Court Opinion

ID: 9765997
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:28:22.335004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:18.232236
License: Public Domain

ANDREWS, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
In order to free this plaintiff from the burden of paying L. E’s fees after the jury’s verdict in its favor, the majority misreads the Supreme Court of Georgia’s decision in Fowler Properties and misapplies a familiar rule concerning the accrual of “substantive” rights. Although it has not faced the question directly, our Supreme Court has strongly suggested that the fee recovery statute should be applied to a claim brought after the statute’s effective date. I therefore dissent.
As the majority correctly points out, our Supreme Court has held that
OCGA § 9-11-68 (b) (1) does not merely prescribe the methods of enforcing rights and obligations, but rather affects the rights of parties by imposing an additional duty and obligation to pay an opposing party’s attorney fees when a final judgment does not meet a certain amount or is one of no liability. By creating this new obligation, the statute operates as a substantive law.
Fowler Properties v. Dowland, 282 Ga. 76, 78 (1) (646 SE2d 197) (2007). It is no less true that we have often held in other contexts that a “substantive” right accrues “at the time of the injury or event on which liability depends.” See Glover v. Colbert, 210 Ga. App. 666, 669 (437 SE2d 363) (1993), and the cases cited therein and at the conclusion of the majority opinion.
The majority’s mistake is to take these holdings at face value *160without understanding the distinguishing features of a defendant’s claim for fees under OCGA § 9-11-68. Just as a defendant’s liability for a claim accrues at the time of a plaintiffs injury, a plaintiff’s liability for fees (after the rejection of a settlement offer) should be held to accrue at the time a defendant is first made obligated to expend fees concerning the legal claim against him — that is, when the plaintiff files her suit. The Supreme Court itself has emphasized the primacy of this date when it pointed out in Fowler that “[w]hen Dowland instituted her tort action . . . , the possibility that she may be responsible for paying the opposing party’s attorney fees and expenses of litigation by rejecting an offer of settlement did not exist because OCGA § 9-11-68 did not take effect until more than three years later.” (Emphasis supplied.) Id. at 78. The Supreme Court also went on to say that imposing liability for fees would create an impermissibly retroactive effect only in “pending cases like this one.” (Emphasis supplied.) Id.
Decided September 17, 2010
Freeman, Mathis & Gary, Philip W. Savrin, for appellant.
Savage, Turner, Pinson & Karsman, Ashleigh R. Madison, for appellees.
The only sensible construction of Fowler is that OCGA § 9-11-68 does not have an impermissibly retroactive effect on cases brought after the statute’s effective date. This is so because a defendant’s fee expenditures can begin only when a plaintiff brings her claim, thus commencing a “new obligation” and creating a “substantive” and enforceable right in that defendant. Fowler, 282 Ga. at 78. The majority cites no cases, and I am aware of none, negating these obvious inferences from binding Supreme Court precedent. I therefore dissent.