I write this personal injury blog from Atlanta, Georgia, and recently I have posted several entries about the liability of Georgia cities that do not construct or maintain their roads properly. In one recent case I did, the City let a stop sign fall down and my client was seriously injured in a car wreck because the other driver did not realize she needed to stop when she got to the intersection. The City's maintenance at that intersection had been so poor that in fact the stop signs on both sides of the intersection had fallen down.
In order to prove that a City is liable for poor road maintenance that caused a car accident in Georgia, the plaintiff has to show that the City had notice of the defect. But how do you prove that a Georgia City had "notice" of a problem with a road that ended up causing a car crash?
Under Georgia law, notice is "imputed" to an entity, like a City, "'from the knowledge of its own agents or employees.' City of Rome v. Stone, 46 Ga. App. 259 (5a) (167 SE 325) (1933)." Crider v. City of Atlanta, 184 Ga. App. 389, 361 S.E.2d 520, 521. The Crider case involved a car accident in Atlanta, Georgia. The Stone case involved a car wreck in Rome, Georgia.
Cf., Fairburn v. Cook, 188 Ga. App. 58, 65, 372 S.E.2d 245, 252 (Ga. Ct. App. 1988) (notice could be found from testimony of the city administrator, superintendent of utilities and chief of police "that they had long been aware of the visibility problems at the intersection in question, having personally observed that a driver approaching the intersection could not always see the traffic lights placed there.")
In Carter v. Mayor & C. Alderman of Savannah, 407 S.E.2d 421, 424, 200 Ga. App. 263, 266 (1991), the plaintiff presented an affidavit of a witness who stated "that the subject stop sign may have been missing for a period of at least one week prior to the date of the accident." The Carter case, of course, involved a car accident in Savannah, Georgia. The plaintiff had provided evidence that "City employees were required to report missing and damaged street signs" to the City. Id. According to the plaintiff's evidence, "during the week prior to the accident, the street, which is located in a business district, was routinely patrolled by police officers; and that during the week preceding the accident, Sutlive Street was cleaned by a street sweeper employed by the City." Id. On those facts, the Carter court concluded that summary judgment was inappropriate. (In other words, the court found that the plaintiff had presented enough information to take the issue to a jury and let the jury decide the case.)
If the plaintiff can show that the City itself caused the road defect, then the "the municipality is chargeable with knowledge thereof, and no notice to it need be shown, such notice being necessarily implied, as the acts of its agents are the acts of the municipality." English v. City of Macon, 259 Ga.App. 766, 767, 577 S.E.2d 837, 838 (2003) (emphasis added). See also City of Vidalia v. Brown, 237 Ga.App. 831, 833, 516 S.E.2d 851, 853 (1999) ("a city is liable for defects in streets and sidewalks negligently caused by its own agents or employees") (involving a car accident in Vidalia, Georgia).
In the English case, the City's director of public works testified that he had no record of a complaint about the uneven sidewalk where plaintiff had tripped, but the plaintiff testified that the city itself had "repaired" the sidewalk and left it uneven. Noting "the City denied neither a recent repair to the sidewalk or that such repair left the sidewalk uneven," the court reversed a grant of summary judgment to the city. English, 259 Ga.App. at 768, 577 S.E.2d at 839 (2003).
