- Court
- Supreme Court of Georgia
- Year
- 2026
- Case
- Clark v. Leigh
- Citation
- Case Nos. S26A0349, S26X0350
- Decided
- June 16, 2026
OCGA § 51-13-1's noneconomic damages cap cannot be applied to a medical malpractice verdict that includes noneconomic damages to which the constitutional right to trial by jury attaches — such as an estate's pre-death pain and suffering — because the statute combines all claimants' noneconomic damages into a single capped sum and provides no mechanism to limit only some claims. The Court reaffirmed Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v. Nestlehutt and vacated the order reducing the wrongful death award, while expressly reserving whether the cap could constitutionally reach wrongful death damages standing alone.
The Supreme Court of Georgia held that the medical malpractice noneconomic damages cap in OCGA § 51-13-1 cannot be applied to a jury’s verdict when that verdict includes noneconomic damages the jury was constitutionally entitled to award — and vacated a trial court order that had used the cap to slash a $29,250,000 wrongful death award down to $350,000. The Court reaffirmed Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery, P.C. v. Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. 731 (2010), and resolved the case on statutory construction without reaching most of the constitutional questions the parties raised. The opinion was unanimous — every Justice joined it — though it openly noted internal division over whether Nestlehutt was correct, and Justice Bethel concurred separately to press his own doubts.
The case arose from the death of April S. Clark. As the opinion describes it, Clark had surgery in May 2019 to remove an ovarian cyst, during which her bowel was perforated; she developed complications under the post-operative care of several physicians and died the following month. Her husband sued as the statutory wrongful death plaintiff, and her estate sued for her pre-death pain and suffering and medical bills. In July 2024 a jury found for the Clarks, awarding $29,250,000 for the full value of Clark’s life (the wrongful death claim) and $2,500,000 for her pain and suffering (the estate’s claim). The trial court then granted the defendants’ post-trial motion, applied § 51-13-1(b), and reduced the $29,250,000 wrongful death award to $350,000.
Nestlehutt stands, and the cap cannot reach a mixed verdict
The defendants asked the Court to overrule Nestlehutt — which struck the same cap as applied to pain-and-suffering and loss-of-consortium damages because it violates the constitutional right to trial by jury — arguing that the jury-trial right is merely procedural. The Court declined. Its stare decisis analysis was candid about the division on the bench: some Justices find Nestlehutt’s view that the right is substantive affirmatively correct, others are less certain, but all agreed the defendants had not shown the decision was “clearly” or “obviously and harmfully” wrong. So the Court adhered to Nestlehutt.
It then resolved the case on the statute’s text. Section 51-13-1 does not cap each claim separately. It treats all persons claiming damages from one patient’s death as “a single claimant,” combines every category of noneconomic damages awarded in the action into one “total amount recoverable,” and limits that single sum to $350,000 “regardless of the number of … separate causes of action.” Because this verdict included $2,500,000 for the estate’s pre-death pain and suffering — the very kind of damages Nestlehutt held a jury is entitled to award and the legislature cannot cap — applying the cap to the combined lump would necessarily reduce those protected damages too. The statute provides no way to carve a verdict apart and cap only some claims, and the Court will not rewrite it to create one. So where a verdict mixes constitutionally protected noneconomic damages with damages the defense says are unprotected, the cap cannot operate at all. In practical terms, that describes the ordinary death case, in which a survival-type pain-and-suffering claim and a wrongful death claim are tried together.
A separate procedural holding cuts the other way: the cap is not an affirmative defense, so the defendants did not waive it by omitting it from the pretrial order and raising it only after the cap-exceeding verdict. It is a statutory limit that may be invoked in any timely post-judgment motion.
What the Court left open
The Court limited its holding carefully. It did not decide whether the right to trial by jury attaches to wrongful death damages at all, and it did not decide whether the cap could be applied to wrongful death damages “isolated in their own” verdict — a case with no protected pain-and-suffering award in the mix. Both questions were reserved. Those reservations leave room for a future test of whether wrongful death damages standing alone can be capped, and for a more carefully drafted statute, but the answer would turn on the questions the Court declined to reach.
Commentary
For plaintiffs, the practical takeaway is direct: in the typical medical malpractice death case, where the estate’s pre-death pain and suffering is tried alongside the wrongful death claim, § 51-13-1’s cap has no application to the verdict. Two cautions keep the win in proportion. The case does not restore the $29,250,000 — the Court vacated the cap order but remanded for the trial court to rule on the defendants’ separate claim that the wrongful death award was excessive, a question it had treated as moot. And the decision settles less than it might first appear: it holds that the statute as written cannot be carved up, not that wrongful death damages can never be capped.
For the doctrinal mechanics — why a special verdict form does not revive the cap, why severance is the only path to the questions the Court reserved, and what all of this means for a brief — see the companion analysis piece, The damages cap cannot be carved up: Clark v. Leigh and the wrongful-death verdict.
