- Court
- Court of Appeals of Georgia
- Year
- 2025
- Case
- Atlanta Women's Specialists, LLC v. Trabue
- Citation
- 377 Ga. App. 755
- Decided
- October 29, 2025
Attorney fees awarded under OCGA 9-11-68 are limited to those incurred from the date of the rejection of the settlement offer through the initial entry of judgment in the trial court. The statute does not permit recovery for appellate work or post-judgment proceedings.
Summary
The Court of Appeals of Georgia vacated a trial court order awarding $13.7 million in attorney fees to the plaintiffs in Atlanta Women’s Specialists, LLC v. Trabue. The underlying medical malpractice case involved a catastrophic brain injury and a $46 million jury verdict. After several appeals on the merits, the trial court awarded fees under Georgia’s offer-of-settlement statute, OCGA 9-11-68.
The Court of Appeals vacated the award and remanded, concluding that the trial court had included fees for appellate work and other services performed after the initial entry of judgment.
Issues Decided
Appellate and post-judgment fees under OCGA 9-11-68
Decision
The court held that attorney fees incurred for appellate proceedings, or for work performed after the initial entry of judgment in the trial court, are not recoverable under OCGA 9-11-68(b)(2).
Facts
The plaintiffs filed a medical malpractice renewal action in 2014. During litigation, they made a $2 million settlement offer, which the defendants rejected. A jury later awarded $46 million, and the trial court entered judgment on March 29, 2017.
After years of appeals, the trial court awarded $13.7 million in attorney fees. The fee evidence included about $1.7 million in appellate fees and about 2,500 hours of work performed after trial. The total award roughly matched 75 percent of the plaintiffs’ 40 percent contingency fee agreement.
Reasoning
The court reasoned that OCGA 9-11-68 is in derogation of common law and must be strictly construed. The statutory phrase “from the date of the rejection of the offer of settlement through the entry of judgment” refers to the initial judgment entered by the trial court, not to a later judgment after appeal.
Because the record showed that the trial court considered post-judgment legal work and entered an award commensurate with that work, the Court of Appeals found an error of law and vacated the fee order.
Commentary
For plaintiff lawyers seeking fees under OCGA 9-11-68, the decision narrows the recoverable window to trial-court work only. Appellate fees, post-judgment motion practice, and related legal services may be substantial and connected to the same settlement-offer dispute, but they are outside the statute’s fee period as the Court of Appeals read it.
The practical point is record discipline. Fee petitions should segregate time and fees incurred between rejection of the offer and the trial court’s initial entry of judgment. The trial court’s order should also make that boundary explicit. In Trabue, the appellate court inferred from the record that post-judgment work had been included, and that inference was enough to require vacatur.
