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Publication Date

5-7-2026

Document Type

Comment

Abstract

Imagine a child’s shape sorter toy—the kind with square, circle, and triangle-shaped holes and equivalent pegs in the same shapes. The toy forms a foundation in a child’s development because, among other things, it teaches the child to problem-solve by (1) recognizing the problem (different-shaped pegs that must go in the sorter a certain way) and (2) solving it (placing each peg in the correct hole to sort the pegs). For simplicity’s sake, let us imagine the toy only has a square and circle-shaped hole with square and circle-shaped pegs. As the child intuitively learns the “rules” of the toy, the child learns what works: the square peg must go into the square hole, and the circle peg must go in the circular hole. The child also learns what does not work: the square peg cannot go in the circular hole, and the circular peg cannot go in the square hole.

Now imagine the same toy—only having the square and circle-shaped holes—but it has additional shaped-pegs (triangle, trapezoid, and rectangle) to go with it. Evidently, the toy manufacturer must be trying to confuse the child. “How does a triangle fit into a circle?” the child asks himself. Now the child’s mind is in a tailspin. What he once learned is now discombobulated. Put simply, the toy is now a guessing game.

The Supreme Court of Georgia’s recent holding in Fleureme v. City of Atlanta ("Fleureme II") creates similar headaches for litigants, giving them more “pegs” (potential avenues to serve notice) than “holes” (successful avenues for serving notice). Imagine a claimant in Atlanta, Georgia, is injured and wishes to sue the city for those injuries. The claimant retains counsel who advises the claimant that he must send the requisite ante litem notice to the municipality. The attorney performs research to determine all the statute’s requirements that must be satisfied. He finds Fleureme II, which holds that a claimant’s ante litem notice satisfies the statute’s service requirements if the claimant substantially complies with the statute, meaning absolute precision is not required. The court in Fleureme II determined that an ante litem notice addressed to “Office of the Mayor” substantially complied with the statute.

Counsel writes up the ante litem notice to send to the municipality and addresses the notice to “City Hall” because he believes that doing so substantially complies with the statute. The city never received the notice because the mail handler did not know where to send the notice. The city could not research the incident giving rise to the claimant’s potential claim against the city. And since the claim has not properly been served to the requisite official, the claimant risks losing what may have otherwise been a valid claim, simply because service could not be properly effectuated. This is the primary risk in Fleureme II’s aftermath.

The court in Fleureme II eliminated “hyper-technical” compliance with the statute’s addressing requirements to focus on the merits of claims.4 But in doing so, it gives rise to legitimate procedural concerns in the future that the statute originally curtailed.

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