If you were hurt in a crash or a fall in Augusta, the decisions you make in the first two weeks will shape what your claim is worth two years from now. This page explains how injury claims actually work in Richmond County — the deadlines, the courts, the crash-report process, the roads that generate the most serious-injury crashes, and the insurance that pays.

Augusta Personal Injury Lawyers

Qué cubre esta página

1. What to do in the first 48 hours
2. The deadlines that end Augusta claims
3. Getting your Richmond County crash report
4. Which court hears an Augusta case
5. The roads Augusta’s planners flag
6. Georgia’s 50 percent bar
7. Which policies actually pay
8. Trauma care and medical bills
9. When a South Carolina driver is involved
10. The Augusta cases we handle
11. Working with a firm without an Augusta office

What should you do in the first 48 hours after an Augusta injury?

The first two days matter more than most people realize, because that is when the evidence is still where the crash left it and before anyone has had time to reconsider what they saw.

Get evaluated, even if you feel functional. Adrenaline masks injury for hours and sometimes days. Soft-tissue damage, concussions and internal bleeding routinely present late. A gap between the crash date and the first medical visit is the single most common argument an adjuster uses to discount a claim, and it is the easiest one to avoid. Augusta has substantial emergency capacity — Wellstar MCG Health operates one of only six Level I adult trauma centers in Georgia, and Doctors Hospital of Augusta is a Level II center, both verified by the American College of Surgeons on the Georgia Department of Public Health’s designated-centers list updated in May 2026.

Photograph more than the damage. Photograph the whole scene: skid marks, debris fields, the position of the vehicles before they are moved, the traffic controls, the sight lines, the weather, and the condition of the roadway. In a premises case, photograph the substance on the floor, the surrounding area, any warning cone or absence of one, and the shoes you were wearing. Photographs taken by a person on the scene are frequently better than anything an investigator can reconstruct three months later.

Identify witnesses yourself. Officers record some witnesses and miss others, particularly people who leave before the report is completed. A name and a phone number written into your own phone is worth a great deal later.

Say less to the other insurer, not more. You are obligated to cooperate with your own carrier. You are not obligated to give a recorded statement to the at-fault driver’s insurer, and doing so early — before anyone knows the full extent of the injury — tends to produce quotes that are used against you rather than for you.

Preserve what disappears on its own. Commercial surveillance video is frequently overwritten in a matter of days. Heavy-truck electronic control module data can be lost when a vehicle is repaired or scrapped. Both usually require a written preservation demand sent quickly, which is one of the most time-sensitive things a lawyer does at the start of a case.

How long do you have to file an injury claim in Augusta?

Georgia gives most injury victims two years from the date of injury to file suit. That rule comes from O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33, and it applies whether the injury happened on Gordon Highway, on a store floor on Washington Road, or on a sidewalk downtown. Miss it and the claim is generally gone regardless of how clear the liability was.

Several related deadlines run on different clocks, and they trap people constantly:

• Loss of consortium — four years. A spouse’s separate claim for the loss of the injured person’s society and services carries a four-year period, so it can outlive the injured person’s own two-year window.
• Claims against a Georgia city — six months. An ante litem notice must reach the municipality within six months of the injury. A trip-and-fall on a defective sidewalk or a collision with a city vehicle falls here, and six months passes quickly while someone is still in treatment.
• Claims against the State of Georgia — twelve months. The Georgia Tort Claims Act requires ante litem notice within twelve months. GDOT is a state entity, which matters on state routes such as Deans Bridge Road, Gordon Highway and Washington Road.
• Injured children — tolled to age 18. O.C.G.A. § 9-3-90 tolls a minor’s claim until the child turns 18, so the child generally has until age 20. The parents’ own claim for the child’s medical expenses is not tolled and still expires two years after the injury. Families lose the medical-bill claim on this point more often than any other.
• Related criminal prosecution — tolled up to six years. O.C.G.A. § 9-3-99 pauses the civil clock while a prosecution arising from the same conduct is pending, subject to a six-year cap. This comes up in DUI and hit-and-run cases, and Augusta’s regional crash data flags hit-and-run among the top contributing factors.

Treat two years as the outer wall and not the plan. Witnesses relocate, video is destroyed on ordinary retention schedules, and a case built at month twenty-two is almost always worth less than the same case built at month two.

How do you get your Augusta crash report?

Augusta and Richmond County operate as a consolidated city-county government, and one detail surprises people who have moved here from elsewhere: there is no Augusta Police Department. El Richmond County Sheriff’s Office is the law-enforcement agency that investigates crashes across the county, which its own office describes as covering 328 square miles, three municipalities and a busy interstate highway with more than 750 personnel. Augusta’s municipal open-records portal expressly routes traffic accident reports away from itself and over to the Sheriff’s Office.

There are two ways to get the report:

• Online through BuyCrash. The Sheriff’s Office provides online access through BuyCrash.com at a fee of $11 per report.
• In person at 400 Walton Way, Augusta, GA 30901, during business hours. Copies picked up at the office are 10 cents per page.

Reports are generally available three to five days after the crash, though complex investigations take longer. For records that are not the crash report itself — supplemental narratives, photographs, body-camera footage, or the file on a pending investigation — the Sheriff’s Office asks that requests go to its open-records unit by email or at (706) 821-1076, and that the request include the requestor’s name, phone number and return address along with names, dates, times, locations and case numbers.

The report is not a legal finding. Georgia officers complete form GDOT-523, and the field labeled “Susp At Fault” records an officer’s suspicion at the roadside — not an adjudication of liability. Adjusters cite it as though it settles the question. It does not, and officer conclusions are regularly revised once the physical evidence, the vehicle data and the witness accounts are actually developed.

Under Georgia’s open-records law, crash reports are handled through O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(5), which requires a written statement of need but expressly allows anyone named in the report to obtain it personally or through a lawyer or other representative. You do not have to explain yourself to get your own crash report.

Which court will hear your Augusta injury case?

Richmond County gives an injury plaintiff a choice that many Georgia counties do not, because both trial courts sit in the same building — the Augusta-Richmond County Judicial Center at 735 James Brown Boulevard.

State Court of Richmond County. Four judges and two senior judges hear civil, misdemeanor and traffic cases. A straightforward injury claim for money damages can be filed here. One misconception is worth correcting: State Court is no a small-claims or lower-value court. O.C.G.A. § 15-7-4 gives Georgia state courts civil jurisdiction without regard to the amount in controversy, except where the superior courts have exclusive jurisdiction. State courts hear seven-figure injury cases routinely.

Superior Court of Richmond County. The Superior Court is Georgia’s general jurisdiction trial court, with exclusive authority over felonies, divorce, equity and title to land, and it may try any civil case except probate matters. The practical dividing line in an injury case is equity: O.C.G.A. § 23-1-1 vests equity jurisdiction in the superior courts, so a case that needs an injunction, a reformation of an insurance policy, or any equitable remedy belongs there rather than in State Court.

One local note that catches out-of-town lawyers: the Augusta Judicial Circuit is now Richmond and Burke counties only. Columbia County was split into its own Columbia Judicial Circuit under legislation signed in March 2021, and the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the split in March 2022. A crash a few miles up Washington Road may sit in an entirely different circuit.

Federal court. If the case is removed or filed federally, Richmond County sits in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Augusta Division, at 600 James Brown Boulevard. The Augusta Division covers Burke, Columbia, Glascock, Jefferson, Lincoln, McDuffie, Richmond, Taliaferro, Warren and Wilkes counties. Removal matters in Augusta more than in most Georgia cities, for reasons covered in the South Carolina section below.

Where venue lies is set by the Georgia Constitution, Art. VI, § II, ¶ VI — generally the county where the defendant resides. Where there are joint tortfeasors residing in different counties, O.C.G.A. § 9-10-31 lets the plaintiff elect among the counties where venue is proper. That election is a real strategic decision, not a formality.

Which Augusta roads produce the most serious-injury crashes?

This is one of the few questions where Augusta has genuinely good public data. The Augusta Regional Transportation Study — the bi-state metropolitan planning organization covering Richmond and Columbia counties in Georgia and Aiken and Edgefield counties in South Carolina — mapped five years of crashes from 2019 through 2023 and published a table of high-crash locations that labels each one by county and by the reason it was flagged.

The Richmond County locations that ARTS specifically flagged for a high volume of serious injury crashes are:

• I-520 near Exit 1A-B, including the on and off ramps
• El North Leg Road / Wrightsboro Road / Jackson Road intersection, which ARTS notes sits near an elementary school and Augusta University
• Wrightsboro Road in the vicinity of I-520, where ARTS found serious-injury clusters along both corridors
• Deans Bridge Road from Meadowbrook Drive to Milledgeville Road
• Gordon Highway from Barton Chapel Road to Old Savannah Road
• Mike Padgett Highway from Wylie Drive to Phinizy Road

ARTS separately flagged Washington Road from Tremont Way to Alexander Drive y Peach Orchard Road from Reedale Avenue to Silverdale Road as high-crash commercial corridors, and identified I-520 at Peach Orchard Road as one of only three intersections in the entire region singled out by its intersection safety analysis. The Windsor Spring Road and Tobacco Road intersection y downtown Augusta around Broad Street and 13th Street also appear on the high-crash list.

For people on foot or on a bicycle, ARTS identified a different set of hot spots: Washington Road near I-20, Walton Way near 15th Street in the medical district, Deans Bridge Road and Gordon Highway near Southgate Plaza, the downtown core around Walton Way and Greene Street, and Wrightsboro Road from I-520 to Champagne Avenue. ARTS found that Richmond County had the highest number of crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists of any county in the region — 493 such crashes from 2019 through 2023.

Two figures deserve honest framing rather than spin. Richmond County’s overall crash total fell over that period, by 1,320 crashes between 2019 and 2023. At the same time, ARTS reported that the number of fatalities increased in Richmond County. Fewer crashes, worse outcomes in the ones that happen — which is consistent with what the corridor data shows: the danger is concentrated on a handful of high-speed arterials and interchanges rather than spread evenly across the county.

Richmond County also has the region’s highest share of households with no vehicle available, at roughly 10 percent. A county where one household in ten walks, cycles or rides the bus is a county where arterial design decisions land directly on people’s bodies.

How does being partly at fault change an Augusta claim?

Georgia uses modified comparative negligence with a 50 percent bar, codified at O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33. If you are found less than 50 percent responsible, your damages are reduced by your percentage of fault. If you are found 50 percent or more responsible, you recover nothing at all.

The practical consequence is that the fight in a contested Augusta case is usually not about whether you were hurt. It is about moving a fault percentage a few points, because the difference between 49 percent and 50 percent is the difference between a reduced recovery and zero.

Georgia also permits apportionment to non-parties. A defendant who gives at least 120 days’ notice before trial can ask the jury to assign fault to someone who is not in the lawsuit — a phantom driver, a contractor, a property owner who was never sued. Fault assigned to an empty chair is fault that no one pays for, which is why identifying and joining every responsible party early is not a technicality but a direct question of what you collect.

The law here changed recently and the change is often misstated. In Alston & Bird LLP v. Hatcher Management Holdings, 312 Ga. 350, decided in 2021, the Georgia Supreme Court held that the apportionment statute did not permit reduction of damages among defendants in single-defendant cases. The General Assembly responded with House Bill 961, effective May 13, 2022, which applies to cases archivado after that date. If you read an older article describing Georgia apportionment, check whether it predates that fix.

One thing Georgia does no do is cap what a jury may award for human loss. In Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v. Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. 731 (2010), the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the statutory cap on non-economic damages in ordinary negligence cases as a violation of the constitutional right to a jury trial. Pain, disfigurement, and the loss of the ability to do the things that made life worth living are not subject to a legislative ceiling in Georgia. Punitive damages are capped at $250,000 under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1 — but that cap does not apply where the defendant acted with specific intent to harm, and it does not apply in DUI casos.

Which insurance policies actually pay an Augusta injury claim?

Georgia’s minimum liability limits are $25,000 per person, $50,000 per accident, and $25,000 in property damage, reached through O.C.G.A. § 33-34-4, § 40-9-2(5) and § 33-7-11(a)(1)(A). A single ambulance ride and a night at a Level I trauma center can exceed $25,000 before any surgery is discussed. Minimum limits are, in a serious case, a starting point rather than a source of compensation.

Georgia’s uninsured motorist rule is unusually favorable, and most people do not know it. Under O.C.G.A. § 33-7-11(b)(1)(D)(ii)(I), Georgia’s default UM coverage is “add-on” — it pays in addition to and in excess of the at-fault driver’s liability limits. Many states default to “reduced-by” coverage, where the UM carrier subtracts what the liability insurer paid. In Georgia you get reduced-by coverage only if you affirmatively selected it in writing. So a driver with $25,000 in liability coverage and $50,000 in add-on UM on your own policy can produce $75,000 of available coverage, not $50,000. Checking which form of UM was actually elected is one of the first things worth doing on any Augusta case with real injuries.

Rideshare coverage depends entirely on what the app was doing. O.C.G.A. § 33-1-24 governs transportation network companies in Georgia. From the moment a driver accepts a ride request through the completion of the trip, there is $1 million in liability coverage and — uniquely among the states where our firm practices — $100,000/$300,000/$25,000 in uninsured motorist coverage, for policies issued after July 1, 2023. During the app-on, waiting-for-a-request phase, the limits drop to $50,000/$100,000 and there is no UM coverage at all. The phase of the trip is a factual question with a six-figure answer.

Other policies that go unexamined and shouldn’t: resident-relative UM on a household member’s policy, umbrella policies, employer non-owned auto coverage where the at-fault driver was working, and — in truck cases — the layered excess policies that sit above a motor carrier’s primary limits.

Where are catastrophic injuries treated in Augusta, and who pays the bills?

Augusta is a regional medical center, and for a badly injured person that is a genuine advantage. According to the Georgia Department of Public Health’s designated trauma and specialty care center list updated in May 2026:

• Wellstar MCG Health is a Level I adult trauma center, verified by the American College of Surgeons — one of only six Level I adult centers in Georgia.
• Médicos Hospital de Augusta is an ACS-verified Level II trauma center.
• El Children’s Hospital of Georgia at Augusta University is an ACS-verified Level II pediatric trauma center.
• El Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta is a designated burn center verified by the American Burn Association — one of only two in the entire state.

The facility name matters because the state list is the authoritative record and hospital marketing is not. Note that Wellstar MCG Health is the current name of the facility that older documents — including a still-posted 2020 version of the state trauma list — call Augusta University Medical Center.

Then the bills arrive. Georgia hospitals may assert a lien against your recovery under O.C.G.A. § 44-14-470. Health insurers and ERISA plans assert subrogation and reimbursement rights. Medicare and Medicaid assert their own claims. These are not optional to address; an unresolved lien can consume a settlement that looked adequate on paper. Auditing the lien claims, challenging the ones that are overstated or improperly perfected, and negotiating the rest is often worth more to a client than the last few thousand dollars of a settlement negotiation.

For statewide scale: the Georgia Governor’s Office of Highway Safety reported $2.4 billion in motor-vehicle hospital and emergency-room charges in Georgia in 2023, across 103,147 emergency department visits and 8,695 hospitalizations. Motor vehicle incidents accounted for 26 percent of all injuries treated by Georgia trauma centers that year — 12,442 patients.

What changes when a South Carolina driver or vehicle is involved?

Augusta sits on the Savannah River, and the state line runs through the middle of the metropolitan area. That geography is not a curiosity — it changes the legal architecture of a meaningful share of local cases.

The scale of the daily cross-river flow is documented. The Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken employs roughly 12,700 people on a 310-square-mile federal reservation. A Department of Energy breakdown of employee residence recorded 966 SRS workers living in Richmond County and 1,287 in Columbia County, against 4,490 in Aiken County, South Carolina. The commuting runs hard in both directions, and the region’s planning organization is itself bi-state — a structure that exists precisely because Augusta and Aiken function as one transportation system.

Three consequences follow for an injury claim:

• Diversity jurisdiction and removal. A Georgia plaintiff suing a South Carolina defendant is complete diversity under 28 U.S.C. § 1332. If the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000, the defense can remove the case from the State Court of Richmond County to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Augusta Division, under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1441 and 1446. Different jury pool, different scheduling, different discovery practice. This should be anticipated when the case is filed, not discovered afterward.
• Two sets of insurance rules. Georgia and South Carolina have different minimum limits and materially different uninsured motorist frameworks. Which state’s policy responds, and on what terms, depends on where the policy was written and where the loss occurred.
• Choice of law. If the collision happened on the South Carolina side of the river, Georgia’s traditional conflicts rule looks to the law of the place of the injury. That can change the negligence standard, the damages rules and the deadlines that apply.

There is also a federal-enclave dimension in Augusta. Fort Eisenhower — redesignated from Fort Gordon on October 27, 2023, and home to the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence — is a federal installation. Injuries caused by federal employees acting within the scope of their employment generally proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. §§ 1346(b) and 2671–2680, which requires an administrative claim on Standard Form 95 before any lawsuit and then suit in federal court. The FTCA has its own deadlines and its own traps, and the ordinary two-year Georgia analysis does not govern.

What kinds of Augusta injury cases does Southern Injury Attorneys handle?

Each of these has its own Augusta page with the local law, the local venue and the local evidence that matters:

• Augusta car accident lawyers — intersection and roadway-departure collisions, the two categories that dominate Georgia’s fatal crash statistics, plus the UM analysis that decides what is actually collectible.
• Augusta truck accident lawyers — I-20, I-520, US 1 and US 25 are the region’s designated key freight corridors, and tractor-trailer cases turn on federal motor carrier regulations, electronic logging data and layered excess coverage rather than on ordinary auto principles.
• Augusta motorcycle accident lawyers — Georgia requires helmets for every rider at every age under O.C.G.A. § 40-6-315, and motorcyclists absorb a share of serious injuries far out of proportion to their share of traffic.
• Augusta premises liability lawyers — slip, trip and fall claims under O.C.G.A. § 51-3-1, negligent security, and the superior-knowledge standard that decides most of them.
• Augusta dog bite lawyers — Georgia is not a strict liability state, but Augusta-Richmond County’s leash ordinance provides a statutory route around the vicious-propensity requirement that does not exist everywhere in Georgia.

We also handle wrongful death claims under O.C.G.A. § 51-4-1, which measures the full value of the life of the decedent without deduction for the cost of living — a standard notably more generous than most states — along with catastrophic injury, pedestrian and bicycle claims, and rideshare cases.

Do you have an office in Augusta, and does that matter?

No. Southern Injury Attorneys does not maintain an office in Augusta. Our only Georgia office is in Atlanta, and Richmond County matters are handled from there and from our headquarters in Memphis. We say that plainly because a number of firms advertising in Augusta list addresses that are mail drops or shared suites they do not actually staff, and a prospective client deserves to know which is which before signing anything.

What matters far more than a local street address is whether the lawyer handling your file is admitted in Georgia and actually knows Richmond County practice. Larry “Jimmy” Peters is admitted to the State Bar of Georgia, Bar No. 936535, and is also licensed in Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Kentucky.

In practice, an Augusta injury case is built through the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office records unit, the Clerk of Superior, State and Juvenile Court at 735 James Brown Boulevard, treating physicians at Wellstar MCG Health and Doctors Hospital, and the defendant’s insurer — almost none of which requires anyone to be sitting in an office on Broad Street. Filings are electronic. Depositions are scheduled where the witnesses are. We travel to Augusta when a case requires it, including for scene inspections, which frequently do require it.

There is no fee unless we recover for you, and the consultation costs nothing. If we are not the right firm for your case — because of the venue, the case type, or a conflict — we will tell you that directly rather than sign you up and figure it out later.

Augusta injury claims: frequently asked questions

How long do I have to file a personal injury claim in Augusta?

Two years from the date of injury under O.C.G.A. § 9-3-33. A spouse’s loss of consortium claim carries four years. The deadlines are much shorter where a government entity is involved: six months for an ante litem notice to a Georgia municipality, and twelve months under the Georgia Tort Claims Act for a claim against the state or a state agency such as GDOT. Missing an ante litem deadline generally ends the claim no matter how strong it otherwise is.

Which police agency handles crashes in Augusta?

The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office. Augusta and Richmond County operate as a consolidated city-county government and there is no separate Augusta Police Department. The Sheriff’s Office covers 328 square miles and three municipalities, and Augusta’s own municipal open-records portal routes all traffic accident reports to it.

How much does an Augusta crash report cost and how long does it take?

Reports are generally available three to five days after the crash. The Richmond County Sheriff’s Office sells them online through BuyCrash.com for $11, or you can pick one up at 400 Walton Way in Augusta for 10 cents per page during business hours. Anyone named in the report may obtain it personally or through a lawyer under O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72(a)(5).

Will my Augusta case be filed in State Court or Superior Court?

Either can hear an ordinary injury claim for money damages, and both sit at 735 James Brown Boulevard. State Court is not a lower-value court; O.C.G.A. § 15-7-4 gives it civil jurisdiction without regard to the amount in controversy. The practical difference is equity: O.C.G.A. § 23-1-1 vests equity jurisdiction in the superior courts, so a case needing an injunction or other equitable relief must be filed in Superior Court.

Can I still recover if the crash was partly my fault?

Yes, if you are found less than 50 percent at fault. Georgia applies modified comparative negligence under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-33, reducing your damages by your percentage of responsibility. At 50 percent or more you recover nothing. Defendants may also apportion fault to people who are not parties to the lawsuit if they give at least 120 days notice before trial.

Does Georgia cap what I can recover for pain and suffering?

No. The Georgia Supreme Court struck down the statutory cap on non-economic damages in ordinary negligence cases in Atlanta Oculoplastic Surgery v. Nestlehutt, 286 Ga. 731 (2010), holding it violated the constitutional right to a jury trial. Punitive damages are capped at $250,000 under O.C.G.A. § 51-12-5.1, but that cap does not apply where the defendant specifically intended to cause harm, and it does not apply in DUI cases.

Which Augusta roads have the most serious-injury crashes?

The Augusta Regional Transportation Study analyzed crashes from 2019 through 2023 and specifically flagged these Richmond County locations for a high volume of serious injury crashes: I-520 near Exit 1A-B including the ramps; the North Leg Road, Wrightsboro Road and Jackson Road intersection; Wrightsboro Road near I-520; Deans Bridge Road from Meadowbrook Drive to Milledgeville Road; Gordon Highway from Barton Chapel Road to Old Savannah Road; and Mike Padgett Highway from Wylie Drive to Phinizy Road.

Does Georgia uninsured motorist coverage add to the at-fault driver’s policy?

By default, yes. Under O.C.G.A. § 33-7-11(b)(1)(D)(ii)(I) Georgia’s default uninsured motorist coverage is add-on, meaning it pays in addition to and in excess of the at-fault driver’s liability limits rather than being reduced by them. Reduced-by coverage applies only if the policyholder selected it in writing. This is more favorable than the default rule in many states and is worth checking on every serious Augusta claim.

What insurance applies to an Uber or Lyft crash in Augusta?

It depends entirely on the phase of the trip under O.C.G.A. § 33-1-24. From acceptance of a ride request through completion of the trip there is $1 million in liability coverage plus 100/300/25 uninsured motorist coverage for policies issued after July 1, 2023. During the app-on, waiting-for-a-request phase the limits fall to 50/100 and there is no uninsured motorist coverage at all.

Where would I be treated for a serious injury in Augusta?

Augusta has unusually strong trauma capacity. On the Georgia Department of Public Health designated centers list updated in May 2026, Wellstar MCG Health is a Level I adult trauma center, one of only six in Georgia; Doctors Hospital of Augusta is a Level II trauma center; the Children’s Hospital of Georgia is a Level II pediatric trauma center; and the Joseph M. Still Burn Center is one of only two designated burn centers in the state. All are verified by the American College of Surgeons or the American Burn Association.

Do you have an office in Augusta?

No. Southern Injury Attorneys does not maintain an office in Augusta. Our only Georgia office is in Atlanta, and Richmond County matters are handled from there and from our Memphis headquarters. The responsible attorney, Larry Peters, is admitted in Georgia under Bar No. 936535. There is no fee unless we recover for you.

What happens if the other driver lives in South Carolina?

It can move your case to federal court. A Georgia plaintiff suing a South Carolina defendant creates complete diversity under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, so if more than $75,000 is at stake the defense may remove the case to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Augusta Division, at 600 James Brown Boulevard. Given how much daily commuting crosses the Savannah River, this comes up regularly in Augusta cases and should be planned for before suit is filed.

This page is legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes and case law change; every case turns on its own facts. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Responsible attorney: Larry “Jimmy” Peters, Georgia Bar No. 936535. Southern Injury Attorneys does not maintain an office in Augusta; our only Georgia office is in Atlanta, and Richmond County matters are handled from there and from our Memphis headquarters.