(The Center Square) — A Georgia Senate committee has advanced legislation to allow high-ranking company executives and government officials to avoid testifying in cases if they have no direct knowledge of the issue being litigated.
The Senate Regulated Industries and Utilities Committee signed off on Senate Bill 200, the Civil Practice Act. It would amend the Georgia Civil Practice Act, effectively adding the “Apex Doctrine” into state law.
“This is not a doctrine that has a purpose of avoiding relevant testimony by people who have personal knowledge,” Emily Johnson, senior vice president and deputy general counsel at United Parcel Service , told lawmakers. “It’s really to avoid bogging executives down who don’t have personal knowledge of the facts at hand and where they can get relevant information from other means.”
Keith Blackwell, a former Supreme Court of Georgia justice speaking on behalf of Georgians for Lawsuit Reform, told lawmakers that such a provision would align the practice in Georgia with that of other states.
“If you’re a CEO or a high-ranking government officer, if you are subject to deposition in every single case in which your company or in which your agency is named as a defendant, you’d never get anything done,” Blackwell told lawmakers. “You wouldn’t have time to run the company. You wouldn’t have time to run the agency.”
Blackwell represented General Motors in a case that reached the state Supreme Court last year. In that case, the car manufacturer urged justices to adopt the “Apex Doctrine.”
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