Georgia Bus and Transit Accident Case Law: 30 Court Decisions on the Duty Owed to Passengers

A bus company, a transit authority, a taxicab operator and the company running an airport train all owe their riders more than ordinary care under Georgia law. OCGA § 46-9-132 requires “a carrier of passengers” to “exercise extraordinary diligence to protect the lives and persons of his passengers,” and OCGA § 51-1-3 defines that diligence as “that extreme care and caution which very prudent and thoughtful persons exercise under the same or similar circumstances.” The same sentence of § 46-9-132 limits the rule: a carrier “is not liable for injuries to them after having used such diligence.” The 30 decisions below from the Supreme Court of Georgia and the Court of Appeals of Georgia show where the courts have drawn the lines: who counts as a passenger and when, what a sudden stop must look like before a jury may find fault, when a carrier must guard against violence by other people, how the duty ends when a rider steps off, and how claims against carriers and their insurers are brought.

Passengers lost more often than they won in this set. The carrier or another defendant prevailed on the question decided in 20 cases, the injured passenger or the family prevailed in nine, and one decision, Korn (No. 3), went partly each way. A passenger’s win usually meant only that a jury would hear the case: in Saltis, Piller, Burton and Cuthbert the court held that the claim had to go to a jury, not that the carrier was at fault. The earliest decision here is from 1924 and the latest from 2025. Five are decisions of the Supreme Court of Georgia and 25 of the Court of Appeals.

The Standard in Georgia’s Code

Checked against the Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel’s summaries of the 2024, 2025 and 2026 sessions, § 46-9-132 shows no amendment, and FindLaw’s copies of it and of § 51-1-3, dated March 28, 2024, carry the wording quoted above. Decisions from before 1982 cite the same passenger rule as Code § 18-204 of the 1933 Code, which used the same words. One rule that appears in older decisions no longer applies to buses. For decades a Georgia statute made proof of an injury caused by a bus for hire prima facie evidence of a lack of care; in 2000 the Court of Appeals explained that the General Assembly repealed that provision in 1992 and held that “[t]he presumption of negligence is therefore no longer valid” (No. 12). Where a decision below mentions the presumption, it was decided under the earlier law. A 2024 change to the statute allowing direct actions against a motor carrier’s insurer is noted at No. 28.

Who Is a Passenger, and What Counts as a Carrier

The extraordinary duty attaches to a relationship, so these cases turn on two questions: whether the person was a passenger at the moment of injury, and whether the business was a carrier at all. Signaling a car at a flag station did not by itself make a waiting man a passenger (No. 1). A passenger in a taxicab had no duty to supervise the driver (No. 2). A bus traveler who left the bus to use a station restroom was owed only ordinary care inside the station, though her carrier’s promise to call a doctor while she was still its passenger could support a claim (No. 3). An amusement ride was not a public conveyance, while a free airport train was (Nos. 4 and 5). Extraordinary diligence did not automatically require MARTA to add a newer safety device to an older escalator (No. 6), and a tourist who fell in a parking lot while walking to board a trolley was not yet a passenger (No. 7).

1. Atlanta Northern Railway Co. v. Brown (1924)

Atlanta Northern Railway Co. v. Brown, 159 Ga. 212, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided November 12, 1924

Fred Brown and a companion went at night to a flag station, where the railway’s cars stopped on signal, and signaled an approaching car. According to Brown, the motorman answered the signal but ran about fifty feet past the station and stopped over an underpass; as Brown walked toward the back of the car he stepped off into the underpass and fell about fifteen feet. The motorman testified that the signal came too late to stop at the station and that he meant to back the car up to it, and the railway’s crew said the car was already backing when Brown fell. A jury found for the railway, and the Court of Appeals reversed because of one instruction.

That instruction was correct, the Supreme Court held. It told the jury that if the car stopped beyond the station in order to receive Brown there, and that purpose was indicated to him, the railway owed him extraordinary diligence in its approaches; but if the stop was only a step toward backing up to the station, “the defendant would owe the plaintiff no duty until the car came to a stop to receive him as a passenger.” The Court relied on an earlier holding that a person who gives a proper signal at a flag station “does not ipso facto become a passenger.” The Court of Appeals had found no merit in Brown’s other grounds, and its judgment was reversed.

2. Andrews Taxi & U-Drive-It Co. v. McEver (1960)

Andrews Taxi & U-Drive-It Co. v. McEver, 101 Ga. App. 383, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 18, 1960

A young passenger was hurt when the taxicab carrying him collided with another automobile, in what some witnesses described as a heavy downpour. He contended that the cab driver’s negligence alone caused his injuries; the taxi company contended that the other driver’s negligence did. A jury found for the passenger, and the company appealed the denial of its motion for a new trial.

Most of the company’s complaints concerned the jury charge. The trial judge had described extraordinary diligence as the care “which every prudent and thoughtful person exercises,” while the Code used the phrase “very prudent and thoughtful persons,” and the court held that the variation was “not harmful error.” The court also stated a rule about the rider’s own role: “A passenger in a taxicab is under no duty to supervise the driver thereof or to instruct him in the manner in which he drives unless he has reason to distrust the diligence of the driver in respect to such matters.” With no evidence of negligence by the passenger, the trial court properly omitted a charge on comparative negligence. The denial of a new trial was affirmed.

3. Korn v. Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc. (1963)

Korn v. Tamiami Trail Tours, Inc., 108 Ga. App. 510, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 7, 1963

According to the petition, a woman traveling on a Tamiami Trail Tours bus left it during a stop in Florida to use the restroom in the bus station and fell down a step at the station entrance on her way back; she had crossed the same step on her way in. The petition further alleged that the carrier’s agents knew she was hurt and, while she was still a passenger, promised at her request to call a physician, but did not, and that her injuries grew worse. Her husband sued, and the trial court dismissed the petition on general demurrer. No Florida law was pleaded, so the court applied Georgia law.

The fall itself stated no claim. Once she left the bus and entered the station she “was merely an invitee entitled to no more than ordinary care,” and nothing alleged about the step showed a breach of that duty. The promise was different. Noting that there “appears to be no direct holding in this jurisdiction on the point,” the court followed Supreme Court decisions on sick and infirm passengers and held that “the petition alleged a duty resting upon the carrier of rendering the promised assistance.” The carrier could not be charged with the original injury, but “it may be held liable for the aggravation of the injury which was occasioned solely by the failure of the carrier to fulfill its duty in securing the promised medical services. This presents a jury question.” The dismissal was reversed with direction that the petition be recast.

4. Harlan v. Six Flags Over Georgia, Inc. (1982)

Harlan v. Six Flags Over Georgia, Inc., 250 Ga. 352, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided November 30, 1982

A patron of the Six Flags Over Georgia amusement park said he was injured in April 1977 while riding “The Wheelie,” a device whose cars spun on a wheel that rose to a near vertical position, holding riders upside down at the top by centrifugal force. The federal court of appeals hearing his case asked the Supreme Court of Georgia what standard of care the operator of such a ride owed its riders. He argued that the ride was a public conveyance, like a taxicab, bus or train, so that the park owed extraordinary diligence.

“The answer is ordinary care.” The Court distinguished elevators, taxicabs, buses and railroads, “which are instruments of transportation that must be used by people to travel from one place to another,” from rides like the Wheelie. “Persons using ordinary transportation devices, such as elevators and buses, normally expect to be carried safely, securely, and without incident to their destination,” while amusement riders seek “a sensation of speed and movement for the sake of entertainment and thrills.” Because “[t]here is no transport involved with ‘The Wheelie,'” it was “not a public conveyance within the meaning of Ga. Code Ann. § 18-201.”

5. Saltis v. A.B.B. Daimler Benz (2000)

Saltis v. A.B.B. Daimler Benz, 243 Ga. App. 603, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided April 14, 2000

Dr. Lawrence Saltis was leaving a shuttle train at Hartsfield International Airport, and trying to keep the doors from closing on a child, when the doors closed on him. They caught the strap of the bag over his shoulder while the bag stayed inside, and his arm was wrenched as the train pulled away. The defendant operated and maintained the trains as free transportation within the terminals and concourses. The trial court granted it summary judgment.

A ride need not be paid for to carry the extraordinary duty. The court held that “the duty of care owed to such passenger was extraordinary care,” likening the airport train to escalators and elevators that give free transportation within a building or complex. Unlike MARTA train doors or elevator doors, these doors did not reopen when obstructed and “require more than 30 pounds of force per door panel to stop them from closing,” and with crowds, shoulder bags and young children at the world’s busiest airport, the court concluded that “more than a mere general warning must be provided to satisfy the requisite duty of care.” The operator’s evidence was insufficient because it described “what usually happened and not as to what actually happened on the day of the incident.” Summary judgment was reversed, so a jury would decide the claim.

6. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Rouse (2005)

Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Rouse, 279 Ga. 311, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided April 26, 2005

Leslie Rouse’s foot was caught under the comb plate of an escalator at MARTA’s Five Points rail station. The escalator lacked a comb plate impact switch, an optional device that stops an escalator when something is caught; the building code did not require it to be retrofitted onto older escalators. A divided Court of Appeals held that a jury could find that MARTA’s extraordinary duty required the switch, and in doing so it overruled a 1966 decision to the contrary.

Keeping up with safety advances is part of the duty, but buying them is not automatically required. The Supreme Court’s holding: “a common carrier, in exercising extraordinary care, must stay informed of safety advances in product design, but is not held to a per se rule that requires those carriers to buy and incorporate those safety advances into previously-purchased, non-defective products.” A contrary rule would make every carrier “an insurer of his passenger’s safety against every possible source of danger,” a standard the Court said it had “consistently declined to impose.” The Court of Appeals was reversed, the 1966 decision was reinstated, and the case went back to that court.

7. DeMott v. Old Town Trolley Tours of Savannah, Inc. (2014)

DeMott v. Old Town Trolley Tours of Savannah, Inc., 328 Ga. App. 657, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 16, 2014

In November 2008 Malissa DeMott bought tickets for a trolley tour at the Savannah Visitor Center, walked across the parking lot to a kiosk to ask where to board, and was told to board at the front door of the visitor center. Walking back, she tried to step around a pothole, the asphalt gave way, and she fell. She sued too late for a premises liability claim against the company that owned the lot and then alleged that, as a common carrier, it had breached its contract of carriage.

That claim failed because the carrier relationship had not begun. “The rule of extraordinary diligence applies only to the receiving, keeping, carrying and discharging of passengers,” the court said, quoting a 1952 decision, and “[w]hen DeMott fell, she was not aboard the trolley, and was not in the act of boarding or exiting the trolley.” Therefore “no carrier-passenger relationship existed for OCGA § 46-9-132 to apply,” and the company’s duty as to its lot was the ordinary care any owner owes invitees, a claim already barred by the two-year statute of limitation. Summary judgment was affirmed by a vote of four judges to three; the dissent would have left to a jury whether the carrier’s duty applied on the way to the boarding point.

Starts, Stops and Falls During the Ride

These seven decisions show what a rider must prove after being hurt when a vehicle stops, starts or collides, or while getting on or off. A cab passenger’s claim survived dismissal where the pleaded facts left open whether the cab driver’s speed and following distance helped cause a collision (No. 8). A bus company was not liable when its driver blacked out without warning (No. 9). A verdict for a standing rider thrown by a sharp stop was upheld (No. 10), and verdicts for MARTA were upheld where a rider’s foot became lodged in the platform gap (No. 11) and where a rider fell as the bus pulled off (No. 12). A $25 million verdict for a paratransit rider was set aside over a jury instruction (No. 13), and in 2022 the Court of Appeals held that MARTA has no duty to wait until train riders find seats (No. 14).

8. Piller v. Hanger Cab Co. (1967)

Piller v. Hanger Cab Co., 115 Ga. App. 260, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided February 17, 1967

The petition alleged that a taxicab carrying the plaintiff was traveling too fast and following too closely on a wet street behind a Falcon that “prepared to turn left.” The cab driver managed to avoid hitting the Falcon, but a Thunderbird following the cab collided with it, and the passenger was hurt. The cab company argued that the Thunderbird driver’s negligence was the only cause, and the trial court dismissed the petition on general demurrer.

An intervening driver’s negligence did not end the case as a matter of law. The cab driver “was charged with the knowledge that a vehicle was following him and that the stopping distance on the wet street at the alleged unlawful speed was greater than on a dry street at a lawful speed,” and “it can not be said as a matter of law that such intervening negligence could not have been reasonably anticipated, apprehended, or foreseen by the defendant’s driver.” Where two causes combine, recovery may be had against either actor, “even though the degree of care owed by them to the injured person be different.” Too many facts remained open “to hold as a matter of law that the defendant was exercising extraordinary diligence to protect the plaintiff passenger,” and the dismissal was reversed.

9. Battey v. Savannah Transit Authority (1971)

Battey v. Savannah Transit Authority, 123 Ga. App. 685, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided April 23, 1971

A Savannah Transit Authority bus collided with another vehicle when its driver, according to the facts the parties stipulated, “suddenly became dizzy, blacked out, and lost control of the bus.” A passenger sued the bus company and the driver. A doctor who had examined the driver in 1965 found his blood pressure moderately elevated and responsive to medication, and testified that such a condition would not normally be expected to cause a sudden fainting spell. The trial court directed a verdict for the defendants.

The passenger argued that the company should have required periodic medical examinations, but the court found no proof that an examination would have changed anything: “any opinion as to what it would have revealed would be pure speculation,” and “[t]here was no evidence that the defendant bus company had any knowledge of the driver’s high blood pressure.” The driver was not negligent in failing to report a condition his own doctor would not have warned him about. The directed verdict was affirmed by the full court over one dissent, which would have placed on the defendants the burden of proving that the driver had no time to stop the bus before losing consciousness.

10. Atlanta Transit System, Inc. v. Simpson (1976)

Atlanta Transit System, Inc. v. Simpson, 139 Ga. App. 34, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided June 14, 1976

The bus was crowded, so the plaintiff stood near the rear door. As the bus turned left from Decatur Street onto Butler Street in Atlanta, it braked sharply to avoid colliding with a truck coming the other way on Decatur Street, and she fell. A jury returned a verdict for her, and the transit company appealed.

Braking hard to avoid a truck did not take the case away from the jury. The court repeated that a carrier “must exercise extraordinary diligence to protect its passengers from injury” and that questions of negligence and proximate cause “are solely for the jury, except in plain, palpable and indisputable cases.” The jurors “were correctly charged and found in favor of plaintiff,” and because the evidence supported their verdict, the judgment was affirmed.

11. Mattox v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (1991)

Mattox v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, 200 Ga. App. 697, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 11, 1991

Naomi Mattox had ridden MARTA regularly for two and a half years. After she boarded a train, her foot became lodged in the gap, about three and three-quarter inches wide, between the train and the platform. The case went to a jury, which found for MARTA, and she appealed the denial of her motion for a directed verdict and several refused jury instructions.

Mattox argued that the evidence demanded a verdict in her favor, but “a common carrier of passengers is not an absolute and unqualified insurer of the safety of its passengers,” and “[w]hat facts suffice to show the exercise of such extraordinary diligence is ordinarily for the jury.” One requested charge, on whether MARTA had allowed a reasonable time to board, was not supported by the evidence, since she had in effect testified that she entered the train without incident and then, “for some reason unknown to her, suddenly found her leg lodged within the gap.” The jury had also been told that injury in boarding raised a presumption that MARTA was negligent, a charge given before the 1992 legislation described in No. 12. The judgment for MARTA was affirmed.

12. Adams v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (2000)

Adams v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, 246 Ga. App. 698, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided November 7, 2000

Mary Gordon Adams, 76 years old and working full time, boarded a MARTA bus in December 1996 and moved to a seat farther back because cold air from the door bothered her. She testified that as she was sitting down the driver “stepped on the accelerator and took off,” the bus jerked, and she fell. The driver testified that a car darted in front of the bus and he braked. The jury found for MARTA and the driver.

Three of her objections to the jury charge failed. The trial court’s failure to define “extraordinary diligence” was not harmful, because “the term is comprised of words of ordinary understanding and is self-explanatory.” Her requested charge on a presumption of negligence was properly refused: after tracing the statute’s history, the court concluded that the General Assembly repealed it for buses for hire in 1992 and that “[t]he presumption of negligence is therefore no longer valid.” On the jerk itself, the court assumed that a streetcar rule applied to buses, under which a plaintiff “must show that there was a sudden, violent, unusual and unnecessary jerk,” and held that Adams had not shown the jerk was “unnecessary at the particular time and place.” The judgment was affirmed.

13. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Tyler (2021)

Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Tyler, No. A21A0626, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 2, 2021

Jaccolah Johnson, 66, qualified for MARTA’s paratransit service with a physician’s certification. In January 2016, as she approached the angled steps of a MARTA mobility bus carrying a number of personal items, she lost her footing in what appeared to be a misstep, spun, fell backward out of the bus and struck her head on the curb; a brain bleed later that day left her in a vegetative state. Video captured the fall, but footage of her earlier boarding was not preserved, and a MARTA representative testified that the system kept video for 30 days. Over MARTA’s objection, the trial court instructed the jury that a party’s failure to produce evidence could raise a presumption against it. The jury awarded $25,000,000 and assigned 75 percent of the responsibility to MARTA and 25 percent to Johnson.

Whether evidence was destroyed is for the judge, not the jury, to decide. No motion for sanctions had been filed and the trial court made no finding that spoliation occurred, and “spoliation of evidence is not a fact the jury is empowered to find by inference. Instead, whether spoliation occurred is a question of fact, to be decided by the court prior to trial.” What the missing footage would have shown, whether Johnson boarding without help or struggling on the steps, was “a complete mystery,” and the charge likely prejudiced MARTA, whose defense was that nothing had put it on notice that she needed assistance. The instruction was reversible error: the judgment was reversed, an attorney fee award under § 9-11-68 was vacated, and the case was sent back for a new trial.

14. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Brown (2022)

Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Brown, 366 Ga. App. 275, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided December 6, 2022

Norman Brown, who used a walker because of gout, was one of the last riders onto a packed train at MARTA’s Georgia State station in June 2017. He took “one or two steps” inside, and then, he testified, “all of a sudden the train pulled off fast,” and he fell, suffering a concussion and a knee injury that required surgery. A MARTA engineer stated in an affidavit that no abnormal acceleration was reported and that the rail cars’ acceleration is limited by software. The trial court held that a jury should decide whether MARTA had a duty to let Brown secure himself before the train moved.

A plaintiff suing over the movement of a train, streetcar or bus must show that it was “(a) sudden and violent, but also (b) that it was unusual and unnecessary at that time and place.” Operators must allow reasonable time to board, but older decisions imposed a duty to wait for passengers to reach their seats only on railroads, and “because a MARTA train is akin to a street car, MARTA had no duty to give passengers a reasonable time to find a seat before departing the station.” Brown offered no evidence contradicting the engineer, and the denial of summary judgment was reversed. In a later case involving an abrupt stop of a MARTA bus, Sanoh v. MARTA, the Court of Appeals applied Brown in an unreported decision, and on August 18, 2026 the Supreme Court of Georgia denied review over the dissent of Chief Justice Peterson and Justices Ellington, Pinson and Land; Justice Pinson wrote that the holding “appears to have mixed up the elements of duty and breach.”

Assaults and Misconduct by Others

Whether a carrier answers for harm done by someone else depends on who acted and on what the carrier knew or should have anticipated. A taxicab company was held to answer for its driver’s assault on a woman riding in his cab (No. 15), and a bus company could be liable when its own agent directed a crowd that trampled a boarding rider (No. 16). A school district’s immunity was not waived for an attack by children on a school bus (No. 17). A false fire alarm at a roadside stop (No. 18), a shooting by a passenger whose earlier remarks did not put the carrier on notice (No. 19) and a stabbing in a crowd outside a station’s faregates (No. 20) were held not reasonably foreseeable on the evidence, and a carrier could not be held liable without fault for an assault by its driver after the ride (No. 21).

15. Radio Cabs, Ltd. v. Tolbert (1952)

Radio Cabs, Ltd. v. Tolbert, 86 Ga. App. 181, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided May 22, 1952

The evidence authorized the jury to find that a Macon taxicab driver raped and beat a young woman who was riding in his cab, and that his driving afterward threw her against the dashboard before he left her where she fell getting out of the cab. The driver did not deny the assault, saying only that he was drunk and remembered nothing after leaving a tavern with her. The cab company argued that the driver had abandoned his employment and was on a personal mission when he picked her up, so that no contract of carriage existed.

That defense raised a question for the jury, and the jury found against the company. As a passenger, the court held, the woman “was entitled by reason of her contract of passenger and carrier, not only to be protected against the negligent acts of the driver of the taxicab resulting from his omission to perform the duty of the defendants to their passengers, but was also entitled to be protected against the wanton and wilful act of violence wrongfully committed on her person by the said servant of the taxicab company during the continuance of the relation as made by the contract.” The $2,000 awarded on the second count was not so large as to show bias, and the verdicts and the denial of the defendants’ motions for a new trial were affirmed.

16. Metropolitan Transit System, Inc. v. Burton (1961)

Metropolitan Transit System, Inc. v. Burton, 103 Ga. App. 688, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided April 20, 1961

In the petition’s account, a uniformed employee of the bus company at the corner of Broad and Walton Streets in Atlanta directed a waiting crowd to board through the rear door, which usually served as an exit. The plaintiff climbed the steps as directed and was pushed from behind by other passengers, knocked to the floor of the bus and trampled. The company argued that it had no control over the loading area and no reason to anticipate unruly conduct.

Once she climbed the steps she was on premises the company controlled, and the company “owed the plaintiff the duty of exercising extraordinary care for her safety from the time she boarded such bus and not just when such bus was in motion.” The court could not say “as a matter of law, that the failure to take any action to protect the plaintiff either from being pushed to the floor of the bus or to protect her from being stepped on after being pushed down was not a lack of extraordinary care.” The trial court’s refusal to dismiss the petition was affirmed by the full court. The dissenting Chief Judge read the petition to describe a push from the sidewalk, where the company had no control.

17. Hicks v. Walker County School District (1984)

Hicks v. Walker County School District, 172 Ga. App. 428, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided October 4, 1984

Dana Hicks rode a Walker County school bus that carried children to and from a center for exceptional children. Her family alleged that two other passengers kicked and beat her for the entire forty-minute ride. They sued the school district, the board of education and the driver, and the district defended on sovereign immunity.

The immunity question turned on insurance. Under OCGA § 33-24-51 as it then read, immunity was waived only to the extent of the district’s motor vehicle coverage, and the policy covered accidents “resulting from the ownership, maintenance or use of a covered auto.” The court saw “no causal connection between the injury deliberately inflicted on Dana by the other school children and the use of the school bus as contemplated by the parties to the insurance policy,” so the district’s immunity was not waived. The board could not be sued, and the driver, sued in her official capacity, was immune in the absence of wilful or malicious conduct. The rulings for the defendants were affirmed. Section 33-24-51 was revised in 2002; in Tift County School District v. Martinez, 331 Ga. App. 423 (2015), the Court of Appeals held that the revised statute waives a school district’s immunity for the negligent use of a covered motor vehicle to the extent of the liability insurance the district buys.

18. Paschal v. Ferguson Transport, Inc. (1988)

Paschal v. Ferguson Transport, Inc., 189 Ga. App. 447, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided December 2, 1988

A chartered bus carrying a group from Warner Robins to a bingo game in South Carolina broke a suspension spring around midnight on the return trip, and the driver stopped at a convenience store to wait for a replacement. While the plaintiff slept on board, a young man who had driven up to the gas pumps, and who was not a passenger, approached the bus and yelled “Fire!” Startled awake, she hurried out and fell on the steps. The driver was standing 25 to 35 feet from the door.

The extraordinary duty does not require precautions against the intentional misconduct of others “until something occurs … to put [the carrier] on notice that … such conduct … might be reasonably anticipated,” the court said, quoting a 1948 decision. Nothing had warned the driver, and “the incident occurred with such suddenness and lack of warning as to surprise even those standing in close proximity to the wrongdoer.” Because the misconduct “could not reasonably have been anticipated,” summary judgment for the bus company was affirmed.

19. Southeastern Stages, Inc. v. Stringer (1993)

Southeastern Stages, Inc. v. Stringer, 263 Ga. 641, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided December 2, 1993

Walker Stringer Jr. was shot and killed by a fellow passenger shortly before his bus from Augusta reached Atlanta in June 1989. When buying his ticket, the gunman had told the agent that there “probably would be an undercover cop … looking for him.” The bus company knew of two earlier incidents, in 1986 and 1988, in which knife-wielding passengers attacked drivers, and it screened boarding passengers for weapons only by looking at them. A plurality of the Court of Appeals, relying on premises liability decisions, held that a jury should decide whether the company should have anticipated the attack.

Premises liability law was the wrong measure: “We disapprove that language in the Court of Appeals’ opinion applying premises liability law to common carrier cases.” Under the carrier rule, a carrier “is not required to take measures to protect its passengers from the intentional misconduct of third persons until something occurs to put the carrier on notice,” and “more than the mere possibility of an occurrence must be shown.” A carrier need not know that a particular person is dangerous, since a route with a history of frequent violence can supply notice, but “there was no evidence that conditions existing on the Augusta-Atlanta route travelled by the decedent were likely to expose passengers to a reasonably foreseeable danger,” and the gunman’s remarks alone suggested no more than “a practical joker or a harmless eccentric.” The Court of Appeals was reversed, and summary judgment for the defendants was restored.

20. Johnson v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (1998)

Johnson v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, 230 Ga. App. 105, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided January 8, 1998

After a tractor pull at the Georgia Dome in January 1994, Jimmy Johnson waited with his son, a neighbor and the neighbor’s son in a crowd outside the faregates of MARTA’s Omni rail station. He felt something warm on his back and found that he had been cut; no one identified his attacker. He and his wife sued, contending that MARTA should have provided more security and more trains for the crowd.

The court did not decide whether Johnson was already a passenger outside the faregates, because “his cause of action fails even under the strictest ‘extraordinary diligence’ standard.” Applying the test from No. 19, the court noted that MARTA had assigned five extra officers to the station for the event, that there was deposition testimony that the scene would have been chaotic “even if MARTA had 50 officers there,” and that no violent crimes had occurred at the station during special events in the preceding three years. The Johnsons offered only conclusions, not evidence, on security and train service, and summary judgment for MARTA was affirmed.

21. Laidlaw Transit Services, Inc. v. Young (2009)

Laidlaw Transit Services, Inc. v. Young, 299 Ga. App. 785, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided August 20, 2009

A disabled adult’s next friend sued Laidlaw Transit Services and one of its bus drivers, alleging that the driver assaulted her in a church parking lot after transporting her on the bus; the complaint did not say precisely where or how the assault occurred. The trial court ruled for Laidlaw on the claims based on respondeat superior and negligent hiring and supervision, but denied summary judgment on a claim that Laidlaw was absolutely liable as a common carrier.

A carrier of passengers is not a guarantor. “[A] common carrier of passengers is not an absolute and unqualified insurer of the safety of its passengers,” the court held, and the extraordinary diligence standard, though stricter than ordinary negligence, is not as strict as the rule for carriers of goods under OCGA § 46-9-1. The 1985 decision the trial court relied on was physical precedent only, because one judge concurred in the judgment only, and it involved the alleged theft of a diamond ring rather than an injury. The denial of summary judgment on the absolute liability claim was reversed.

Getting Off, and What Comes After

The extraordinary duty continues while a passenger alights, and these decisions ask when it ends and what replaces it. A jury was correctly told that the relationship ends once a passenger has safely gained footing on the street (No. 22), and a carrier ordinarily meets its duty by letting passengers off at a usual and reasonably safe place (No. 23). Whether a woman killed by the rear wheel of the bus she had just left was still a passenger was for a jury (No. 24). A child’s death after his school district chose an unsafe drop-off point did not arise from the “use” of its bus under an insurance exclusion (No. 25), a grandmother who boarded a school bus without permission was not a passenger (No. 26), and a Greyhound rider hurt in a field after the driver unloaded a stuck bus could not prove what caused her fall (No. 27).

22. Beardsley v. Suburban Coach Co. (1951)

Beardsley v. Suburban Coach Co., 83 Ga. App. 381, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 1, 1951

W. L. Beardsley, whose left arm was in a sling, alleged that in July 1948 he was stepping off a bus in East Point onto the grassy shoulder of the sidewalk, still holding on to the bus, when the driver drove off at high speed and threw him backward onto the concrete. The jury found for the bus company. Beardsley died while his appeal was pending, and his executrix continued it.

The appeal attacked the trial judge’s explanation of when the carrier’s duty ends. The jury had been told that the relationship lasted until the passenger “reached the place of his destination and had been allowed reasonable time and opportunity to alight from the bus in safety,” and that “[a]fter a passenger leaves a bus and has a safe footing on the street, the relationship of carrier and passenger is ended.” The plaintiff argued that the carrier must also see that the passenger has a safe means of moving away before it drives on. The court found that “various correct forms of expression have been used” in stating the rule, that the charge was “not basically incorrect,” and that the specifications of negligence were fairly put to the jury. The denial of a new trial was affirmed.

23. Knight v. Atlanta Transit Sys., Inc. (1976)

Knight v. Atlanta Transit Sys., Inc., 137 Ga. App. 667, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided February 5, 1976

The plaintiff testified that she fell early one morning while stepping off a bus on Auburn Avenue near Peachtree Street, at a stop where the pavement was broken and the light was too poor to see it. The driver contradicted her on every material point, and the jury found for the transit company. She argued that extraordinary diligence would have required the driver to get off and help passengers down.

“[T]he general rule is to the contrary.” A carrier on city streets “discharges its legal duty to a passenger when it deposits him at a usual and reasonably safe place for alighting and crossing the street,” the court said, quoting a 1936 decision; she had neither alleged nor proved circumstances that would require physical assistance, and whether such circumstances exist “is a question to be determined by the jury.” The carrier’s extraordinary duty also “does not abrogate the requirement” that a plaintiff use ordinary care for her own safety. The denial of a new trial was affirmed.

24. Cuthbert v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (1989)

Cuthbert v. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, 190 Ga. App. 550, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided February 9, 1989

Christine Cuthbert rang the bell to get off at her stop. The driver stopped about four feet from the curb and about twenty-five feet from the stop, although MARTA’s operator manual defined a “perfect stop” as one made one foot from the curb. She walked along the side of the bus toward the stop and fell under the rear wheel as the bus began to roll, and she was killed. The driver testified that he checked his mirrors but began to roll before looking again in the right mirror. The trial court directed a verdict for MARTA in her grandson’s wrongful death action.

Her status at the moment she was killed was for the jury to decide: “Whether the passenger was owed a duty of extraordinary care or ordinary care is also a jury question.” The court quoted the test that the carrier’s duty in discharging a passenger “continues until the passenger has been conducted to a place where he has some freedom of locomotion and can in a measure look out for his own safety,” and it held that her walking in the roadway, contrary to a statute, “merely raised a jury question as to her own negligence.” The directed verdict was reversed by the full court. The dissenting Chief Judge concluded that she had safely alighted and chosen her own route, so that she was owed only the ordinary care due a pedestrian.

25. Roberts v. Burke County School District (1997)

Roberts v. Burke County School District, 267 Ga. 665, Supreme Court of Georgia, decided March 3, 1997

A five-year-old kindergarten student was let off each afternoon at an unapproved stop about half a mile from home, an arrangement the district allowed at some parents’ request, which required the children to walk along a heavily traveled road with no crosswalks and a 55 mph speed limit. In 1986, after walking about four-tenths of a mile, he ran across the road and was struck and killed by a van; the bus was by then about two miles away. After a bench trial, the court found the district negligent in selecting the route and in training and supervising the driver, held that the death did not arise from the “use” of the bus, and entered judgment for the $1,000,000 limit of a general liability policy that excluded injuries arising from use of a vehicle. The Court of Appeals disagreed and ordered the case dismissed.

Distance from the bus mattered, though it was not decisive by itself. The meaning of “use” in such a policy “is dependent to a great extent on the circumstances of the case,” and it can extend to unloading children and seeing them to a place of safety while the bus stands guard with its signals on. Here, however, the district’s negligence in choosing the route and supervising the driver “is removed from the actual operation of the school bus,” and a place of safety “cannot be defined solely by whether or not the individual would be safe if he remained in the place.” The trial court “correctly concluded that the boy’s injury and death could not be said to have arisen from the ‘use’ of the school bus,” so the Court of Appeals was reversed and the case returned to it.

26. Hancock v. Bryan County Board of Education (1999)

Hancock v. Bryan County Board of Education, 240 Ga. App. 622, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided September 14, 1999

Shirley Hancock’s grandson had been suspended from riding the school bus. The next morning she boarded the bus at one of its stops to talk to the driver about the suspension; school policy barred adults from boarding, and the driver asked her to leave. She fell as she got off and sued the driver and the board of education. The jury found for the defendants, having been instructed, at her own request, on the duties owed to licensees and trespassers.

Hancock argued on appeal that she had been a passenger of a common carrier. That was “incorrect as a matter of law. A school bus is not a motor common carrier,” the court held, citing the statutory definition as it then read, and “Hancock’s unauthorized boarding of the school bus did not make her a ‘passenger’ thereon.” The defense had also offered evidence that she stepped backward “blindly” when she left, which made assumption of the risk a question for the jury. The judgment was affirmed, with two judges dissenting.

27. Greyhound Lines, Inc. v. Williams (2008)

Greyhound Lines, Inc. v. Williams, 290 Ga. App. 450, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 24, 2008

Laura Williams was riding a Greyhound bus from California to Augusta in September 2003 when the driver took a wrong exit in Alabama and the bus became stuck while turning around. The driver had the passengers get off without telling them where to wait. Williams walked for at least 20 minutes in a grassy field that looked safe to her, then heard a crack in her foot about 30 feet from the bus and broke her ankle; she presumed she had stepped in a hole but never saw one. She sued, arguing that Greyhound owed her extraordinary care because it had put her in that position.

Which duty applied was left open. “Pretermitting whether Greyhound owed Williams a duty to exercise extraordinary versus ordinary care while Williams was walking in the field, however, Greyhound is not liable for her injuries under either standard as a matter of law because there is no evidence regarding the cause of Williams’ injuries.” Whether she stepped in a hole, on a rock or simply misplaced her foot was “subject only to speculation,” and nothing showed that Greyhound had directed her into the field. The denial of summary judgment was reversed.

Suing a Carrier: Insurers, Courts and Deadlines

The last three decisions concern how a passenger’s claim is brought. An injured rider’s family could not sue a medical transport company’s insurer directly because the van fell within an exemption from the Motor Carrier Act (No. 28). A suit against MARTA by bus passengers belonged in the Superior Court of Fulton County (No. 29). A rider’s lawsuit filed on the Monday after the second anniversary of her injury, which fell on a Saturday, was timely (No. 30).

28. Mornay v. National Union Fire Insurance Co. (2015)

Mornay v. National Union Fire Insurance Co., 331 Ga. App. 112, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided March 11, 2015

Southeastrans brokered nonemergency medical transportation for Georgia Medicaid members and assigned a trip to a subcontractor’s van. In April 2010 the van was carrying Sylvia Mornay in her wheelchair from her nursing home to a medical appointment when it stopped abruptly and she flipped over, suffering injuries that led to her death. Her family sued Southeastrans and joined its liability insurer under the direct action provision of the Motor Carrier Act, OCGA § 40-1-112.

Only the insurer of a “motor carrier” can be sued directly, and the statute excluded privately owned vehicles “capable of transporting not more than ten persons for hire when such vehicles are used exclusively to transport persons who are elderly, disabled, en route to receive medical care or prescription medication, or returning after receiving medical care or prescription medication.” The van had been built to seat at least 12, but after being fitted for a wheelchair it could carry only one wheelchair passenger and three others, and the court read “capable” to mean present ability; the van was used only for medical trips, and the statute’s “or” meant that carrying children to appointments did not matter. Summary judgment for the insurer was affirmed. The direct action provision was later rewritten by Senate Bill 426 (2024), which, for causes of action accruing on or after July 1, 2024, allows the insurer to be joined only in limited circumstances.

29. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Buho (2020)

Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority v. Buho, No. A19A2396, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided January 21, 2020

Kasim Buho and Kenneth Redd were passengers on a MARTA bus that collided with a parked vehicle in December 2017. They sued MARTA and the driver in the State Court of Fulton County, and MARTA, which admitted that the driver was its employee, asked the court to dismiss the case or transfer it to the Superior Court of Fulton County. The State Court refused, reasoning that MARTA was sued as a joint tortfeasor with its driver.

Section 10 (t) of the MARTA Act of 1965 requires suits against MARTA to be brought in the Superior Court of Fulton County. In a 1979 decision the Supreme Court allowed a suit to proceed elsewhere because the Georgia Constitution lets joint tortfeasors “residing in different counties” be sued in either county; here, though, the driver lived in Fulton County, so the constitutional provision and the MARTA Act did not conflict. Quoting an earlier decision, the court noted that “Georgia law vested exclusive subject matter jurisdiction and venue for all actions against MARTA in the Superior Court of Fulton County.” The State Court’s ruling was reversed, and the case was to be transferred rather than dismissed.

30. Cummings v. First Transit, Inc. (2025)

Cummings v. First Transit, Inc., No. A25A0876, Court of Appeals of Georgia, decided July 31, 2025

Robyn Leah Cummings was hurt on August 12, 2021, while boarding a bus operated by First Transit. She sued on Monday, August 14, 2023, voluntarily dismissed that suit in February 2024, and refiled it in August 2024 under Georgia’s renewal statute, which allows a timely suit to be refiled within six months of its dismissal. The trial court dismissed the renewed case, concluding that the first suit was filed after the two-year limitation period and so could not be renewed.

The anniversary fell on a weekend, which moved the deadline. Under OCGA § 1-3-1 (d) (3), when the last day of a period measured in years “falls on Saturday or Sunday,” the party has “through the following Monday,” and the rule applies to the two-year limitation period for personal injury claims. “Here, Cummings was injured on August 12, 2021, and because August 12, 2023, fell on a Saturday, her complaint was timely filed on Monday, August 14, 2023.” Older decisions to the contrary predated the 1985 amendment of the statute and “are no longer controlling,” and the renewal notice together with the trial court’s order sufficiently showed that the renewed case was valid. The dismissal was reversed.

How These Summaries Were Prepared

The opinions themselves are the source for every fact and quotation above; each case name links to one, either in the Caselaw Access Project’s reporter version or, for recent decisions, as a court PDF archived by CourtListener. No decision here is physical precedent: in every Court of Appeals decision chosen, each judge on the panel joined the opinion in full, some also writing separately, as Presiding Judge Miller did in No. 13. Transit decisions in which a judge concurred only in the judgment were left out for that reason, among them the 1985 ambulance decision discussed in No. 21. Three entries (Nos. 3, 8 and 16) come from rulings on the pleadings and so recount allegations, while entries from summary judgment rulings recount the evidence as the court had to view it, in favor of the party opposing the motion. Nos. 13, 29 and 30 are identified by docket number because no reporter citation for them was seen in a court’s own text. For each Court of Appeals decision, later Supreme Court decisions under the same case name were searched for; none was found, although that search does not reach every later ruling that may have limited a decision. The research was completed in September 2026.

Legislative Sources

Senate Bill 426 (2024), Georgia General Assembly

Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 2nd Session of the 157th General Assembly (2024), Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel

Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 1st Session of the 158th General Assembly (2025), Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel

Summary of General Statutes Enacted at the 2nd Session of the 158th General Assembly (2026), Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel

Limits of This Page

Nothing here is legal advice. The summaries report what Georgia’s appellate courts decided in particular disputes over particular facts; they do not say whether any bus company, transit authority, school district, taxicab operator or driver is responsible for any injury. Several of the decisions applied statutes that have since been renumbered, revised or repealed, and later legislation or court decisions may have changed the rules they describe.