Court Opinion

ID: 9580381
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:04:30.991369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:14.857845
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur with the majority, but the direction to the trial court should be more explicit lest we invite additional error which otherwise is bound to occur. When we remand with direction to the trial court, we thereby exert a more active role and go beyond merely ruling on whether or not that court has committed error as enumerated. We then function as an instructive court, affecting further proceedings in the case. In that regard, we are not addressing issues not raised but rather assuring insofar as possible that we do not directly instigate error in the future proceedings.
The scope of the remand is inherently in error unless it is clarified. In addition, if its scope is not made clear, this opinion can be construed to consider attorney fees as awardable as a discovery sanction in pro se cases in the future. While the majority directs that the circumference of the hearing be limited to “expenses of litigation,” with which I have no quarrel, it does not point out that, as a matter of law, those expenses in this case would not include “attorney fees” as provided in the award we are vacating, because McCrimmon was acting pro se. Only those expenses authorized by OCGA § 9-11-37 may be considered.
First, attorney fees are fees incurred by a party who chooses to employ a professional to represent that party in legal matters, or in other words, fees charged for professional services rendered to another in representing that other’s interests. When a party chooses to represent himself, there is no such other advocate.
Second, in the OCGA § 9-11-37 context, the attorney fees are those arising out of the pursuit of discovery in a lawsuit. The statute explicitly provides for “expenses.” Mr. McCrimmon’s legal services to himself are unquestionably valuable. And no doubt his attention to his own lawsuit negatively impacted the availability of his time and stock in trade which otherwise would be available to others. But such is not an “expense.” It would merely mean the transfer of money from one of his pockets to the other, were he to bear this “expense” in the absence of the sanction against the recalcitrant defendant. The sanction creates the expense, in effect. Without the sanction, the “fee” would not exist. Instead, there would be no “expense” but rather the party’s choice to use his own time and efforts and expertise instead of hiring another to represent him.
*750Decided July 16, 1987.
Everette L. Doffermyre, Jr., Alan R. Perry, Jr., for appellant.
Edward W. McCrimmon, pro se.
To so construe the statute reads into it a legislative intent to include the fair market value of one’s own legal services to oneself, lay or attorney, in the provision of “reasonable expenses, including attorney fees.” If the legislature meant to include the fair market value of self-representation as a sanction, it could easily have written “reasonable expenses, including attorney fees or the fair market value of one’s self-representation,” or words to that effect. Instead, it left the scope of the sanction precisely to “expenses, including attorney fees.”
I recognize that to the contrary is judicial interpretation of congressional intent in the Freedom of Information Act somewhat analogous proviso for the award of attorney fees. 5 USCA § 552 (a) (4) (E). See Cox v. U. S. Dept. of Justice, 601 F2d 1, 5 (5-7) (D.C. Cir. 1979); Crooker v. U. S. Dept. of Treasury, 663 F2d 140, 141 (1) (D.C. Cir. 1980); Jordan v. U. S. Dept. of Justice, 691 F2d 514, 523 (6) (D.C. Cir. 1982); Holly v. Acree, 72 FRD 115 (D.C. 1976), aff’d 186 U. S. App. D.C. 329 (569 F2d 160) (1977); Jones v. U. S. Secret Svc., 81 FRD 700 (D.C. 1979). That statute does not speak of attorney fees as “expenses” as does OCGA § 9-11-37 (b) (2), but rather of “reasonable attorney fees and other litigation costs reasonably incurred.” A difference is discernible. See Holly, supra.
Third, if a pro se attorney can recover “attorney fees” under OCGA § 9-11-37 (b), the pro se litigant who is not an attorney will be discriminated against because his services to himself will not be measurable as “attorney fees.” How could fair market value of self-representation by a non-lawyer be calculated? The subjective and speculative nature of the assessment when such is attempted is illustrated in Jones, supra. We will not even take an attorney’s bill as conclusive of reasonable attorney fees, in the context of an assessment of the same in a workers’ compensation award. OCGA § 34-9-108 (b); State of Ga. v. Mitchell, 177 Ga. App. 333, 335 (2b) (339 SE2d 384) (1985).
Georgia’s Bill of Rights provides that “No person shall be deprived of the right to prosecute or defend, either in person or by an attorney, that person’s own cause in any of the courts of this state.” Ga. Const. 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. XII. The Constitution recognizes an either/or distinction and so should we.
There are, of course, other sanctions affordable to the pro se litigant under OCGA § 9-11-37 when an opponent abuses discovery. And there is some indication of actual expenses of approximately $723.