Milton will pay $3.33 million from its fund balance to help end a decade-long wrongful death case, after the City Council unanimously approved a $10 million settlement Monday, Aug. 24, with the parents of Joshua Chang.

Chang, a 21-year-old Yale University student and Woodstock High School salutatorian, died Nov. 19, 2016, when his car left Batesville Road and struck a concrete planter roughly six feet off the roadway. He was driving home for Thanksgiving break. His parents, John Chang and Rebecca Zhu, sued the city, alleging the planter was a hazardous obstruction Milton had failed to remove from its right-of-way.

The vote came during a special-called meeting at Milton City Hall, according to Appen Media.

Under the agreement, the city's insurer, the Georgia Interlocal Risk Management Agency, and its reinsurer, NLC Mutual Insurance Co., will cover $6.67 million. Milton is responsible for the remaining $3.33 million, drawn from a fund balance that stood at approximately $17.3 million at the start of the fiscal year against a self-imposed reserve floor of roughly $12 million, according to The Roundabout. The city says the payment will not reduce services, delay capital projects or require a tax increase.

The settlement does not include an admission of fault.

The deal dramatically reduces Milton's financial exposure. As of Aug. 20, the original $32.55 million jury verdict plus roughly $11.54 million in accrued post-judgment interest had pushed the city's potential liability to approximately $44.09 million, according to the city's official Q&A page. Milton has also spent about $90,000 in direct legal fees beyond what its insurer covered.

"When you're faced with a judgment like that and we finally have an opportunity to settle this once and for all … and we can have a manageable outcome that will not affect services or affect taxes, we had to take it," Mayor Peyton Jamison told Appen Media on Aug. 21, ahead of the vote.

The case wound through Georgia courts for years. A Fulton County jury found Milton liable in June 2023, awarding $35 million later reduced to $32.55 million to account for Chang's comparative fault. The Georgia Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in September 2024. More than 60 Georgia cities, including Roswell, Johns Creek and Sandy Springs, supported Milton's appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court.

In March 2026, the Supreme Court reversed the appellate ruling in a 5-2 decision, finding that the state's waiver of sovereign immunity for unsafe streets does not extend to roadside areas like where the planter sat. The court sent the case back to the Court of Appeals on narrower questions, where it remained pending at the time of the settlement.

Mayor Jamison and Councilmember Carol Cookerly took active roles in a July 29 mediation that produced the agreement. Before the 2023 trial, the Chang family had offered to settle seven times for amounts between $1.75 million and $10 million; GIRMA, which alone held settlement authority at the time, rejected every offer.

Since the 2016 crash, Milton has amended its code to require engineering-based safety evaluations of fixed objects in the right-of-way and has issued removal notices for noncompliant structures.

Once all parties sign, they will jointly ask the Court of Appeals to dismiss the case. Payment is due within 14 days of execution.