Georgia Supreme Court issues 27 opinions

The Georgia Supreme Court today issued 27 opinions.  The count is: 5 general civil cases (including a major tort reform decision, discussed below), 6 domestic cases, 3 habeas cases, 12 criminal cases (including 8 involving murder and/or life sentences), and 1 attorney discipline case.  The opinions are available here and the summaries are here.

Over the next week we will be catching you up on court of appeals decisions (both 11th Circuit and Georgia), as well as this fresh batch of Georgia Supreme Court decisions.

The headline case from today's releases is the decision in the pair of cases, Fowler Properties, Inc. v. Dowland, and vice versa, holding the new offer of judgment statute, OCGA § 9-11-68, unconstitutional as applied to cases filed prior to the statute's enactment. In this slip-and-fall case originally filed in December 2002, the defendant made an offer of judgment of $20,000 after the statute was enacted -- an offer to which the plaintiff did not respond. When the jury found in the defendant's favor at trial, it moved for attorneys' fees pursuant to the statute, which the trial court found reasonable, but denied on the ground that the statute was unconstitutional (on a variety of grounds).

The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously agreed with the trial court that the statute was unconstitutional as applied to cases filed before the statute's enactment because the statute retrospectively altered vested rights or created new obligations -- to wit, paying the other party's attorneys' fees if the plaintiff rejects the defendant's offer of settlement (and subsequently loses). The court said nothing about the statute's constitutionality as applied to later-filed cases, and declined to address other arguments made regarding its constitutionality. (It also affirmed the trial court judgment over the plaintiff's cross-appeal of the denial of a new trial based on complaints related to the court's instructions to the jury.)