## Facts

- Johnny Edwin Dowis, a Tennessee resident, was hired by Mud Slingers, Inc., a Missouri construction company led by its president, Michael Clement Graves, to perform work at a hotel project in Roswell, Georgia.
- Dowis fell four stories from the basket of a telescopic boom forklift operated by Graves and was injured at the Georgia job site.
- Mud Slingers maintained workers’ compensation insurance in Missouri, and Dowis filed a Missouri workers’ compensation claim and received benefits.
- Dowis later filed a Georgia tort action against Mud Slingers and Graves seeking damages for the same injuries.
- Dowis contended Missouri law would permit both workers’ compensation benefits and a tort action, while Georgia law would bar the tort claim through the Workers’ Compensation Act’s exclusive-remedy provision.
- The trial court applied Georgia’s choice-of-law rule (lex loci delicti), held Georgia substantive law controlled because the injury occurred in Georgia, and granted summary judgment to Mud Slingers and Graves.
- The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed; the Georgia Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether to retain lex loci delicti in tort cases.

## Issues

1. Whether Georgia should abandon lex loci delicti in tort conflict-of-laws cases in favor of a different methodology (such as a “most significant relationship” test).
2. Whether, under Georgia’s choice-of-law rules, Georgia substantive law applies to a workplace injury occurring in Georgia, thereby triggering Georgia workers’ compensation exclusivity and barring the employee’s tort suit.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Georgia affirmed.
- The court declined to abandon lex loci delicti as Georgia’s tort choice-of-law rule.
- Because the injury occurred in Georgia, Georgia substantive law governed the tort claim.
- Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation Act exclusive-remedy provision applied and barred Dowis’s tort action against the employer and its president.
- Summary judgment for Mud Slingers and Graves was upheld.

## Legal Principles

- In Georgia tort cases, the governing substantive law is determined by lex loci delicti: the law of the state where the tort was committed.
- Under lex loci delicti, the place of injury is controlling for determining the applicable substantive law.
- Georgia’s Workers’ Compensation Act provides an exclusive remedy that generally precludes an employee from pursuing a separate tort action against an employer for a compensable workplace injury when the Act applies.
- Longstanding conflicts rules will be retained absent sufficient justification to depart from precedent; changes with broad policy effects are generally left to the legislature.

## Conclusion

Georgia reaffirmed lex loci delicti for tort choice-of-law and applied Georgia substantive law because the injury occurred in Georgia, resulting in workers’ compensation exclusivity that barred the employee’s tort suit despite the employee’s receipt of Missouri workers’ compensation benefits.


Dowis v. Mud Slingers, Inc., 279 Ga. 808, 621 S.E.2d 413 (Ga. 2005)