An eye-popping $280 million Muscogee County jury verdict for a woman killed in a tractor-trailer wreck was the largest so far this year in a string of Georgia jury awards in the tens and even hundreds of millions in catastrophic injury and death trials.

Defense lawyers say the number and size of these multimillion-dollar verdicts have sharply increased in Georgia, because of a changed jury climate, and they’re having a profound effect on settlement negotiations.