Pre-suit notice requirements in Georgia medical malpractice

Georgia has no general pre-suit notice for a malpractice claim against a private doctor or hospital. Notice applies when the defendant is a public body: 12 months for the state, 12 months for a county, and 6 months for a city. Each has its own wording and delivery rules, and a claim can be lost before the two-year period ends if notice goes wrong. The first task is to find out what kind of entity each defendant is.

The three public notice rules

Defendant	Deadline	Who receives it	Required content	Statute
State government entity	12 months from when the loss was or should have been discovered	Risk Management Division of the Department of Administrative Services, with a copy to the entity	Listed items in the statute, to the claimant's knowledge and as practicable	§ 50-21-26
County	12 months after the claim accrues	County	Presentation of the claim	§ 36-11-1
City	6 months from the event	Mayor or chair of the city council or commission	Time, place, extent of injury, negligence, and a specific dollar amount	§ 36-33-5

The state: delivery and timing

Section 50-21-26(a)(2) calls for certified mail or statutory overnight delivery with return receipt requested, or personal delivery with a receipt, to Risk Management, with a copy delivered or mailed to the entity. Subsection (a)(3) says no action may begin, “and the courts shall have no jurisdiction”, until timely notice is presented. Subsection (b) requires the plaintiff to wait until the claim is denied or 90 days have passed.

The state case also has features no private case has.

• The individual state employee cannot be named. Section 50-21-25(b) requires naming “only the state government entity”.
• The employee is not personally subject to suit for acts within the scope of the job, under § 50-21-25(a).
• Recovery is capped under § 50-21-29: $1 million for a single occurrence, $3 million in aggregate per occurrence, with a further rule for certain claims in (b)(2). Department of Human Resources v. Phillips, 268 Ga. 316 (1997), read the first figure as a limit “per person”, and treated one individual suing as personal representative and as administratrix as “two distinct legal persons”. So count the claimants before assuming one limit.
• Criminal-case tolling under § 9-3-99 does not extend the notice period, under Department of Public Safety v. Ragsdale.

The city: a number is required

Section 36-33-5(e) says the description “shall include the specific amount of monetary damages being sought”. In Dates v. City of Atlanta, 321 Ga. 696 (2025), a mother’s first timely notice named no specific amount, and her second, with the number, was late. The Supreme Court also held that the rule pausing time for minors in § 9-3-90(b) does not apply to the municipal notice statute, so a child’s age did not save the claim. The amount is an offer of compromise and does not bind the claimant in later litigation, under (e). Service has to go to the mayor or chair by personal delivery, certified mail, or statutory overnight delivery, under (f). Subsection (d) suspends the limitation period while the demand is pending without action.

The county: its minors clause

Section 36-11-1 is short: claims “must be presented within 12 months after they accrue or become payable or the same are barred”, with an allowance for minors and others under disability of “12 months after the removal of the disability.” That text has no counterpart in the city statute, so the outcome in Dates does not transfer to it automatically.

Finding out who the defendant is

A name on a building does not answer the question. A hospital can be private, a public hospital authority, or state-run. A physician at a state-affiliated hospital can be a state employee or an independent contractor. A hospital authority’s status raises its own legal questions, so check the specific authority. A careful approach is to:

• check who bills for the service;
• read the admission and consent forms;
• check the employer named in the chart and on any letterhead; and
• send notice to any public body that might be involved if a date is approaching.

Missing a notice that was required can end the claim.

How this relates to the affidavit and the two-year period

Notice does not replace the expert affidavit in § 9-11-9.1, which goes with the complaint. It also does not extend the outer five-year limit. A person may therefore need a notice first, then an expert, and then a complaint before the two-year period ends, as the limitation article shows.

A federal employee or facility is a different system. The Federal Tort Claims Act has its own administrative claim requirement at 28 U.S.C. § 2675, and it is outside the scope of the Georgia rules on this page.

Death cases follow the same public-body rules, as wrongful death from medical malpractice explains.

Sources

• Official Code of Georgia Annotated, November 2022 public release: §§ 9-3-90, 36-11-1, 36-33-5, 50-21-25, 50-21-26, 50-21-29
• Department of Human Resources v. Phillips, 268 Ga. 316
• Department of Public Safety v. Ragsdale, 308 Ga. 210
• Dates v. City of Atlanta, 321 Ga. 696
• 28 U.S.C. § 2675

This page was last reviewed in November 2026 for general information. Laws and court decisions can change after that date. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship.