Dunwoody Park Hazards: Liability Risks for 2026

For Dunwoody resident Sarah Chen, it was just a regular trail run in Brook Run Park until it wasn’t. One moment she was on the familiar path, the next her foot snagged an exposed tree root bulging through the asphalt and she was down hard. The impact sent a sharp, immediate pain through her twisted ankle and scraped her knee raw on the pavement. Frustration quickly followed. Who’s supposed to be maintaining these trails, and who’s on the hook when a hazard like this in a Dunwoody park causes an injury?

Her ankle was screaming, but as Sarah sat on the trail, another thought started to form. She was pretty sure she’d seen that root before, and it seemed to have gotten worse over time. This wasn’t some sudden event you couldn’t see coming. This was a hazard that had been developing for a while, just waiting to trip someone. The path is part of the huge Dunwoody trail system, and she knew it was packed daily with runners, walkers, and even families with small kids. The idea of a child taking a fall on that same root bothered her even more than her own throbbing ankle.

Sarah’s situation immediately runs up against a major legal hurdle: Georgia’s Recreational Property Act. This law, codified at O.C.G.A. Section 51-3-20 et seq., gives a lot of immunity to landowners who let the public use their property for free. The whole idea is to encourage cities and private owners to open up land for things like hiking or fishing without living in fear of constant lawsuits. As the owner of Brook Run Park, the city of Dunwoody gets the full benefit of this protection.

The Act basically says that when an owner opens up their land for public recreation at no charge, they are not promising that the property is safe for any particular use. It also means that a person using the land doesn’t have the legal status of a paying guest to whom a high duty of care is owed. Most importantly, the owner doesn’t automatically assume responsibility for injuries caused by their own acts or omissions. This puts the bar for proving the city is liable much higher than it would be against a private business owner, like a grocery store.

I’ve seen this countless times in my own practice, and that distinction between public and private property often decides the entire case. For Sarah, this means showing the root was a hazard is nowhere near enough. She has to prove something much more serious. The law requires her to show evidence of gross negligence or a willful and malicious failure to guard or warn against a dangerous condition. This is an incredibly difficult standard to meet. Gross negligence isn’t just a slip-up. It’s an extreme deviation from ordinary care. Willful and malicious failure is even worse, suggesting they knew about a serious danger and just didn’t care about the consequences.

After a trip to Northside Hospital Dunwoody confirmed she had a severe sprain, Sarah felt she couldn’t just let it go, seeing it as a public safety problem. Her first call was to the City of Dunwoody Parks and Recreation Department. They sent her to an online incident report form, which she filled out with every detail: date, time, exact location, and how she fell. She also attached the clear photos of the root she had taken with her phone. This was a smart move. Documentation is the foundation of these cases. Without it, the city can just claim it had no idea the hazard existed.

A few weeks later, a letter arrived from the city’s risk management department. It was polite but firm, denying liability and pointing directly to the Recreational Property Act. This is the standard first response you expect to get. They said the city inspects its parks but can’t possibly guarantee the safety of every inch of its trails, and that park users assume some level of risk.

This is where most people’s stories would end. They see that legal wall and they just give up. But Sarah remembered seeing a city crew doing some work on the trail a few months earlier, not far from her fall. She couldn’t help but wonder if they’d been aware of the root or if it was just overlooked. Her next step was to find a lawyer, which is really the only way to push back against these kinds of denials. A personal injury attorney who has experience with governmental liability cases knows the ins and outs of the Recreational Property Act and the very specific, limited ways to get around its immunity.

In any case against a Georgia city or county, the whole thing often comes down to “notice.” Did the city know about the hazard? Or, based on the circumstances, *should* it have known? Sarah’s memory of seeing the root before and her feeling that it had worsened could be a key piece of the puzzle. If she could prove the city had actual notice of that specific hazard and failed to fix it, or if the hazard was so obvious for so long that the city should have found it during a reasonable inspection (what we call constructive notice), her case would start to look much stronger. Even with proof of notice, though, she would still have to meet that high standard of gross negligence or willful conduct.

In a situation like this, my firm’s first move is to send a formal request to the City of Dunwoody for all maintenance logs, inspection reports, and any prior complaints filed about that specific part of the trail. We’d also dig into whether other accidents had happened in that same spot. Sometimes you find a pattern of falls that shows the city knew it had a dangerous condition on its hands but failed to do anything about it. We might also bring in a park maintenance or civil engineering expert to give an opinion on whether the trail’s condition was a major departure from accepted safety practices.

For instance, if the city’s own internal policy required quarterly inspections for that trail and the records showed it hadn’t been inspected for 18 months, that starts to look like a serious lapse. It’s not automatic proof of gross negligence, but it helps build a case that their conduct fell far short of what was reasonable. The burden of proof is always on the injured person to show this higher level of fault. The Georgia Court of Appeals confirmed this in Welch v. Douglas County, a case where the court said the Recreational Property Act shields landowners from simple negligence. The behavior has to be substantially worse to create liability.

During the discovery phase, Sarah’s attorney found that the City of Dunwoody had in fact received several complaints about exposed roots in that general area of Brook Run Park in the last year. While none of them pointed to the exact root that tripped Sarah, it established a pattern of a known problem. On top of that, the last documented inspection of that trail segment was almost two years old, far longer than the department’s own guidelines for high-traffic paths. This evidence wasn’t a slam dunk, but it started to poke holes in the city’s immunity defense. The argument was now that ignoring their own inspection rules for a recurring hazard in a popular park could be seen as gross negligence.

In the end, Sarah’s case didn’t go to trial. After a lot of negotiation and a formal presentation of the evidence, the missed inspections and prior complaints, the City of Dunwoody made a settlement offer. It wasn’t a huge amount, but it was enough to cover her medical bills, the wages she lost from being out of work, and some amount for her pain. The city didn’t admit liability (they almost never do), but it clearly saw the risk that a jury could find its actions met the gross negligence standard, especially with the documented complaints and their own lapsed inspection schedule. The outcome proves a valuable point: government immunity is a tough defense, but it isn’t unbeatable if you have the facts and a solid legal strategy.

Anyone using Dunwoody parks or other public recreational areas needs to know that you’re partly responsible for your own safety. But if you’re injured by a hazard that seems to be the result of long-term neglect, don’t just assume you have no options. Document everything, file an official report, and get legal advice. The fight for accountability against a well-protected government entity can be won, and doing so can make things safer for everyone else.

Working through government liability claims in Georgia requires a deep knowledge of state laws and how the courts have interpreted them. Whether a case involving trail hazards in a public park succeeds or fails almost always comes down to good evidence and the right legal approach. Always be safe, but also know your rights if an accident happens.