Georgia Court of Appeals Overturns Massive $54M Verdict Against Avis for Crash Following Employee’s Theft of Vehicle

In a recent pair of companion cases, Avis Rent A Car System v. Johnson, 352 Ga.App. 858 (2019) and Avis Rent A Car System v. Smith, 353 Ga.App. 24 (2019), the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed massive jury verdicts totaling $54M on the grounds that an Avis employee’s theft of a rental vehicle cut off Avis’s liability for the employee’s subsequent crash that injured the bystander plaintiffs.

The two plaintiffs’ respective cases arose from the same incident where an Avis employee stole a rental SUV after hours from a downtown Atlanta branch and then later fled from the police before crashing into a brick wall where both plaintiffs were sitting. The plaintiffs suffered significant injuries and filed suit against Avis, a regional security manager, the operator of the Avis location, the operator’s owner, and the operator’s employee who stole the vehicle.

At the trial court level, the juries found that Avis was vicariously liable for the employee’s negligence in causing the crash and, in the Smith case, found that Avis was also vicariously liable for the fault that was apportioned to the operator and its owner. Avis filed a motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict or, in the alternative, for a new trial; the trial court denied the motions.

Avis appealed the holdings and last year the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed the verdicts and held that only the car thief employee could be held liable for the plaintiffs’ injuries. In both appeals cases, the Court of Appeals held that the at-fault employee’s criminal acts – namely, his after hours theft of the vehicle and high-speed flight from the police some five hours later – were intervening acts that severed Avis’s liability for the incident. The Court further recognized Georgia’s long line of appellate decisions holding that a car thief’s criminal acts were the sole proximate cause of plaintiffs’ injuries in those cases 

Further, in the Smith case, the Court found that Avis, the operator, and its owner could not be liable for negligent hiring and retention of the car thief employee because the employee was not acting under the color of his employment when the theft and subsequent accident occurred.

However, the two cases did not end at the Court of Appeals, as the Georgia Supreme Court granted certiorari and heard oral argument last December. The Supreme Court’s pending holding could very well dramatically alter the landscape of vicarious liability law in Georgia, so we encourage you to keep an eye on this space for further analysis once the Supreme Court issues its ruling.