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Official Code of Georgia Annotated

Title 31. HEALTH · Chapter 9. CONSENT FOR SURGICAL OR MEDICAL TREATMENT

31-9-6. Construction of chapter; requirements of valid consent.

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Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Session of the General Assembly of Georgia.

  1. (a)

    This chapter shall be liberally construed, and all relationships set forth in this chapter shall include the adoptive, foster, and step relations as well as blood relations and the relationship by common-law marriage as well as ceremonial marriage.#

  2. (b)

    A consent by one person authorized and empowered to consent to surgical or medical treatment shall be sufficient.#

  3. (c)

    Any person acting in good faith shall be justified in relying on the representations of any person purporting to give consent, including, but not limited to, his identity, his age, his marital status, his emancipation, and his relationship to any other person for whom the consent is purportedly given.#

  4. (d)

    A consent to surgical or medical treatment which discloses in general terms the treatment or course of treatment in connection with which it is given and which is duly evidenced in writing and signed by the patient or other person or persons authorized to consent pursuant to the terms of this chapter shall be conclusively presumed to be a valid consent in the absence of fraudulent misrepresentations of material facts in obtaining the same.#

Reading note: a word broken across two lines in the printed volume was joined by rule and could not be checked against the volume's own vocabulary. The official page linked below settles any doubt.

The notes below are printed with the section but are not enacted law (O.C.G.A. § 1-1-1(c)). They are shown apart from the text.

History

Code 1933, § 88-2906, enacted by Ga. L. 1971, p. 438, § 1; Ga. L. 1991, p. 94, § 31.

Law reviews

For article, “Informed Consent: New Georgia Guidelines,” discussing law of medical consent in Georgia, in light of Young v. Yarn, 136 Ga. App. 737, 222 S.E.2d 113 (1975), see 12 Ga. St. B. J. 197 (1976). For comment on Young v. Yarn, 136 Ga. App. 737, 222 S.E.2d 113 (1975), see 28 Mercer L. Rev. 377 (1976). For article, “Georgia’s Medical Consent Law,” see 21 Ga. St. B. J. 138 (1985). For note, “Informed Confusion: The Doctrine of Informed Consent in Georgia,” see 37 Ga. L. Rev. 1129 (2003). For article, “Doreika v. Blotner: Affirming Ketchup against Judicial Mustard,” see 60 Mercer L. Rev. 807 (2009).

Read the official page (the state's PDF, opened at the page this text was read from).

Current through: Including Acts of the 2025 Session of the General Assembly of Georgia.

Text read from t31-(v23)-2025-pdf.pdf, Volume V23, 2025 edition, pages 604 to 605; merge action: bound only; file SHA-256 ba5a57f85d04.