End of Trump case caps dramatic year in Georgia courts
Imprisoned reality television stars Todd and Julie Chrisley were pardoned, President Donald Trump dodged what many people said was the strongest criminal case against him, and jury verdicts reached new heights in a year of significant legal developments in Georgia.
The state also had its first trial in hundreds of pending lawsuits alleging a cancer-causing gas was recklessly used for decades in medical sterilization facilities, poisoning staff as well as people living and working nearby.
And in a ruling with wide implications, the Georgia Supreme Court allowed one of hundreds of product liability cases filed in the state against hair relaxer makers to proceed but limited the scope of the claims.
These are among Georgia’s biggest court cases of 2025.
The Chrisleys get a presidential pardon
Before they were found guilty of defrauding community banks out of $36 million and hiding their earnings to avoid federal taxes, the Chrisleys brought reality television viewers into their Atlanta-area home. Now, they’re out of prison and back on screen.
The wealthy real estate couple, who moved to Nashville while the criminal case against them was pending in Atlanta’s federal trial court, were pardoned by Trump in May and released from prisons in Florida and Kentucky.
They were indicted in 2019 by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney and found guilty in a 2022 jury trial of all 18 charges against them. Julie and Todd Chrisley were sentenced to seven and 12 years in prison, respectively, and together, they were ordered to pay $17.2 million in restitution.
The conservative-leaning 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, to which Trump has appointed six judges, upheld the Chrisleys’ convictions in 2024 but decided Julie Chrisley must be resentenced.
Julie Chrisley’s appeal of her new seven-year prison sentence, imposed by the Barack Obama-appointed trial judge, was pending when the case ended with Trump’s pardon.
Trump’s election interference prosecution dies on the vine
Two years after his mugshot from the Fulton County Jail made headlines around the world, Trump notched a significant legal victory in November when the criminal charges brought against him by District Attorney Fani Willis were dismissed.
Willis’ sweeping election interference case against Trump and 18 supporters went sideways in early 2024, when she was accused of having an improper romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a private attorney she had hired to work on the case.
That line of inquiry led to the removal of Willis and her office from the prosecution, which no other district attorneys in the state wanted to take. In the end, Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia Executive Director Pete Skandalakis dropped the charges, saying the alleged criminal conduct amounted to more of a federal, not state, case.
While the allegations appeared strong, and before her love life was questioned, Willis secured guilty pleas from four of Trump’s co-defendants — Scott Hall, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis.
Now, it is possible that Willis’ taxpayer-funded office could be made to pay for the defendants’ legal costs.
Ford settles truck rollover cases after second record-setting verdict
Ford Motor Company was still litigating a truck rollover case that set a jury verdict record in the state when it was hit with another record-setting jury verdict in a similar Georgia case in February.
The manufacturer was accused in both cases of selling more than 5 million Super Duty trucks with a dangerously weak roof prone to crushing occupants in rollovers. Ford denied the allegations, tied to the deaths of two Georgia couples.
In 2022, a Gwinnett County jury punished Ford with a $1.7 billion verdict that the company’s longtime in-house lawyer later described as “outrageous” during a meeting with Gov. Brian Kemp. The case became a poster child for so-called nuclear verdicts as Kemp pushed for an overhaul of the state’s civil litigation system.
That verdict, the state’s largest at the time, was wiped out on appeal, and Ford was facing a third trial in the Gwinnett County case when jurors in the other Georgia case — in the federal trial court in Columbus — slapped the company with a $2.5 billion verdict.
Ford confidentially settled both cases several months later without admitting any wrongdoing.
Georgia’s only other billion-dollar jury verdict came in March in a product liability case against Monsanto, blamed for the cancer of a Georgia man who, for two decades, used its weedkiller, Roundup. Monsanto, which maintains that Roundup is safe, settled that $2 billion case in November.
Toxic exposure lawsuit on appeal after landmark trial
For the first time, a Georgia jury got to decide whether the owner of a sterilization facility is responsible for alleged harm tied to its use of a toxic gas. That’s a big deal because there are hundreds of associated lawsuits pending in the state.
In May, jurors in Gwinnett County found Becton, Dickinson and Company and its predecessor, C.R. Bard, liable for the cancer of a retired truck driver who, for years, had transported medical products sterilized at their Covington facility.
The driver, Gary Walker, was awarded $70 million, but a partial mistrial was declared after a juror told the judge she felt pressured to agree with other jurors that the companies intended to cause harm.
The case is now headed to the Georgia Court of Appeals, while more than 400 similar cases remain pending against the companies.
In Cobb County, hundreds more cases are developing against Sterigenics in relation to its sterilization plant there, which, for decades, has used the same toxic gas — ethylene oxide. The county judge overseeing those cases is still deciding what evidence can be presented at trial.
Justices allow a weakened case against hair relaxer makers
In the fight between the users and makers of hair relaxer products, Georgia’s highest court found a compromise of sorts while clarifying a state law with far-reaching implications.
The court decided in October to revive a lawsuit that had been dismissed as untimely filed against L’Oreal USA and other manufacturers by Georgian Kiara Burroughs, who blamed them for her uterine fibroids and associated health problems.
But the court also limited the scope of Burroughs’ case to her use of hair relaxers in the decade before she sued, excluding evidence of her more extensive prior use.
The ruling dictates how Georgia’s 10-year statute of limitations in product liability cases is applied when a plaintiff, like Burroughs, alleges they were injured by repeated use of a product over a long period of time.
Often, such plaintiffs claim they used a product for decades before noticing any harm. Some also claim it took them years longer to realize the link between the product and their injury.
Burroughs alleges she regularly used chemical hair relaxers from 1995, when she was 6, through 2014. She said she was diagnosed with uterine fibroids in 2018 and sued in 2022, when she learned of a study linking the use of chemical hair relaxers to uterine cancer.
Under the state Supreme Court’s ruling, Burroughs’ case is whittled down to her product use between 2012 and 2014. Around 600 such cases have been filed in Georgia courts in recent years.
About the Author
Journalist Rosie Manins is a legal affairs reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
