Florida insurers will no doubt remember the time more than two years ago when one of the largest plaintiffs’ law firms in the state gave notice that it was planning to file tens of thousands of claims lawsuits ahead of the 2023 tort-reform enactment.
Georgia plaintiffs’ firms appear to have followed the same script in 2024 and this year – before two significant litigation-limiting legislative packages took effect.
A report from Lex Machina, the analytics arm of LexisNexis, a legal data firm, shows that civil litigation jumped sharply in the Atlanta area in 2024. Some 43,000 suits were filed in 2024 in seven courts in four north Georgia counties. That was almost 9,000 more suits than in any year in the last decade, the report’s authors noted.
“Data from the Lex Machina platform for January through September 2025 show that the civil case burden on Atlanta’s state courts has continued to grow, with 2025 on track for more lawsuits to launch in these courts than any year since at least 2016,” the report said.
Georgia insurance defense lawyers said the 2024 increase likely had to do with the passage of changes to Georgia’s century-old statutes that allowed parties injured in truck accidents to sue the motor carriers’ insurance companies directly, even without naming the trucking firm. Georgia was one of just a few states that had allowed direct-action suits against insurers, and that law was revised in 2024.
“I do think that at least some members of the plaintiffs’ bar were rushing to file commercial auto claims before the direct-action statute law that was amended passedin 2024,” said Martin Levinson, a partner with the Hawkins Parnell firm in Atlanta.
Levinson, the incoming president of the Georgia Defense Lawyers Association, said his firm saw a big increase in commercial auto suits in 2024, ahead of the direct-action legislation taking effect.
Others said the rush to the courthouse was expected after widespread publicity about the 2024 changes and the buildup to the sweeping tort-reform package championed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in 2025.
“When you have the tide going out, plaintiffs see that and react to that,” said Mike Nelson, an Atlanta attorney who practices insurance defense in auto claims.
He noted that a similar rush to file was seen in Missouri in 2019 before the governor there signed a four-bill package of tort reform designed to limit litigation and damage awards.
The Lex Machina analysts, Adam Mills Masarek and Chuan Qin, suggested that other factors may have had an impact on the lawsuit numbers, including massive verdicts in some recent injury cases and the increased prevalence of attorney advertising, which nationwide trends.
“Knowing of such potentially large awards has perhaps led more injury claimants to file lawsuits rather than agree to pre-suit resolutions,” said the report, which was first noted by Law.com.
The report also suggested that the rising caseloads have slowed resolution of lawsuits. The median time from filing a complaint to decisions in limine (at the beginning of a trial) was about 2.5 times longer in 2022 to 2024 as it was from 2016 to 2018.
But Levinson said that in limine marker may be a misleading bookend to judge cases by. Some cases may resolve even after such a ruling. And a two-year window won’t include all suits.
“It’s really too early to tell if newly filed litigation is down” after the passage of the tort-reform legislation, Levinson said.
The statute of limitations on bodily injury claims torts is two years. Then it usually takes more than two years for suits to reach trial, he explained.
“It’s too early to tell” if the 2025 tort-reform laws are discouraging lawsuits, Nelson said. “It’s hard to pick up a pattern with any objective view so far.”
In Florida, the 2022 reforms, which ended one-way attorney fees and assignment-of-benefit agreements, and the broader 2023 tort-reform law have significantly reduced insurance claims litigation, most measures indicate.
From January to July of this year, Citizens Property Insurance Corp., Florida’s state plan and until last month the state’s largest insurer, was served with 3,721 lawsuits. That was a 34% drop from the same period in 2024, Citizens officials said at a Board of Governors meeting.
With significantly lowered defense costs and containment, now down to 3.4%, the lowest in a decade, according to Gallagher Re’s research, multiple carriers have filed for homeowner insurance rate decreases in the last two years in Florida.
Georgia insurers hope to see a similar impact in that state.
“The significant increase in lawsuits filed in the Atlanta area in 2024 confirms why Governor Kemp was right to seek to address legal system abuse and the costs it imposes on Georgia businesses and consumers,” said Ron Jackson, Georgia vice president for state government relations at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association.
The Lex Machina report can be seen here.
Top photo: Old Dekalb County Courthouse in Georgia (AdobeStock)
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