Walmart Stores East, Lp v. Leverette

Bettie Leverette was shopping at a Conyers Walmart when two employees pushing a heavy pallet backed into her. She later reported head injuries and sued Walmart for negligence. At trial, Walmart argued Leverette deserved at most nominal damages, and the jury agreed by checking a box for 'nominal damages,' but wrote in $1 million rather than leaving other damages categories filled in. Walmart argued this award was legally impossible because nominal damages are supposed to be a trivial, symbolic sum, not a huge award. The Court of Appeals of Georgia had upheld the $1 million award, following its own earlier cases holding nominal damages have no upper limit. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed. Tracing the concept back to English common law adopted into Georgia law in the 1700s, the court held nominal damages must remain a trivial sum, and $1 million plainly is not trivial. It vacated the Court of Appeals' decision and sent the case back to the lower courts to sort out what happens next, including whether Walmart itself caused the problem by requesting the nominal damages instruction.

The court held that nominal damages under Georgia law, inherited from English common law, must remain a trivial sum meaningful only for the fact of the award, not its amount; a $1 million award cannot qualify, so the Court of Appeals of Georgia's contrary precedent allowing unlimited nominal damages amounts is overruled.

The ruling limits what Georgia juries can award when labeling damages 'nominal,' correcting decades of Court of Appeals decisions that had allowed huge sums under that label. Trial lawyers, judges, and litigants across Georgia must now treat nominal damages as a token amount, not a workaround for large verdicts lacking clear proof.

Judgment vacated and case remanded with direction

1. The court explained that in the late 1700s Georgia's legislature adopted the English common law wholesale, meaning common law rules like those governing nominal damages remain Georgia law unless the legislature later changes them by statute or constitutional amendment.
2. Reviewing historical English and early American sources, the court found nominal damages were always understood as a trivial, token sum (often a shilling or a dollar) awarded when a plaintiff proved a legal right was violated but could not prove the amount of actual loss with certainty.
3. The court examined Georgia statutes Leverette relied on, including cost-shifting rules (O.C.G.A. §§ 9-15-9, 9-15-10) and the contract-damages statute (O.C.G.A. § 13-6-6), and concluded none of them clearly changed the common law rule that nominal damages must be trivial.
4. The court reexamined its 1901 decision in Sellers v. Mann and concluded that its language suggesting nominal damages could scale up with the size of the case was non-binding dicta, not part of the actual holding, because the case only decided that an unspecified damages verdict was too uncertain.
5. Because the Court of Appeals of Georgia had built a line of precedent treating nominal damages as having 'no maximum,' relying on that dicta, the Supreme Court of Georgia overruled those decisions as inconsistent with the common law's trivial-sum requirement.
6. Applying this rule, the court found no rational juror could view $1 million as a trivial sum, so the jury's nominal damages award could not stand as written, though whether the verdict itself must be redone was left for the lower courts to decide.

• nominal damages
• Walmart negligence lawsuit
• personal injury verdict
• common law in Georgia
• jury damages award