Court Opinion

ID: 9609738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:30:49.512183+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:52.074000
License: Public Domain

Pannell, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur in the ruling that summary judgment was not proper upon the defendant’s motion and the proof offered. The dissenting opinion relies on Emory University v. Williams, 127 Ga. App. 881, 883 (195 SE2d 464). That case was an appeal from the denial of a motion for directed verdict. The burden was upon the plaintiff in that case to prove its contentions. The evidence in that case was examined to see if the plaintiff had carried that burden and produced sufficient evidence to prove its case.
Here, the motion for summary judgment was by the defendant. The burden was on the defendant to disprove some essential element of plaintiffs case.
Where a defendant, on whom the burden of proof does not lie at the trial, makes a motion for summary judgment his burden is not carried unless he can affirmatively disprove, by evidence demanding a finding to that effect, some essential element of plaintiffs case. That the plaintiff fails to show a right to recover as required on the trial when the burden is on the plaintiff, does not have the effect of affirmatively disproving some essential element of plaintiffs case. The question is not whether plaintiff has failed to prove her right to recover, as in a motion for directed verdict at the trial where the burden is on the plaintiff, but whether the defendant who has the burden of proof on its motion for summary judgment has disproved by uncontroverted evidence some essential element of plaintiffs case. The whole difference in these cases turns upon who has the burden of proof, and whether or not that *444burden has been carried. In motions for summary judgment by defendant the burden is on the defendant movant, and the plaintiff has no burden until the defendant has first carried its burden. The plaintiff is entitled to go to a jury unless the defendant has carried that burden. The defendant has not done so in this case.