How this estimate is built
Your medical expenses and lost wages are your economic damages — the easy-to-document part, and these are never capped in Georgia. We then apply the multiplier method, the same approach insurers and attorneys use industry-wide, to estimate pain and suffering: your economic damages multiplied by a factor of 1.5 to 5, depending on how serious the injury actually was.
No cap on compensatory damages, reaffirmed as recently as mid-2026
Georgia's legislature capped non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases at $350,000 in 2005. In Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery, P.C. v. Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. 731 (2010), the Georgia Supreme Court struck that cap down unanimously, holding it violated the state constitution's guarantee of the right to a jury trial. Defendants have pushed the court to reconsider or narrow that ruling since, but in Clark v. Leigh (June 16, 2026), the court reaffirmed Nestlehutt and restored a $29.25 million wrongful death verdict that a lower court had cut to $350,000. Today, Georgia places no cap on non-economic or economic damages in any type of personal injury case.
Punitive damages are a genuinely different story
Unlike compensatory damages, punitive damages in Georgia are capped at $250,000 under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1 — but with real exceptions. There's no cap at all if the defendant acted with specific intent to harm, if the defendant was impaired by drugs or alcohol, or in product liability cases, where the cap also doesn't apply, though 75% of any punitive award there goes to the state treasury rather than the injured party.
Your own fault still has a hard cutoff
Georgia follows modified comparative negligence under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33: if your fault is less than 50%, your recovery is reduced proportionally. Reach 50% fault, and you recover nothing. See our Georgia comparative negligence calculator for the full rule.