Court Opinion

ID: 9586405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:10:07.250928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:01.616083
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
The trial court granted summary judgment for Mansour on the basis that he had merely related the facts as he knew them, and that the decision to prosecute was left entirely to the discretion of the legal authorities. Melton v. LaCalamito, 158 Ga. App. 820 (282 SE2d 393) (1981). Generally, a party is so insulated from liability in an action for malicious prosecution, “ ‘but, if it is found that his persuasion was the determining factor in inducing the officer’s decision, or that he gave information which he knew to be false and so unduly influenced the authorities, he may be held liable.’ ” Melton v. LaCalamito, supra at 822; El-Amin v. Trust Co. Bank, 171 Ga. App. 35, 38 (318 SE2d 655) (1984). (Emphasis supplied.)
One of the emphasized factual predicates for this court’s holding in Al-Amin v. Trust Co. Bank, supra, was that there was no evidence that the defendants knew that the information they related to the police was false. In the instant case, however, the precise basis of Rice’s complaint against Mansour was that Mansour had falsely represented to the legal authorities what had transpired between Man-sour, Rice, and Upton. The evidence produced by Rice in opposition to Mansour’s motion for summary judgment established a factual conflict concerning the agreement between the three parties, with regard both to who was to perform certain work on the project and to what the exact compensation would be: according to Rice and Upton, Mansour understood that Rice was to perform the preparatory engineering (and that Rice did so), and that Mansour was aware of the specific unit rate that would be due Rice; according to Mansour, he did not know whether Rice had done any work on the property, and was unaware of the basis for which Rice (and Upton on his behalf) sought payment.
The majority opinion apparently ignores either this evidence or the inferences that may be drawn from it. It strikes me that from this evidence a jury certainly could accept Rice’s account of the events and find that Mansour had misrepresented the facts in his account given to the investigating authorities. Because genuine and material factual issues thus existed over the accuracy of the information related to the authorities by Mansour, as well as over Mansour’s good faith in doing so, summary judgment for Mansour was inappropriate.
Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent. I am authorized to state that Judge Carley joins in this dissent.
*620Joseph E. Cheeley III, for appellee.