Naudia Daise says she was attacked for about 10 minutes inside a downtown Atlanta parking garage, beaten with a belt buckle until she was bruised and bloodied, and that nobody came to help her while it happened. Two years later, she says the person responsible for the harm still has not truly been held accountable — because the lawsuit she filed over what happened on state property has been thrown out of court.
Daise was attacked in 2024 inside the Georgia World Congress Center’s Orange Deck parking garage, according to 11Alive. The man accused of attacking her was arrested the same day, the station reports, but Daise says that arrest did little to address the physical and financial toll of the assault. She filed a lawsuit against the Georgia World Congress Center, hoping to recover costs tied to her hospital bills, only to see a court dismiss the case in June 2026 under the legal doctrine of sovereign immunity.
That doctrine generally shields government entities from being sued unless immunity is waived or a lawsuit is otherwise allowed to proceed, per the station’s report. Daise called the dismissal “bogus and wrong,” and told 11Alive she is frustrated that no one came to her aid during the attack and that no one has been held accountable since. As a military veteran, she said the lack of institutional accountability felt especially unjust to her.
Why the Lawsuit Never Had a Chance
The legal obstacle Daise ran into is baked into Georgia law. Under O.C.G.A. § 10-9-2, the Georgia World Congress Center Authority is established as a body corporate and politic and an instrumentality of the State of Georgia, according to Justia Law. That statute does not itself explicitly grant the Authority sovereign immunity. The authority also runs its own law enforcement arm: under O.C.G.A. § 10-9-15(d), the Georgia World Congress Center Authority operates a dedicated Department of Public Safety with state-certified police officers and contracted security patrolling the campus around the clock, per the authority’s own board materials…