Court Opinion

ID: 9580256
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:03:31.635783+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:10.049405
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While concurring fully with the majority opinion, it is appropriate to make additional comments.
The majority opinion properly notes the authoritative, apt, and ageless adage that “justice delayed is often justice denied.” While seeking to decide cases properly and accurately is the primary goal of our judicial system, it is no less important that it be done promptly and with deliberate speed.
The dissenting opinion also endorses the urging of rendering prompt decisions in child custody cases, and, in fact, suggests that these type cases ought to have priority over others “all along the judicial path.” The dissent goes so far as to charge that a slow judicial system may even be “complicitous in the further harm” to children in custody cases. However, can this court say that child custody cases are more important than (1) criminal cases (where one’s liberty is at stake), (2) workers’ compensation cases (where an injured claimant needs medical or financial assistance to survive), or (3) contempt cases (where one may have to spend time in the jail)? Selective preference of any category of cases would only result in delaying other cases which have been filed first and actually deserve priority.
The simple solution, of course, is to decide all cases whenever possible in the trial and appellate courts properly, promptly, and “with deliberate speed.” This could be accomplished by reduction of the time periods between (a) the date the case is filed, (b) the date the matter is tried or argued, and (c) the date of decision. OCGA § 9-*75811-1 sets forth the standard of a “just, speedy and inexpensive determination.” We cannot improve upon the words of one of Georgia’s most distinguished appellate justices, Logan Bleckley: “In the administration of justice there ought to be correctness, clarity and cheapness . . . Progress is the realization, in short time, of what formerly occupied long time.” Ga. Bar Assn. Annual Report, p. 25 (August 13, 1884).
I would affirm the judgment of the trial court, as this case is controlled by our recent whole court case of Gibson v. Pierce, 176 Ga. App. 287 (335 SE2d 658) (1985). In that case, seven out of nine judges acknowledged that, as in the instant case, “implications and inferences of possible potential criminal fornication, which is a misdemeanor” (or a case involving adultery or incest) cannot be ignored where the best interests of a child are at issue. See also Milner v. Milner, 181 Ga. App. 760 (353 SE2d 628) (1987). Groans and “moans and love-making noises” were heard by a neighbor in the instant case. This might be somewhat scanty, and perhaps not the strongest case, but it is strong enough!