Introduction

On 24 June 2025 the Supreme Court of Georgia delivered a significant opinion in Fleureme v. City of Atlanta, S25G0995, resolving a frequent procedural flashpoint in municipal-tort litigation: How must an ante-litem notice be “served upon the mayor” under OCGA § 36-33-5(f)? The plaintiff, Roodson Fleureme, had mailed his notice by Federal Express (a statutorily authorised “overnight delivery”) addressed simply to “City of Atlanta – Office of the Mayor.” Both the trial court and Court of Appeals dismissed his subsequent negligence action, holding that service on “the mayor” requires the notice (and outer envelope) to name the mayor personally.

The Supreme Court reversed, holding that delivery to the mayor’s official mailing address, addressed to the “Office of the Mayor,” fully satisfies the statute. In doing so the Court clarified the meaning of “deliver[ing] the claim to such official” and, perhaps more importantly, repudiated an overly “hyper-technical” line of cases demanding “strict compliance” with subsection (f).

Summary of the Judgment

1. The mandate in OCGA § 36-33-5(f) to serve “the mayor or the chairperson” is aimed at getting the claim to the municipality’s governing authority, not at personal hand-delivery to a named individual.
2. Addressing the notice to the “Office of the Mayor” at the correct City Hall address, and sending it by an authorised method (statutory overnight delivery or certified mail), meets that objective and therefore complies with the statute.
3. The Court rejected the Court of Appeals’ requirement that the envelope “must actually be addressed to the mayor” and criticised the notion that subsection (f) demands “strict compliance” in a hyper-literal sense.
4. Earlier Court of Appeals precedent—especially City of Albany v. GA HY Imports, LLC—was disapproved to the extent it insisted upon an inflexible “strict compliance” test that overrides ordinary methods of statutory construction.
5. Case remanded; Fleureme’s action against the City may proceed.

Analysis

A. Precedents Cited and Their Influence

• Cummings v. Georgia Dept. of Juvenile Justice, 282 Ga. 822 (2007)
  The Court analogised the municipal ante-litem purpose to the State Tort Claims Act discussed in Cummings— namely, giving the sovereign notice and a chance to settle. This functional viewpoint underpinned the broad reading of “service.”
• Georgia Ports Auth. v. Harris, 274 Ga. 146 (2001) & Norris v. GDOT, 268 Ga. 192 (1997)
  Both cases interpret “delivery” under the Tort Claims Act to mean transferring possession, not confirming receipt by a specific person. They supplied linguistic precedent for construing “deliver” in OCGA § 36-33-5(f).
• Owens v. City of Greenville, 290 Ga. 557 (2012) and its ancestry (Langley, Aldred, etc.)
  These decisions endorse “substantial compliance” with the municipal notice statute. The Court invoked them to question, even if only in dicta, the Court of Appeals’ “strict compliance” doctrine.
• City of Albany v. GA HY Imports, LLC, 348 Ga. App. 885 (2019)
  The principal authority for “strict compliance.” The Supreme Court criticised its reasoning for equating “shall” with a demand for literal perfection and for overlooking the pre-existing substantial-compliance line.
• Additional supportive citations: Cameron v. Lang (suit against official in official capacity is a suit against the entity); Pandora Franchising v. Kingdom Retail Group (use of “personally” as one of several service modalities).

B. Legal Reasoning of the Court

1. Textual Interpretation through Context.
   The phrase “deliver[ ] the claim to such official personally or by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery” is read grammatically: “personally” delineates a method of service, not an element of who must be named. Parsing the sentence otherwise would leave the conjunction “or” dangling and upset the statute’s syntax.
2. Purpose-Driven Construction.
   The statute’s core aim is to notify the governing authority so it can investigate, adjust and perhaps settle the claim. Requiring that the mayor personally open the envelope would do little to advance that purpose, especially in large cities where executive staff routinely handle such correspondence.
3. Plain versus Literal Meaning.
   Echoing U.S. Supreme Court guidance in Niz-Chavez v. Garland, the Court emphasised “ordinary meaning” over hyper-literalism. An “ordinary speaker” in 2014 would understand mailing to the “Office of the Mayor” to be service on the mayor for governmental purposes.
4. Rejection of Hyper-Technical “Strict Compliance.”
   Even assuming strict compliance is demanded, compliance is measured against the correct statutory reading— not a more stringent gloss devised by lower courts. Therefore “strict compliance” cannot justify a construction that the text and purpose cannot bear.

C. Potential Impact of the Decision

The decision carries significant procedural and practical implications:

• Lower Dismissal Barrier. Cities can no longer defeat tort suits merely because the notice lacked the mayor’s personal name. Claimants have a clearer, simpler path to compliance.
• Litigation Efficiency and Settlement Incentives. Because notices are less likely to be thrown out on technical grounds, municipalities may receive and respond to claims earlier, promoting negotiated resolutions.
• Precedential Ripple. The Court’s critique of the “strict compliance” narrative will reverberate beyond subsection (f), influencing other statutory notice regimes (e.g., ante-litem notices to counties, GTCA claims, zoning appeals).
• Legislative Clarity. The opinion may dissuade future legislatures from inserting superfluous “personally” language or, conversely, may prompt clarifying amendments if a stricter rule is desired.
• Administrative Practices. Municipal clerks and risk-management departments must now treat office-addressed notices as valid and date-stamp them accordingly.

Complex Concepts Simplified

Ante-Litem Notice

A statutory letter a claimant must send to a government entity before filing suit, detailing the claim so the entity can investigate and possibly settle.

OCGA § 36-33-5

Georgia’s municipal-tort notice statute. Subsection (f) specifies how the notice must be served; subsection (b) dictates when (within six months) and subsection (c) obliges the city to act within 30 days.

Statutory Overnight Delivery

Delivery by a commercial carrier (e.g., FedEx, UPS) that is expressly recognised in Georgia statutes as equivalent to certified mail.

Strict vs. Substantial Compliance

“Strict” means following the statutory directive as written; “substantial” means following it closely enough to fulfil its purpose even if minor deviations exist. The Supreme Court suggested that, for subsection (f), substantial compliance probably remains the true test.

Plain vs. Literal Meaning

Plain meaning considers common usage and context; literal meaning isolates words in a vacuum. Courts favour the former, lest statutes be applied in absurd or unworkable ways.

Conclusion

Fleureme v. City of Atlanta re-centres Georgia’s municipal ante-litem regime on practicality and purpose. By holding that delivery to the “Office of the Mayor” suffices, the Supreme Court restored coherence to OCGA § 36-33-5(f), harmonising grammatical structure, statutory context and longstanding “substantial-compliance” precedent. The ruling curtails procedural gamesmanship, streamlines pre-suit practice, and signals that “strict compliance” cannot eclipse ordinary meaning. For practitioners, the message is clear: focus on effective notice to the governing authority, not on addressing minutiae that do not advance justice.