Georgia Department of Public Safety v. Cleapor, 2024 WL 4538995, at *2 (Ga.App., 2024)
Here, on this record, we are compelled to conclude that Cleapor failed to comply with the ante litem requirements and that his complaint against DPS is therefore due to be dismissed. Cleapor’s May 11, 2022 ante litem notice on the DOT and DOAS is ineffective because it did not state “to the extent of the claimant’s knowledge and belief and as may be practicable under the circumstances, … [t]he name of the state government entity, the acts or omissions of which are asserted as the basis of the claim” as required by OCGA § 50-21-26 (a) (5). It is certainly the case that Cleapor’s ante litem notice asserted the name of a state government entity that was allegedly responsible, namely DOT. However, when Cleapor sent the ante litem notice, he had concrete evidence and belief through the crash report and through the subsequent negotiations with DOAS on his claim and Young’s claim that the responsible entity was DPS, not DOT, and DOT was listed on the ante litem notice only due to an admitted clerical mistake, not through a reasonable mistake based on imperfect information. Given that the record is clear that Cleapor was aware which agency was actually responsible for the accident, we cannot say that he acted “to the extent of his knowledge and belief” when he listed the wrong agency as responsible on his notice.
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Furthermore, we have repeatedly held that “the Department’s knowledge of [an] injury and ensuing investigation [does] not obviate the [plaintiff’s] clear statutory burden to establish a waiver of immunity by complying with the GTCA’s ante litem notice requirement.”
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Finally, we note that none of the remaining correspondence in the record meets the requirements to constitute a compliant ante litem notice.
