DOT Not at Fault for Fatal Collision

Marcus, et al. v. DOT; Superior Court of Fulton County
Civil Action File No. E16315
Affirmed Smith v. Commercial Transp.,et al., 220 GA. App. 866 (1996)

A 16-year-old Plaintiff sued for his own personal injuries and for the wrongful death of his father and sister, after their vehicle rear-ended a tractor-trailer on I-75 north. Plaintiff argued that the DOT’s failure to install a sign warning of a prior serious crash, which caused a long unexpected queue of traffic, constituted the proximate cause of Plaintiff’s crash.

We moved for summary judgment on the grounds that the negligent actions of the young driver were the proximate cause of the accident and that the only plausible explanation for the collision was that he fell asleep at the wheel. The trial court agreed and the decision was upheld by the Georgia Court of Appeals.