- Court
- Court of Appeals of Georgia
- Year
- 2026
- Case
- Mag Mutual Insurance Company v. Perera
- Citation
- Case No. A26A0733, 2026 Ga. App. LEXIS 289
- Decided
- June 11, 2026
Reviewing the denial of JNOV under the "any evidence" standard, the Court of Appeals affirmed a more-than-$12 million verdict for a physician whose malpractice insurer breached its duty to defend, holding that consequential damages to the physician's career and reputation above the policy limit were a jury question and were supported by the evidence. It also affirmed an award of OCGA § 13-6-11 litigation expenses, finding at least slight evidence that the insurer acted in bad faith and that the contingency-fee-based amount was adequately supported.
Summary
The Court of Appeals affirmed a jury verdict of more than $12 million against MagMutual in a suit brought not by an injured patient but by the insurer’s own insured — vascular surgeon Ganesh Perera. The case is a study in what happens when a malpractice insurer’s handling of a claim collapses, and it is unusual reading for a plaintiff’s bar that more often sees MagMutual on the other side of the room. Reviewing the denial of MagMutual’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict under the deferential “any evidence” standard, the court upheld both the damages award and an award of litigation expenses.
Background
Perera was a board-certified vascular surgeon employed at University Hospital in Augusta with, by the opinion’s account, a clean professional record. He was insured under a MagMutual professional liability policy with a $1 million per-loss limit that promised “the strongest defense we can.” In 2018 he treated Barbara Bowen, an 82-year-old patient with severe vascular disease; after surgery she suffered a retroperitoneal bleed and died, and her autopsy also revealed a non-survivable dead colon. Her estate sent an unfiled complaint and then sued for wrongful death.
What followed was the heart of the case. MagMutual routed the claim to a claims analyst who was not licensed to practice law in Georgia, did not assign Perera defense counsel as the answer deadline approached, and — without Perera’s authorization — negotiated a stipulation conditioned on his attending a mediation he had never agreed to. By the time MagMutual assigned counsel, the deadline had passed; new counsel told the estate the prior handler had “gotten too far out on his skis,” the estate treated that as a repudiation, and the trial court set aside the stipulation and entered a default judgment finding Perera liable for Bowen’s death. MagMutual then settled for $1.7 million — paying above Perera’s $1 million limit — while admitting that, absent the default, any settlement “would have been nominal, at best.” It reported the settlement to the National Practitioner Data Bank and the Georgia Composite Medical Board, where the record is effectively permanent.
Perera, fired the next year and then rejected by some 30 prospective employers, sued. The trial court dismissed his tort, fiduciary-duty, and punitive-damages claims before trial; the case went to the jury only on breach of contract and OCGA § 13-6-11 litigation expenses. The jury awarded $9,109,775 in damages and $3,120,711 in litigation expenses, and the trial court denied JNOV.
Issues Decided
The damages were a jury question
MagMutual argued the damages were not recoverable as a matter of law. The Court of Appeals rejected each version of the argument. First, whether the parties contemplated reputational and career damages at the time of contracting was a fact question, and there was evidence they did — MagMutual advertised its insurance as protecting a physician’s reputation, and its own witnesses agreed that reputation and livelihood are a “very large component” of malpractice insurance and that settlements are a matter of permanent record. Second, that the damages exceeded the $1 million policy limit did not bar them: an insurer that breaches its duty to defend “is not necessarily protected by the policy limits,” and recovery beyond the limit is a jury question turning on what damages flowed from the breach. Third, causation was properly left to the jury on circumstantial evidence — Perera’s unbroken employment history before the settlement and his consecutive rejections after it, with no other explanation in the record, distinguished the speculative-causation cases MagMutual relied on. The court also clarified that Perera sought lost earnings as a wage earner, not lost profits from his fledgling private practice, so the “proven track record of profitability” rule did not apply.
The litigation-expense award stands
The court affirmed the OCGA § 13-6-11 award. This is contract litigation-expense “bad faith,” not the separate insurance bad-faith tort, and it requires only “slight evidence.” There was more than that: testimony that MagMutual’s handler told Perera the case was “not about whether we obtain a defense verdict” but “about costs, expenses, and time lost,” and that the insurer wanted a “very limited assignment to counsel” to control defense costs, let the jury find bad faith in MagMutual’s dealings with its insured. The court also upheld the contingency-fee-based amount, because Perera put up more than the bare existence of the fee agreement — evidence that the percentage was standard and customary, plus the firm’s hourly rates and hours showing the value of the work.
Commentary
For a plaintiff’s-side reader, Perera is worth filing for two reasons. The doctrinal one is the clean statement that an insurer’s breach of the duty to defend can expose it to consequential damages well beyond the policy limit, and that those damages — including damage to a professional’s reputation and earning capacity — are a jury question rather than a matter of law capped at the settlement amount. The practical one is the window into how an insurer’s claim handling looks when it becomes the evidence: the unlicensed analyst, the unassigned counsel, the unauthorized mediation, and the candid internal framing of the case as a cost-control exercise rather than a defense. The court did not need to reach the bad-faith tort or punitive damages — both were dismissed before trial — to let an “any evidence” record carry a $12 million contract verdict.
