Court Opinion

ID: 9585044
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:55:27.523319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:26:56.069236
License: Public Domain

SMITH, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur fully in the majority opinion; I write separately only to support the majority’s holding in Division 2 that provisions of the Civil Practice Act must be incorporated expressly into the workers’ compensation code in order to have mandatory application.
OCGA § 34-9-102 (d) (1) provides specifically that the Civil Practice Act discovery provisions will be applied in workers’ compensation cases. The venerable maxim “expressio unius est, exclusio alterius” therefore requires that other provisions of the Civil Practice Act apply only if expressly incorporated into the workers’ compensation law. This is consistent with the view that the Board is not a “court” as such, and thus the Act does not necessarily apply. See Rocor Intl. v. Guyton, 229 Ga. App. 758, 761 (2) (494 SE2d 571) (1997), physical precedent only but quoting a Georgia Supreme Court case, Gravitt v. Ga. Cas. Co., 158 Ga. 613, 618 (1) (123 SE 897) (1924):
In a proceeding for workers’ compensation benefits, neither the ALJ nor the Appellate Division acts as “a court of general jurisdiction, nor even of limited common-law jurisdiction, but [each] is an industrial commission made so by express terms of the act of the legislature to administer [the] provisions [of the Georgia Workers’ Compensation Act, OCGA § 34-9-1 et seq.].” [Cit.]
While we have held in some cases that provisions of the Civil Practice Act may apply even in the absence of a statutory mandate *682when “common sense and equity require the relationship, [cit.]” Wade v. Harris, 210 Ga. App. 882, 884-885 (1) (437 SE2d 863) (1993), citing Griggs v. All-Steel Bldgs., 201 Ga. App. Ill (410 SE2d 309) (1991), that principle is not applicable here. Wade, while acknowledging the principle in theory, in fact refused to apply the default provisions of OCGA § 9-11-55 to the enforcement of a workers’ compensation award in the superior court. 210 Ga. App. at 885 (1). And Griggs applied OCGA § 9-11-60, governing a motion to set aside, to an award that had already been reduced to a superior court judgment. 201 Ga. App. at 113-114 (2). In other words, “[t]he introduction of the matter into the judicial system so that the award can be made a judgment and enforced as such may require that it be governed to some procedural extent by the Civil Practice Act.” Wade, supra, 210 Ga. App. at 884. That is not the situation here, because McLendon has attempted to apply Civil Practice Act provisions to the inception of a claim before the Board.
Decided July 10, 2008.
Fink, Cohen & Snyder, John A. Snyder, for appellant.
Edwin G. Russell, Jr., for appellees.
Todd K. Maziar, amicus curiae.