Georgia statutory hiring duties in truck crash cases

What the cited provisions say

O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 binds an employer to exercise ordinary care when selecting employees and not to retain employees after learning of their incompetency. O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 also requires like care in providing machinery equal in kind to machinery in general use and reasonably safe for people operating it with ordinary care and diligence. Under O.C.G.A. 34-7-20, warning is required when machinery has latent defects or employment involves dangers that the employer knows or ought to know about but the employee does not know about.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

O.C.G.A. 51-2-2 provides responsibility for torts committed by a person's wife, child, or servant when committed by that person's command or in the prosecution and within the scope of that person's business. O.C.G.A. 51-2-2 includes torts committed negligently or voluntarily. The command alternative and the business-related conditions belong to the rule stated in O.C.G.A. 51-2-2, rather than to the employee-selection language of O.C.G.A. 34-7-20.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Who and what the provisions cover

O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 speaks in terms of employers and employees; its saved official hierarchy places it within Employment Generally and Employer's Liability, in the article addressing employer liability for injuries generally. O.C.G.A. 51-2-2 appears in the saved hierarchy under Torts and Imputable Negligence, and its operative language identifies a wife, child, or servant. Neither saved provision, O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 or O.C.G.A. 51-2-2, supplies a definition of truck driver or a vehicle-based applicability threshold.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

O.C.G.A. 51-1-2 generally defines ordinary diligence through the care ordinarily prudent people exercise in the same or similar circumstances. For preservation of property, O.C.G.A. 51-1-2 describes the care a prudent person takes of that person's own property of a similar nature. O.C.G.A. 51-1-2 calls the absence of that diligence ordinary negligence. O.C.G.A. 51-1-2 supplies the saved definition of ordinary diligence, while O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 sets out distinct requirements for employee selection, retention, machinery, and warnings.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Conditions and exceptions

O.C.G.A. 51-2-4 generally excludes employer responsibility for an employee's torts when the employee conducts an independent business and, in that business, is outside the employer's immediate direction and control. O.C.G.A. 51-2-5 separately specifies circumstances imposing responsibility for contractor negligence. O.C.G.A. 51-2-5(1) covers work wrongful in itself or productive of a nuisance when ordinarily performed. O.C.G.A. 51-2-5(2) concerns work that, according to the employer's previous knowledge and experience, is inherently dangerous to others however carefully performed.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

O.C.G.A. 51-2-5(3) covers a wrongful act violating a duty expressly imposed on the employer by contract; O.C.G.A. 51-2-5(4) covers a wrongful act violating a statutory duty. O.C.G.A. 51-2-5(5) covers retention of the right to direct or control the work's time and manner, or interference and assumed control creating a master-servant relationship or producing an injury traceable to that interference. O.C.G.A. 51-2-5(6) covers ratification of the independent contractor's unauthorized wrong. The saved units for O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 and O.C.G.A. 51-2-2 supply historical notes but no operative effective-date or tolling language.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Related provisions in the saved sources

O.C.G.A. 51-1-6 addresses a legal duty to perform an act for another's benefit or to refrain from an act that may injure another. Under O.C.G.A. 51-1-6, even when a cause of action is not expressly given, an injured party may recover for breach of that legal duty if damage results from the breach. The damage requirement is part of O.C.G.A. 51-1-6 itself; its saved wording does not identify particular truck-crash damages or resolve whether a specific hiring decision breached a duty.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

O.C.G.A. 51-1-2 provides a diligence definition, while O.C.G.A. 51-1-6 describes recovery upon breach of a qualifying legal duty. O.C.G.A. 51-2-4 and O.C.G.A. 51-2-5 add the independent-business rule and the stated contractor-negligence circumstances. Read as a reference collection, these saved provisions address distinct subjects. This entry does not use their titles to supply additional rules or treat the presence of related provisions as a determination about any particular crash.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Source date and limits

The saved-source date for this entry is 2026-11-06. The source set consists of selected statutory text and accompanying hierarchy, history, and notes from the Georgia General Assembly's Official Code of Georgia Annotated public access edition published by LexisNexis. That date identifies the saved material used here; it is not a representation that the law was checked today. The discussion stays within the supplied units and does not reconstruct provisions absent from the source set.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

The historical notes accompanying O.C.G.A. 34-7-20 and O.C.G.A. 51-2-2 identify decisions associated with the origins of their language, but those decisions' reasoning is outside this statute-only entry. Judicial interpretation, application to disputed facts, and conclusions about a particular truck crash are not supplied here. This is general reference information about the cited Georgia statutory language, not legal advice or an assessment of any person's rights, obligations, or potential recovery.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

See also

On related publications

• Georgia truck accident statistics (2020-2024) (truckaccidentlawyers.wiki)
• https://truckaccidentlawyer.wiki/topics/georgia-truck-crash-law/ (truckaccidentlawyer.wiki)
• https://caraccidentlawyers.wiki/reference/georgia-fault/ (caraccidentlawyers.wiki)