A trial-lawyer perspective on why large verdicts often reflect discovery failures, credibility issues and corporate conduct – not runaway juries.
Every time a Georgia jury returns a large verdict, you can almost set your watch by the press release that follows. Insurance industry groups and tort-reform lobbyists roll out the same talking points: “runaway juries,” “nuclear verdicts,” “jackpot justice.” The implication is always the same – that jurors have somehow lost their minds and are handing out lottery tickets at the expense of innocent defendants.
I have tried cases to Georgia juries for most of my career. That narrative is not what I see in the courtroom. What I see is the opposite: juries taking their job seriously, listening carefully and reacting rationally to the evidence in front of them. When a verdict is large, it is almost always because the evidence was overwhelming; and because the defense, or more often the insurance company standing behind the defense, created the conditions for that result.
The “nuclear verdict” label is a marketing term. It tells you nothing about what actually happened at trial. What it hides is far more important: the discovery abuses, credibility collapses, corporate misconduct and bad-faith insurance negotiations that most “runaway jury” verdicts are actually responding to.
The Industry Narrative vs. What the Record Actually Shows
The “runaway jury” story depends on keeping the public at arm’s length from the trial record. If you only read the headline –”$30 million verdict” – you might think a jury went off the rails. If you read the transcript, the exhibits, the discovery motions and the pretrial history, you usually find something very different: a defendant that stonewalled, an insurer that lowballed and evidence that the jury clearly weighed carefully before returning its number.
Georgia law gives juries real discretion in determining damages, and for good reason. The people in the box are the ones who actually heard the witnesses, watched the cross-examination and weighed the credibility of each side. Georgia appellate courts have repeatedly recognized this. Jury awards will not be disturbed unless they are so excessive as to “shock the judicial conscience” – a deliberately high bar that reflects confidence in the fact-finding process, not suspicion of it.
Driver #1: Discovery Failures and Sanctions
Discovery is not a technicality. It is the process by which both sides put their cards on the table before trial so the jury can see the whole picture. When a defendant refuses to produce documents, gives evasive answers under oath, or destroys evidence, the consequences under Georgia law can be severe — and they are supposed to be.
Under O.C.G.A. § 9-11-37, a Georgia trial court has broad discretion to sanction discovery abuses. The sanctions range from fee-shifting and adverse-inference instructions all the way up to striking a defendant’s pleadings and entering default judgment on liability. These tools exist because the civil justice system cannot function when one side hides the ball.
In Howard v. Alegria, 321 Ga. App. 178 (2013), the Georgia Court of Appeals upheld an order striking a defendant’s pleadings because the defendant had provided intentionally false discovery responses and destroyed evidence. The court treated the conduct as a “total failure to respond,” and affirmed the trial court’s decision to strip the defendant of its right to contest liability. When a jury later assesses damages in a case like that, it is not because the jury went rogue. It is because the defendant already forfeited its defense by the way it handled discovery.
Driver #2: Credibility Collapse
Jurors do not need a law degree to spot dishonesty. When a witness takes the stand and contradicts their own deposition, or a corporate executive cannot explain why safety records were destroyed, jurors notice. And they react.
Georgia law recognizes this reality. A defendant who is caught lying, concealing or destroying evidence often triggers punitive damages. Not because the jury stretched the law, but because the defendant’s own conduct warranted it. Punitive damages are not a windfall; they are a calibrated legal response to conduct the civil justice system has decided cannot be tolerated.
Driver #3: Corporate Conduct
The largest verdicts in Georgia almost always involve corporate defendants. That is not because juries are biased against corporations. It is because corporations make safety choices at the policy level, and those choices get documented. When a trucking company sets a dispatch schedule that forces drivers to violate federal hours-of-service rules, that decision lives in writing. When a healthcare system caps nursing staff below what patient acuity requires, that decision lives in a budget spreadsheet.
In Hospital Authority of Gwinnett County v. Jones, 259 Ga. 759 (1989), the Supreme Court of Georgia upheld a punitive damages award against a hospital whose internal policies prioritized economic considerations over patient care. The jury was not punishing the hospital for being a hospital. It was punishing the hospital for a documented choice about how to run one.
When defense lawyers and insurers complain about the size of a corporate verdict, they rarely mention the corporate conduct that produced it.
Driver #4: Bad-Faith Insurance Negotiation
There is one driver of large verdicts that insurance industry talking points never acknowledge: the insurers themselves. Bad-faith negotiation (lowball offers, delay tactics, refusals to evaluate cases honestly) is one of the single most powerful forces pushing verdicts into eight-figure territory.
Butler v. McDaniel, tried in DeKalb County State Court illustrates this clearly. The case arose from the wrongful death of Felecia Butler.
Before trial, the highest amount the defense ever offered to resolve the case was $250,000 — for the death of a human being. The trial team took the case to a DeKalb County jury, which returned a verdict of $30 million. That number was not the product of a runaway jury. It was the product of a defense and an insurer that had spent the entire pre-suit and pre-trial period treating a wrongful death case like a nuisance claim.
A $30 million verdict is not a $250,000 case that a jury inflated 120 times over. It is a case whose real value the insurer refused to evaluate honestly.
Georgia recognizes that insurance companies have legal duties to negotiate in good faith. Under O.C.G.A. § 33-4-6, an insurer that refuses to pay a valid claim in bad faith can be liable for bad-faith penalties of up to 50% of the claim value, plus attorney’s fees. Under O.C.G.A. § 9-11-68, a defendant who rejects a reasonable settlement offer and then loses at trial by 25% or more can be forced to pay the plaintiff’s attorney’s fees from the date of rejection through judgment.
These statutes exist because the legislature understood something the “nuclear verdict” narrative ignores: large verdicts are often the direct consequence of insurer conduct.
Why Georgia Trusts Juries with Damages Decisions
Georgia appellate courts have consistently recognized that determining damages — including punitive damages — is a jury function that should not be second-guessed lightly. In Fassnacht v. Moler, 358 Ga. App. 463 (2021), the court of appeals reiterated that punitive damages are assessed based on deterrence and that appellate courts will only intervene if an award “shocks the judicial conscience.”
If Georgia juries were actually handing out irrational verdicts, our appellate courts would be reducing them. They are not — because the verdicts, overwhelmingly, are defensible under the evidence and the law.
Conclusion: Hold the Right Parties Accountable
The “nuclear verdict” story is a lobbying tool, not a description of reality. In Georgia courtrooms, large verdicts are usually the result of defendants who hid evidence, witnesses who lost credibility, corporations whose own documents proved the case against them and insurers who refused to value the case honestly until a jury forced the issue.
Butler is not an outlier. Butler is a window. A $250,000 pre-trial offer became a $30 million verdict because a family had the courage to keep going and a trial team willing to try the case. If you are an attorney advising injured clients, or a firm deciding how to position your practice, the lesson is the same: the firms that actually try cases are the ones that force insurers to take cases seriously. Everything else follows from that.
Disclaimer: Haug Barron Law Group Managing Partner Colin A. Barron was part of the trial team in the $30 million Butler verdict in DeKalb County Superior Court discussed in this article. Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome in any future case. Every case is different and depends on its own facts and circumstances. Nothing in this article constitutes legal advice or creates an attorney-client relationship.
