A $140 million jury verdict over a tenant's fiery death at a troubled Atlanta apartment complex is now in the hands of the Georgia Supreme Court, which heard arguments over whether to restore the massive award against the landlord of Venetian Hills Apartments. The case centers on George Hughes, a 63-year-old tenant who died when fire tore through his unit on Campbellton Road in 2017, in a building that lacked smoke detectors, fire alarms and a sprinkler system.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a DeKalb County jury found Venetian Hills Apartments liable for Hughes's death in late 2023, and a state-court jury ordered the landlord to pay his family $140 million. Atlanta firefighters had responded to the blaze, which the Georgia Court of Appeals opinion dates to March 17, 2017.
The dollar figure made headlines well beyond Atlanta. Kinsale Insurance Company, which insured Venetian Hills' general liability policy, said it intended to appeal, The Insurer reported. The underlying claim traces back to June 2019, when Marie Hughes, administrator of George Hughes's estate, filed the original lawsuit against the complex.
Appeals Court Found a Jury Instruction Error
The case didn't stay settled for long. In 2025, the Georgia Court of Appeals vacated the judgment entered on the verdict and ordered a full retrial, finding a harmful error in how jurors had been instructed, according to the appellate opinion hosted by FindLaw. At the same time, the court found that a jury could hold the landlord liable under Georgia Code section 44-7-14, which covers damages from defective construction or a failure to keep premises in repair — even if the landlord had fully parted with possession of the property.
That same opinion lays out how the fire reached Hughes's apartment: another tenant's guest had set a sock on fire and fled before flames spread. Witnesses at trial testified that Hughes's unit lacked basic fire safety measures, including alarms, sprinklers and smoke detectors. The appeals court noted that the landlord had converted town homes into apartments made up of one or more rented rooms back in 2012 without installing the fire protection measures mandated by law.
The appellate judges wrote that, given the missing fire protections and the circumstances of how the fire started, a jury could reject the landlord's theory and resolve the question of proximate cause in the estate's favor. That finding kept the door open for Hughes's family to pursue the case again, even as the original $140 million figure was wiped off the books pending a new trial.
Landlord Says the Fire Was Not Foreseeable
Venetian Hills has pushed back hard on the size and the premise of the verdict. The complex asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to void what its filings called an “extraordinarily high” award, the AJC reported in mid-2025. Attorney Laurie Webb Daniel, representing the landlord, argued that the fire simply wasn't the kind of event the property owner could have anticipated. “We're talking about arson triggered by sexual assault,” Webb Daniel said. “That's not foreseeable.”
Venetian Hills has also been named as one of many troubled complexes examined in the AJC's Dangerous Dwellings investigation, which the paper began publishing in June 2022.
What Comes Next for the Verdict
The Georgia Supreme Court is now considering whether to restore the $140 million verdict against the apartment complex. Whatever the justices rule will shape how far Georgia landlords can be held accountable for fire deaths in properties they no longer directly manage — a question the Court of Appeals already answered in the tenant's favor once, only to see the verdict wiped out on a jury-instruction error.
