The Georgia Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed $54 million in verdicts for catastrophic injuries to two women hit by a Ford Edge sport-utility vehicle stolen off an Avis rental lot.

Chief Judge Christopher McFadden wrote two opinions Thursday holding that a company cannot be held liable for the criminal acts of an off-duty employee.

"We hold that Avis is entitled to judgment on all claims," McFadden said, writing for a panel that included Presiding Judge Carla Wong McMillian and Judge Amanda Mercier.

"It is well established that to recover for injuries caused by another's negligence, a plaintiff must show four elements: a duty, a breach of that duty, causation and damages," McFadden said. "An absence of evidence of any one of the elements will entitle a defendant to judgment in its favor."

In this case, the two women sitting on a brick wall on the evening of Aug. 23, 2013, were injured not by the rental car company or its operators but by the man who stole the SUV and then crashed it as police were chasing him, McFadden held. The ruling overturned two verdicts in favor of the women: one for $7 million and the other for $47 million.

"Our decision today must take its place in a line of decisions in which we have dealt with injuries caused by car thieves," McFadden said. "And in every one of those decisions, we have held that the car thief's acts were the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injuries."

The panel held that Gwinnett County State Court Judge Joseph Iannazzone was wrong to deny the defense motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdicts. McFadden also held that the trial judge made mistakes in holding Avis responsible for apportionment of fault against employees and operators. But those verdicts were set aside anyway—as were the plaintiffs' appeals of orders for new trials on liability, which are now moot, according to McFadden.

The ruling offered a broad conclusion regarding the liability of businesses for criminal acts of employees. A key was that the SUV was stolen after hours and that Avis was also a victim of the crime.

"It is undisputed," McFadden said, that the "tortious act did not occur during his working hours."

McFadden noted not only that the theft occurred after closing time but that the crash happened several hours after the theft.

The women—Brianna Johnson, who won the $7 million verdict, and Adrienne Smith, who won $47 million—were represented by Michael Neff and others with his firm, and Michael Terry, a partner at Atlanta's Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore.

Terry said Thursday they will appeal.

"The distress opinion of the Court of Appeals directly contradicts several Georgia Supreme Court cases and substantial case law from other jurisdictions," Terry said by email. "Among other things, it takes the proximate cause issue from the jury and applies a different, outmoded standard of foreseeability to vehicle theft cases than applied in recent cases involving other intervening crimes. These issues should be, and were, resolved by the jury. We will be presenting these issues to the Supreme Court of Georgia in due course."

The winning team included Laurie Webb Daniel of Holland & Knight, chair of the firm's national appellate team and the leader of firm's Atlanta litigation practice group.

"My only substantive comment is what I told the COA at the start of my oral argument," Daniel said Thursday in an email. "To approve the $47 million verdict in the Smith case and the $7 million verdict in the Johnson case, this court would have to overrule binding precedents, old and new. Simply put, Avis is entitled to a JNOV because the essential elements of duty and proximate cause fail."

G. Lee Welborn of Downey & Cleveland in Marietta represented an operator of the downtown Avis location where the SUV was stolen.

"When I called my client Yonas Gebremichael and told him the Court of Appeals just held he was not liable for the criminal acts of his employee who stole the rental car that night, he got very emotional," Welborn said in an email Thursday. "We owe a big debt of gratitude to the Court of Appeals for calmly and dispassionately reviewing these cases and finding that the criminal's intervening acts were the proximate cause of the injuries, not the employer who still had the key to the car safely locked in the office the morning after the wreck."

Welborn said the rulings Thursday offer lessons that travel.

"The most remarkable thing about these two jury trials is how well they demonstrate that a jury verdict is completely dependent on the twelve laypeople sitting in the jury box. These cases were the legal equivalent of a science experiment involving two Petri dishes. We had two young ladies, both horribly injured. One had her leg torn off. The other had her hips shattered and lost fifty inches of intestines. Their cases were tried separately. Identical witnesses. Identical evidence. Identical lawyers making identical arguments. The only difference was the twelve people in the box," Welborn said. "The first jury awarded $47 million, of which over $7 million was apportioned to my clients CSYG and Yonas Gebremichael. The second jury, however, only awarded $7 million, but totally exonerated my clients CSYG and Yonas Gebremichael from any liability at all."

Welborn said he also mediates cases, and he uses these as a cautionary tale when people want to go to trial because they "know a jury will find in our favor."

He said his answer is, "No, you really don't. Let me tell you about the Smith and Johnson cases."

The cases are Avis v. Smith, No. A19A1503, and Avis v. Johnson, No. A19A0928.