Court Opinion

ID: 9576190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:21:34.407327+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:02:15.659732
License: Public Domain

*615Deen, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
1. I do not agree that anything in the Georgia Constitution requires that the issue of amount of damages in cases ex delicto which are in default must be tried by a jury. Statutes which provide that jury trial is waived unless demanded are constitutional. And the constitutional right to jury trial may be waived by proceeding to trial without demanding a jury. Clarke v. Cobb, 195 Ga. 633 (24 SE2d 782). Code § 2-3907 does not say that default cases ex delicto must be tried by jury; it specifies only that cases other than these shall be tried by the court without a jury. But the converse, which is that the ex delicto default must be so tried, cannot be read into the language. As to ex delicto actions in default, this constitutional provision puts them in neither category and might as well not exist.
2. Code § 81A-155 is not definitive because it has nothing to say about waiver. It states a general rule that when the action is ex delicto the plaintiff shall introduce evidence before a jury "with the right of the defendant to introduce evidence as to damages.” This language is susceptible of the construction that it applies to cases where a defendant seeks to be heard on the question of damages.Harrell v. Davis Wagon Co., 140 Ga. 127, 128 (78 SE 713), notes that the statute (former Code § 110-401) and the constitutional provision (Code § 2-3907) "merely authorize judgments in the class of cases mentioned to be rendered by the court without the intervention of a jury.” Certainly they are not intended to abolish the right to waive a jury trial.
3. This leaves only the question of whether, in a court which by statute provides that jury trial is waived if not demanded, a jury need not be demanded in ex delicto default cases. In the Civil Court of DeKalb County, where this case originated and where the litigation in Hudgins v. Pure Oil Co., 115 Ga. App. 543 (154 SE2d 768) originated, it was specifically held in that case that the identical statute dealt with here resulted in waiver of jury trial where jury trial was not demanded. Unless there is a constitutional or statutory provision, which I am convinced there is not, forbidding waiver of jury trial in an ex delicto default, this is a false distinction and should not *616be made. Further, it rewards the negligent rather than the diligent. In Marler v. C & S Bank of Milledgeville, 139 Ga. App. 851 it was held that a late demand for jury trial was a nullity, and jury trial was waived. A litigant who does in fact file a defense must file his demand for a jury on time or waive it. What logic can give a defendant who suffers his case to go to judgment by default without taking any steps at all the right to a new trial before a jury on the theory that the right to jury trial cannot be waived? This court and the Supreme Court have consistently held to the contrary. "Waiver may be made of the right of trial by jury, and where a party has the right to demand a jury trial and neglects to do so he will be held to have waived the right.” Williams v. Leonard Heating &c. Co., 137 Ga. App. 16, 17 (223 SE2d 2) and cit.
4. "Conversion is a tort for which the action of trover is maintainable.” Carithers v. Maddox, 80 Ga. App. 230 (5) (55 SE2d 775). I therefore respectfully disagree with the statement in the majority opinion relating to Cherry v. McCutchen, 68 Ga. App. 682 (23 SE2d 587) seeking to distinguish it on the ground that it is "not strictly an ex delicto action.” It is indeed an ex delicto action. (89 CJS, 534, Trover and Conversion, § 4, and see Black’s Law Dictionary, ex delicto: "In both the civil and the common law, obligations and causes of action are divided into two great classes — those arising ex contractu, . . . and those ex delicto. The latter are such as grow out of or are founded upon a wrong or tort, e.g. trespass, trover, replevin.”) The holding in Cherry is that a defendant who did not demand a jury trial within the time limited could not do so thereafter.
Here the case is in default because of the defendant’s negligence. He is not entitled to rights greater than those of one who acted, though tardily.