The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that a trial judge applied the wrong legal standard in refusing to let the parents of a young woman who died after the car she was riding in crashed during a police chase substitute the Oconee County sheriff as a defendant in a wrongful death suit.

Monday's opinion, which said the trial judge was correct in disallowing the action to proceed against the county itself, also said the state Court of Appeals—which agreed with the plaintiffs that the sheriff should have been substituted—had also missed the mark on interpreting the relevant law.