some attorneys saw this shift coming and changed how they build cases. The difference starts with a simple question at the beginning of representation: does this client have health insurance?

If the answer is yes, there's a choice. Send the client to a lien provider and let medical bills accumulate at billed rates. Or use the client's existing health insurance, which covers the same treatment at negotiated rates that are often a fraction of the billed amount.

Under the new rules, using health insurance isn't just better for the client's net recovery. It's better for the case. The billing is clean. The numbers a jury sees match what was actually paid. There's no gap to explain and no inflated figure to defend. The case is built on the injury, not on the billing.

An attorney running this model can go to trial without flinching. The medical evidence holds up. The damages are real. The billing doesn't create a distraction. And because the adjuster knows this attorney will actually try the case with a clean record, the settlement offers reflect that confidence.

The rule change didn't make injury cases harder. It made the firms that weren't ready for it impossible to hide.

If you're currently represented by a firm that sent you to a lien provider without discussing your health insurance options, it's worth understanding why that decision was made and who it benefits. It may have been the right call. Not every client has health insurance. Not every situation makes it practical. But if the conversation never happened, that's a question worth asking.

If your case is approaching a demand or a settlement offer that feels low, the billing structure may be part of the reason. Adjusters know which firms adapted and which ones didn't. The offer reflects that.

And if your firm is talking about going to trial with medical bills that were built under the old model, it's worth understanding what a jury will see and whether your case is ready for that scrutiny.