Roger Steele died in a collision between his vehicle and another vehicle at the intersection of State Route 16 and a county built road in Butts County. Donna Steele, as his surviving spouse and the administratrix of his estate, brought a wrongful death suit against the Georgia Department of Transportation DOT pursuant to the Georgia Tort Claims Act GTCA. She alleged that the DOT’s negligent design of State Route 16 proximately caused the fatal accident. Ms. Steele appeals from the trial court’s order granting the DOT’s motion to dismiss the suit on the basis that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because the DOT was entitled to sovereign immunity from the suit under the GTCA. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court’s dismissal of the suit in part and reverse in part. The DOT, as a department of the State of Georgia, was sued pursuant to the GTCA OCGA § 50-21-20 et seq., which waives the state’s sovereign immunity from suit subject to certain limitations and exceptions. Section 50-21-24 of the GTCA sets forth exceptions to the state’s waiver of sovereign immunity, so to the extent an exception under this code section applied to the claims made against the DOT, the DOT was immune from suit, and the trial lacked subject matter jurisdiction to try the claims. Dept. of Transp. v. Dupree , 256 Ga. App. 668, 670-674 570 SE2d 1 2002. Ms. Steele’s wrongful death suit alleged that the DOT was negligent in various ways, but she conceded in the trial court that exceptions set forth in OCGA § 50-21-24 expressly rendered the DOT immune from suit on all of her claims except the two negligent design claims at issue in this appeal. Accordingly, it is undisputed that the trial court correctly dismissed other claims in the wrongful death suit alleging that the DOT negligently failed to install a flashing beacon or traffic light at the intersection; negligently posted a 55 miles per hour speed limit on Route 16, and negligently allowed placement of a utility pole within the right-of-way for Route 16.
The fatal accident occurred on December 27, 2000 as Mr. Steele was traveling east on State Route 16 on a curve approaching the intersection with the county road. Mr. Steele had the right-of-way through the intersection. Accordingly, there were no signals at the intersection controlling traffic on Route 16, but stop signs controlled vehicles approaching the intersection on the county road. A driver traveling south on the county road stopped at the stop sign, then crossed the intersection as Mr. Steele’s vehicle approached around the curve. The two vehicles collided in the intersection with the southbound vehicle striking the passenger side of Mr. Steele’s vehicle and causing Mr. Steele’s vehicle to go out of control off the southern shoulder of Route 16, where it overturned and struck a utility pole.
