NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and official text of the opinion.
In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: June 24, 2025
S25G0995. FLEUREME v. CITY OF ATLANTA, et al.
PINSON, Justice.
Before bringing a tort claim against a city for damages, a per-
son has to give the city notice of the claim. The statute requiring
that notice, OCGA § 36-33-5, says that it must be served on “the
mayor or the chairperson of the city council or city commission . . .
by delivering the claim to such official personally or by certified mail
or statutory overnight delivery.” Id. § 36-33-5 (f). This case requires
us to decide whether that service requirement may be satisfied by a
notice that was mailed by statutory overnight delivery, addressed to
the “Office of the Mayor” at the correct address for that office. For
the reasons set out below, we hold that such a notice may satisfy the
service requirement. So the judgment of the Court of Appeals, which
rested on the contrary view, is reversed. 1. Roodson Fleureme alleges in this case that he was injured
when he was struck by a City of Atlanta vehicle driven by an em-
ployee of the City. Before bringing a lawsuit, Fleureme sent several
timely ante litem notices by Federal Express. One of those notices
was mailed in an envelope addressed to “City of Atlanta Office of the
Mayor” at the correct address of Atlanta City Hall. Inside the enve-
lope was the notice itself: a letter addressed to “City of Atlanta, Of-
fice of the Mayor,” beginning with the salutation “To Whom it May
Concern.”
A few months later, Fleureme sued the City for negligence. The
City moved to dismiss, arguing, among other things, that Fleureme’s
ante litem notice to the mayor did not comply with OCGA § 36-33-5
(f). The trial court granted the motion to dismiss.1 The court agreed
with the City that OCGA § 36-33-5 (f) requires that an ante litem
notice to a city mayor be served on the mayor individually and by
1 Fleureme’s complaint also named as a defendant the driver who alleg-
edly struck Fleureme. The driver moved to dismiss on the ground that he was entitled to official immunity. Fleureme agreed with that argument, and the trial court dismissed the claims against the driver without discussion. That dismissal order is not part of this appeal. 2 name, and that Fleureme’s notice addressed to the “Office of the
Mayor” did not do that.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court under the same
reasoning. See Fleureme v. City of Atlanta, 371 Ga. App. 416 (900
SE2d 625) (2024). The Court of Appeals started from the premise
that a plaintiff “must strictly comply” with the service requirement
of OCGA § 36-33-5 (f), in part because the statute uses the word
“shall,” which the court said was a “mandatory command.” See id. at
417. The court concluded that Fleureme’s service on the “Office of
the Mayor” fell short. “Strict compliance” with the service require-
ment, the court reasoned, meant that “the mayor — not the mayor’s
office” had to be “served with the mailing.” Id. at 423 (2) (b). In the
court’s view, that meant that the notice and the envelope containing
it “must actually be addressed to” the person being served. Id. at 419
(1). See also id. at 424 (2) (b). Fleureme’s notices were not, so the
Court of Appeals affirmed the order dismissing Fleureme’s com-
plaint.
3 We granted review to determine whether the statutory require-
ment to serve an ante litem notice on “the mayor” may be satisfied
by mailing to the correct mailing address a notice that is addressed
to the “Office of the Mayor.”
2. (a) This is a question of statutory construction, so we should
start with some basic principles. We interpret legal text according
to its original public meaning: the meaning that the public would
have understood that language to carry at the time it was enacted.
See Seals v. State, 311 Ga. 739, 740 (1) (860 SE2d 419) (2021) (citing
Olevik v. State, 302 Ga. 228, 235 (2) (c) (i) (806 SE2d 505) (2017)). To
figure out the meaning of language in a statute, we read the text “in
its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the
English language would.” State v. Islam, 321 Ga. 30, 32 (912 SE2d
632) (2025) (citation omitted). In doing so, we always consider con-
text, which is the “primary determinant of a text’s meaning.” City of
Guyton v. Barrow, 305 Ga. 799, 805 (3) (828 SE2d 366) (2019). Rele-
vant context may include the language around the text we are inter-
preting, other provisions of the same statute, that statute’s broader
4 structure and history, and any other law that made up the legal
background of the statutory provision in question when it was en-
acted. See id.
The legal text at issue here is the service requirement of Geor-
gia’s municipal ante litem notice statute, OCGA § 36-33-5, which
says that “[a] claim submitted under this Code section shall be
served upon the mayor or the chairperson of the city council or city
commission, as the case may be, by delivering the claim to such offi-
cial personally or by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery.”
Id. § 36-33-5 (f). And the question is whether this requirement may
be satisfied by mailing a notice to the address of the mayor’s office,
addressed to the “Office of the Mayor,” rather than to the mayor by
name. As always, we start with the relevant language, but that lan-
guage on its own does not get us very far towards an answer to this
question. The question turns on what it means to serve “the mayor”
by “delivering” the claim to “such official,” a requirement that could
plausibly be read in isolation to require either putting the notice of
the claim directly into the hands of the person who serves as the
5 mayor (the City’s position), or just to get the notice to the mayor’s
address. So we must turn to the relevant context of this language to
figure out its meaning. We will not bury the lede: the context rele-
vant to this service requirement make clear enough that a notice
addressed to the “Office of the Mayor” at the correct mailing address
may satisfy the statute’s service requirement.
Start with the municipal ante litem notice statute as a whole.
The text of this statute shows that it seeks to ensure that the “gov-
erning authority” of a municipality knows about a potential tort
claim and has a chance to settle it before a lawsuit is filed. Cf. Cum-
mings v. Georgia Dept. of Juvenile Justice, 282 Ga. 822, 824 (653
SE2d 729) (2007) (addressing the Georgia Tort Claims Act’s ante li-
tem notice requirement and explaining that its “purpose . . . is to
ensure that the state receives adequate notice of the claim to facili-
tate settlement before the filing of a lawsuit”) (cleaned up). Subsec-
tion (b) of the statute requires that any person with a potential claim
must “present the claim in writing to the governing authority of the
municipal corporation” within six months of the event giving rise to
6 the claim, and it precludes courts from even “entertain[ing]” an ac-
tion about that claim until it “has first been presented to the govern-
ing authority for adjustment.” OCGA § 36-33-5 (b) (emphasis added).
Subsection (c) then imposes a corresponding duty on the “governing
authority” to “consider and act upon the claim within 30 days.” Id.
§ 36-33-5 (c).
Subsection (f), the service requirement, must be read in light
of this focus on giving the “governing authority” notice of a claim and
a chance to resolve it. Read in that way, the service requirement can
only reasonably be understood as a requirement that specifies how
to get notice to the governing authority. And given that understand-
ing, mailing a notice to the office where “the mayor” (or “the chair-
person of the city council or city commission,” for that matter) works,
addressed to the formal title of the official’s office, is a reasonable
way to “deliver[ ]” the claim to the relevant official. After all, these
officials represent and act on behalf of a municipality’s “governing
authorities” only through the offices they hold, not as individuals.
And when the statute directs service to the mayor or the city council
7 chair, it refers to them as “such official[s],” not as “such individuals”
or “such persons.” That makes sense: any plaintiff filing a lawsuit
generally has to serve and notify the defendant, see OCGA § 9-11-4,
so if the defendant is a city, it stands to reason that the service re-
quirement is met if the delivery of the notice is calculated to get to
an official standing in the shoes of that city.2 And although a notice
addressed to that official by name would do the trick, so would a
notice addressed to the formal office of that official and delivered to
the office where that official works.
This broader understanding of what steps may satisfy the ser-
vice requirement is consistent with the history of the municipal ante
litem notice statute. Before that requirement was added to OCGA
§ 36-33-5 in 2014, see Ga. L. 2014, pp. 125-126, Act 487, § 1, the
statute did not specify any particular people or entities to be served,
which led to repeated litigation about whether getting the notice to
2 Along the same lines, it was well understood when subsection (f) was
enacted in 2014 that a suit against a government “official” in his official capac- ity is really a suit against the entity — or “governing authority” — that the official serves. See, e.g., Cameron v. Lang, 274 Ga. 122, 126 (3) (549 SE2d 341) (2001). 8 particular officials or offices was sufficient to “present the claim in
writing to the governing authority,” OCGA § 36-33-5. See City of Al-
bany v. GA HY Imports, LLC, 348 Ga. App. 885, 889 (1) (825 SE2d
385) (2019). Adding subsection (f) resolved that ambiguity by speci-
fying which “officials” — “the mayor or the chairperson of the city
council or city commission, as the case may be” — to serve. But when
that provision was added, the overarching requirement to “present
the claim in writing to the governing authority” remained, thus
making clear that the service requirement is a clarification of how
to apprise the governing authority of the claim, not a new require-
ment to address the notice to the particular officials by name.
The City tries to support its narrow reading of the statute —
under which the service required can be satisfied only by getting the
notice into the hands of the mayor himself — by emphasizing the
word “personally.” See OCGA § 36-33-5 (f) (service requirement is
met “by delivering the claim to such official personally or by certified
mail or statutory overnight delivery”). The City contends the phrase
“to such official personally” establishes that the notice must be
9 handed to the individual person who holds the office.
But when we interpret statutes, we apply ordinary principles
of grammar, see Walton Elec. Membership Corp. v. Georgia Power
Co., 320 Ga. 740, 747 (2) (911 SE2d 559) (2025), and that reading
does not follow those principles. To see why, consider the word “or”
that comes after the “personally.” Under the City’s reading, that “or”
creates a disconnect between the first and second clauses of the stat-
ute. The first clause — “by delivering the claim to such official per-
sonally” — presents the complete thought that service must be made
on an individual person. But then the next clause — “or by certified
mail or statutory overnight delivery” — begins with the word “or,”
and goes on to describe two methods of service. That doesn’t work:
what comes after the “or” does not follow from what comes before it.
Not only that, but under this reading, the statute would not require
service on “such official” at all if the plaintiff chooses one of the other
two methods of service. Instead, it would allow the plaintiff to satisfy
the service requirement either by (1) delivering the claim “to such
10 official personally” or (2) mailing the claim to some unspecified per-
son or office, which would defeat the statutory purpose of making
sure that the “governing authority” is aware of the pending claim.
By contrast, reading the word “personally” as simply indicating
a third permissible method of service gives grammatical meaning to
the entire subsection. Under that reading, the first clause requires
that the claim be delivered “to such official,” and the second requires
that the delivery be made either “personally” (meaning in-person de-
livery), by certified mail, or by statutory overnight delivery. To put
it visually, the sentence breaks like this: “. . . by delivering the claim
to such official // personally or by certified mail or statutory over-
night delivery,” and not, as the city argues, like this: “ . . . by deliv-
ering the claim to such official personally // or by certified mail or
statutory overnight delivery.” The former reading gives meaning to
all the words in the statute, and results in no orphaned conjunctions,
dangling clauses, or awkward changes in tense. In other words, it
takes the statutory text “in its most natural and reasonable way, as
an ordinary speaker of the English language would.” See Islam, 321
11 Ga. at 32. And it is consistent with the understanding that it is the
“governing authority” that must be presented with the notice. After
all, a plaintiff can personally deliver a notice to the office of the
mayor, just as he can send the notice by certified mail or statutory
overnight delivery addressed to the office of the mayor. He can serve
the mayor in those ways too, of course, but the word “personally”
doesn’t mean that he must.3
It would make little sense to require plaintiffs to get the ante
litem notice into the hands of the mayor himself given that the stat-
ute requires plaintiffs to serve the notice by “delivering” it to the
relevant official. In this context, to “deliver” something means to
give or transfer possession of it. See Georgia Ports Auth. v. Harris,
274 Ga. 146, 149-150 (2) (549 SE2d 95) (2001) (ante litem notice was
3 This reading of the word “personally” finds further support from its use
in another statute: the Georgia Tort Claims Act, which addresses tort claims against the State, provides that the required ante litem notice “shall be mailed by certified mail or statutory overnight delivery, return receipt requested, or delivered personally” — an unambiguous reference to personal service as one of three permissible methods of service. See OCGA § 50-21-26 (a) (2); Pandora Franchising, LLC v. Kingdom Retail Grp., LLLP, 299 Ga. 723, 727 (1) (a) (791 SE2d 786) (2016) (noting that we can look to other statutes to determine the meaning of a statute). 12 delivered when it was stamped as received by the department to
which it was addressed); “Delivery,” American Heritage Dictionary
(4th ed. 2000) (“The act of transferring to another.”). And it is the
plaintiff’s burden to show that this delivery happened, such that the
service requirement is met. See Stambaugh v. City of Demorest, 221
Ga. 527, 528 (2) (145 SE2d 539) (1965) (plaintiff’s petition for dam-
ages against municipality was subject to special demurrer because
plaintiff “failed to show that the plaintiff, prior to the institution of
this litigation, presented her claim for damages to the city as re-
quired by” the ante litem notice statute). If the statute required get-
ting the notice into the hands of the mayor himself, it is hard to see
how a plaintiff could ever make sure that this delivery requirement
was met. Even if the notice were addressed to the mayor by name —
which the City says is required — how could the plaintiff verify and
prove that it was received by the mayor himself, rather than his
staff? On the other hand, it would be straightforward to show com-
pliance with a requirement that is met by delivery to the office of the
mayor: the plaintiff could simply walk into city hall and deliver the
13 notice to the front desk of the mayor’s office, or he could mail it to
the office of the mayor at the correct address by any of the permitted
statutory methods. Cf. Norris v. Georgia Dept. of Transp., 268 Ga.
192, 193 (486 SE2d 826) (1997) (plaintiff can show compliance with
ante litem notice requirement of Georgia Tort Claims Act by show-
ing he mailed the notice by a statutorily permitted method; he need
not show it was actually received). The general illogic of the City’s
artificially narrow view of the service requirement is further reason
to reject it.
The construction of the service requirement we arrive at in this
case is a good example of our focus on the “plain and ordinary” mean-
ing of legal text rather than its literal or hyper-technical meaning.
Deal v. Coleman, 294 Ga. 170, 172 (1) (a) (751 SE2d 337) (2013). See
also Niz-Chavez v. Garland, 593 U.S. 155, 168-169 (II) (B) (141 SCt
1474, 209 LE2d 433) (2021) (“[W]hen interpreting this or any stat-
ute, we do not aim for ‘literal’ interpretations. . . . We simply seek
the law’s ordinary meaning.”). The City’s position is that “the mayor”
14 can mean only the person who is serving as mayor, so the notice un-
der this statute must be addressed to that person. The logical con-
clusion of that position, which the City acknowledged at oral argu-
ment, is that any notice under this statute must be put directly into
the hands of that person himself, whether by hand delivery or mail
that makes its way into his hands. That is perhaps a reasonable ar-
gument about the literal meaning of “the mayor,” but as an argu-
ment about ordinary meaning, it is a hard sell. Indeed, it would have
seemed very odd to a member of the public in 2014 (when subsection
(f) was enacted) to require a plaintiff to deliver a notice of a lawsuit
into the hands of the mayor himself, rather than mailing or deliver-
ing it to his office, particularly when the mayor works in an office
large enough to serve millions of Georgia residents (e.g., the City of
Atlanta). The ordinary meaning of this language is broad enough
that the service requirement may be satisfied by addressing a notice
to the Office of the Mayor and mailing it to the correct address of
that office.
In short, the relevant contextual clues about the meaning of
15 OCGA § 36-33-5 (f) point to the same answer. A plaintiff suing a
municipality may satisfy the service requirement for the ante litem
notice by mailing the notice to the address where the mayor works
and addressing it to the “Office of the Mayor.” The plaintiff does not
have to make sure that the notice gets into the hands of the mayor
personally, whether by addressing it specifically to the mayor by
name or otherwise.
(b) The Court of Appeals’ contrary view — that the notice “must
actually be addressed to” the mayor or chairperson individually to
meet subsection (f)’s service requirement — appears to be driven
mostly by Court of Appeals precedent holding that a claimant must
“strictly comply” with subsection (f)’s service requirement. See
Fleureme, 371 Ga. App. at 421-423 (1)-(2) (citing GA HY Imports,
348 Ga. App. at 891 (1)). We take this opportunity to address that
precedent.
As an initial matter, we doubt seriously that “strict compli-
ance” with subsection (f) is required, as GA HY Imports held. That
idea appears nowhere in the statute itself. And precedent of this
16 Court reaching back more than a century has held that “substantial
compliance with the [municipal ante litem notice] statute is all that
is required.” Owens v. City of Greenville, 290 Ga. 557, 561 (4) (722
SE2d 755) (2012) (emphasis added) (quoting Atlanta Taxicab Co.
Owners Assn. v. City of Atlanta, 281 Ga. 342, 352 (5) (638 SE2d 307)
(2006)). See also, e.g., City of Arlington v. Smith, 238 Ga. 50 (2) (230
SE2d 863) (1976); Aldred v. City of Summerville, 215 Ga. 651, 653
(113 SE2d 108) (1960); Langley v. City Council of Augusta, 118 Ga.
590, 600-601 (11) (45 SE 486) (1903). Although subsection (f)’s ser-
vice requirement was added to the statute in 2014, it is hard to see
why that provision would warrant different treatment from the rest
of the statute. GA HY Imports reasoned that “[i]f substantial com-
pliance with subsection (f) was all that is required (i.e., service of
notice on other individuals or entities associated with the municipal
corporation other than those specified in subsection (f) would be suf-
ficient), then there was no purpose in enacting subsection (f), at least
not with the use of the directive ‘shall,’ which is a mandatory com-
mand.” GA HY Imports, 348 Ga. App. at 891 (1). But the premise of
17 this reasoning — that requiring only substantial compliance would
mean that a claimant would not actually have to serve the mayor or
chairperson as subsection (f) expressly required — is mistaken. Sub-
stantial compliance means that “absolute exactness need not be
had,” but it still requires “substantive[ ]” compliance with the stat-
ute. See Owens, 290 Ga. at 561-562 (4) (citation and punctuation
omitted). A notice that is not even calculated to be “deliver[ed]” to
the office of the officials expressly specified in subsection (f) would
not substantially comply with its service requirement. And that
leaves GA HY Imports without any basis for its holding that “strict
compliance with OCGA § 36-33-5 (f) is required.” 348 Ga. App. at
891 (1).
But even assuming that holding is correct, it does not follow
that mailing a notice to the address where the mayor works, ad-
dressed to the “Office of the Mayor,” cannot satisfy the service re-
quirement. The concept of “strict compliance” has to do with how
precisely a claimant’s notice must conform to the statutory require-
18 ments. As we have applied the concept to the similar ante litem pro-
vision of the Georgia Tort Claims Act, we have said it means that
the notice simply must “compl[y] with the plain language of the ante
litem notice provisions.” Cummings, 282 Ga. at 827. (This is in con-
trast to substantial compliance, which requires the notice to be “sub-
stantively sufficient,” Atlanta Taxicab Co. Owners Assn., 281 Ga. at
352 (5).) “Strict compliance” has nothing to say, however, about how
to interpret the statute in the first instance. We have rejected before
the notion that “strict compliance” demands a “hyper-technical con-
struction that would not measurably advance the purpose” of the
ante litem notice provisions. Cummings, 282 Ga. at 824. See also
Board of Regents of Univ. Sys. of Ga. v. Myers, 295 Ga. 843, 846 (764
SE2d 543) (2014) (“Nor does strict compliance take precedence over
the plain language or meaning of the statute.”) (cleaned up). Instead,
the requirements of the municipal ante litem notice statute, includ-
ing the service requirement, must be construed like any other stat-
ute: according to its plain and ordinary meaning, taking into account
the relevant context and rules of statutory construction. See, e.g.,
19 Deal, 294 Ga. at 172 (1) (a); Islam, 321 Ga. at 32; State v. Harris,
319 Ga. 665, 667 (906 SE2d 402) (2024). The concept of “strict com-
pliance” does not warrant any deviation from that well-settled ap-
proach to statutory construction. To the extent that decisions of the
Court of Appeals suggest otherwise — by concluding that a statute
that requires “strict compliance” must be interpreted in a hyper-
technical way — they are disapproved.
*
For the reasons set out above, mailing the notice required by
OCGA § 36-33-5 by statutory overnight delivery, addressed to the
“Office of the Mayor” at the correct address, satisfies that statute’s
service requirement. This means that, contrary to the decision be-
low, Fleureme’s notice in this case satisfied that requirement.
Judgment reversed and case remanded. Peterson, CJ, Warren, PJ, and Bethel, Ellington, McMillian, LaGrua, and Colvin, JJ, concur.