The family of Cornelius Taylor, the unhoused man fatally struck by a bulldozer during an Old Fourth Ward encampment sweep, is suing the city of Atlanta, alleging that the tent city’s clearance was conducted with reckless abandon.
The wrongful death suit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court by Davis Bozeman Johnson Law on Friday, alleges that poor encampment clearing protocols caused Taylor’s death.
A public works bulldozer ran over Taylor early in the morning on Jan. 16, while he was asleep in a tent on Old Wheat Street. He died at a hospital soon after. His family’s lawsuit claims Taylor died because the clearance was rushed, ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. Day festivities on Jan. 19.
“If someone had just looked inside [the tent] — had taken 10 seconds to do so — this tragedy could have been avoided,” the family’s lawyer, Harold Spence, said at the July 18 press conference.
The lawsuit, which also targets the unidentified Atlanta Public Works employee operating the frontloader and other city staff, seeks unspecified damages for Taylor’s death. But the broader goal is to force local governments from Atlanta and beyond to bolster homeless services and housing programs, the lawyers and family members said.
“This lawsuit is going to challenge the government’s policies, their practices around how they treat the unhoused — not only in the city of Atlanta, but in the state of Georgia and throughout the country,” attorney Mawuli Davis told reporters.
After Taylor’s death, the city convened a 90-day task force to reform its encampment-closure practices. It debuted a slate of policies in June to improve communication with unhoused people and make encampment sweeps safer.
But Taylor’s sister, Darlene Chaney, said those changes only made a broken system slightly safer. The city should instead guarantee stable housing for anyone who would be displaced by decommissioning an encampment.
“They can’t be in tents on the street. We get it,” Chaney said at the press conference. “So let’s get them housing. This is what we’ve been aiming to do as the [Justice for Cornelius Taylor Coalition]. But we can’t do it alone. This is something where we need the city to help.”
A spokesperson for Mayor Andre Dickens called Taylor’s death “a tragedy” but declined to comment on pending litigation.
MORE ABOUT THE SWEET AUBURN TENT CITY & ITS RESIDENTS
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