Court Opinion

ID: 9576188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:21:34.111762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:15.703636
License: Public Domain

Smith, Judge,
concurring specially.
I agree with the majority that the trial court’s grant of appellee’s motion for summary judgment was proper. However, I believe the majority sweeps too broadly in attempting to overrule Langley v. Stone, 112 Ga. App. 237 (144 SE2d 627) (1965), cited in Buckhead Doctors’ Building v. Oxford Fin. Cos., 115 Ga. App. 534 (154 SE2d 760) (1967). As the trial court noted in its well-reasoned order granting summary judgment to appellee: “Langley v. Stone, 112 Ga. App. 237 (1965) is inapposite.”
The party asserting the right to damages in both Langley and Buckhead Doctors’ Building was the holder of the equity of *334redemption. The duty imposed in Langley (i.e. to sell the property at its fair market value) is a duty which, under both the facts and rationale of that case, runs from the grantee-seller under a power of sale to the holder of the equity of redemption. As the court stated: “To deny [plaintiff] the right to the relief he here seeks would be to rob him of the use of the full value of his equity of redemption in the event the fair market value of the property exceeded the amount of the first loan or exceeded the amounts of both loans.” Id at 240. In the instant case, the plaintiff is not the holder of the equity of redemption, but a holder of an inferior deed to secure debt. •
The majority has extended the holding of Langley and then, in the same opinion, has attempted to overrule the holding of the case as extended. In my view, the extension, and therefore the “overruling,” is unnecessary.1

Since Langley is inapposite to the instant case, a determination as to whether Langley has been overruled by implication in Giordano v. Stubbs, 228 Ga. 75 (184 SE2d 165) (1971), is unnecessary. However, in view of the discussion in the majority opinion, I believe it should be pointed out that Giordano, unlike Langley and Buckhead Doctors’ Building, is concerned with setting aside a sale under power. Langley and Buckhead Doctors’ Building are concerned with a right of damages where a grantee-seller under a power of sale has breached a duty to sell property at its fair market value.