WILLIAMS v. HARVEY

Johnny Williams was severely injured when a dump truck driven by Rubin Harvey, an employee of Oxford Construction Company, hit his tractor. Oxford admitted fault, and a jury awarded Williams $18 million. On appeal, Oxford argued that Williams's lawyer had violated a pretrial ruling (called a motion in limine) that barred arguments meant mainly to inflame the jury's emotions, when he compared a nursing home option to a 'death warrant' during closing argument. Oxford's lawyers never objected when this happened at trial, but the Court of Appeals still reversed the $18 million verdict, ruling that the earlier pretrial ruling was enough to preserve the issue without a fresh objection. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed. It held that a party must object right when the violation happens during trial, not rely solely on the earlier pretrial ruling, in order to preserve the issue for appeal. Applying that rule, and finding the pretrial motion here too vague to control the specific argument, the court reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the verdict for Williams.

A party must make a contemporaneous objection when counsel's argument at trial allegedly violates a previously granted motion in limine; the pretrial ruling itself does not preserve the issue for appeal. The court also overruled prior cases allowing appellate review of unobjected-to closing argument errors in civil cases.

The ruling changes how civil trial lawyers across Georgia must protect their objections: they can no longer rely on a pretrial ruling alone and must speak up immediately when they think opposing counsel crosses a line in argument, or risk losing the issue permanently on appeal.

Reversed

1. The court traced Georgia's contemporaneous objection rule, which requires lawyers to object at the earliest opportunity so the trial judge can fix a problem right away, and explained this rule has applied for over 150 years to preserve issues for appeal.
2. It reviewed how earlier cases (Harley-Davidson and Reno) let a party skip renewing an objection to evidence once a motion in limine on that evidence was ruled on, but found that Georgia's newer Evidence Code, patterned on the Federal Rules of Evidence, only extends that protection to evidentiary rulings, not to arguments made by lawyers in court.
3. The court concluded that because closing arguments are not evidence, and because a violation of a vague pretrial ruling on argument only becomes clear once the argument is actually made, a party must object at that moment to give the trial judge a chance to give a curative instruction or otherwise fix the problem.
4. Turning to a separate Georgia statute governing improper argument in civil cases (O.C.G.A. § 9-10-185), the court found its 'objection made' requirement has long meant a real-time objection, not merely relying on a pretrial motion, and it overruled prior cases (including Stolte v. Fagan) that had allowed appellate courts to review improper argument even without a timely objection.
5. Applying these rules to the facts, the court found the specific pretrial motion here, which broadly barred any statement meant to 'overly inflame the emotions of the jury,' was too vague to control the specific 'death warrant' comment made in closing, so the trial court did not abuse its discretion in finding no violation occurred.

• motion in limine
• closing argument objection
• personal injury verdict
• appellate preservation of error
• truck accident lawsuit