AULD v. FORBES (Two Cases)

Tomari Jackson, a 14-year-old on a school trip from Cobb County, drowned while swimming in a river in Belize. His mother, Adell Forbes, later sued the trip organizer, its owner, the school district, and chaperones in Georgia, but she filed more than a year after his death, which is too late under Belize's wrongful death law though still within Georgia's longer deadline. The trial court dismissed her claims as time-barred under Belize law, but the Court of Appeals of Georgia reversed, ruling Georgia's longer deadline applied instead. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed with the Court of Appeals. It held that under Georgia's longstanding conflict-of-laws rules, the place where the injury happened, here Belize, supplies the substantive law and time limit for a wrongful death claim, and that applying Belize's shorter deadline does not violate Georgia public policy because Georgia's own wrongful death law does not even apply to deaths occurring outside Georgia. The court reversed the Court of Appeals on the wrongful death claim.

The court held that Belize's one-year limitation period, not Georgia's two-year period, governs Forbes's wrongful death claim because the tort was committed in Belize where the drowning occurred, and applying that shorter foreign limitation period does not violate Georgia public policy since Georgia's wrongful death law does not apply to deaths occurring outside the state.

The ruling means Georgia residents injured or killed while traveling abroad, including on school trips, must meet the foreign country's deadlines and rules for wrongful death claims, not Georgia's more generous ones, which could bar many claims that would otherwise succeed under Georgia law.

Reversed in part as to the wrongful death claim

1. The court applied the doctrine of lex loci delicti, meaning a tort claim is governed by the substantive law of the place where the injury actually occurred, and found that the 'last event necessary' to create liability, Jackson's drowning, happened in Belize, not Georgia.
2. Ordinarily statutes of limitations are treated as procedural matters governed by the law of the forum state (lex fori), meaning Georgia's own deadlines would normally apply, but the court noted an exception: when a foreign law creates an entirely new type of claim unknown at common law, that foreign law's own time limit is treated as a substantive part of the claim itself.
3. Because wrongful death is a purely statutory claim with no common-law counterpart, and Belize's Law of Torts Act created the cause of action along with a one-year deadline, the court concluded that Belize's shorter deadline is substantive and must be applied rather than Georgia's two-year period.
4. The court then considered Georgia's public policy exception, under which a foreign law will not be applied if it is so radically different from Georgia law that enforcing it would seriously contravene Georgia's own policies, and found that a mere difference in the law, such as a shorter deadline or a different measure of damages, is not enough to trigger this exception.
5. Because Georgia's own Wrongful Death Act has no extraterritorial application and would give Forbes no remedy at all for a death occurring outside Georgia, the court reasoned that allowing Belize's wrongful death law, including its shorter time limit, actually gives Forbes more of a remedy than Georgia law would, so applying it does not offend Georgia public policy.
6. Based on this reasoning, the court overruled a prior Court of Appeals decision, Carroll Fulmer, that had applied Georgia law over a foreign wrongful death statute merely because the measure of damages differed, holding that decision had ignored the rule against extraterritorial application of Georgia's wrongful death statute.

• wrongful death lawsuit
• statute of limitations
• school trip drowning
• choice of law
• Belize