Court Opinion

ID: 9619087
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:21:53.678708+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:36.751385
License: Public Domain

Smith, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
An old and wise saying tells us that hard cases make bad law. This is just such a “hard case,” as was Sparks v. Hosp. Auth. of the City of Bremen &c., 241 Ga. App. 485, 490 (526 SE2d 593) (1999). Although I agree with the result in this case, I cannot agree with the reasoning or all that is said in the majority opinion.
The lease agreement here cannot be distinguished in any meaningful way from that in Sparks. Yet the majority, authored by the author of Sparks, treats them as very different. In Sparks, this court stated that the parties there “agreed to the terms and the conditions of the transaction, but agreed that it would not be effective until the Attorney General approved the agreement.” (Emphasis supplied.) Id. at 486 (1). Now, however, the majority distinguishes this case from Sparks by saying that Sparks “took effect immediately, regardless of the contingency provision,” majority opinion at 197, and that such an agreement “effectively transfers ownership, operation or control of the hospital” at the time it is signed. Majority opinion at 197.
As I indicated in my special concurrence in Sparks, I am concerned about the flaws, both ambiguities and omissions, in the Hospital Acquisition Act, OCGA §§ 31-7-400 through 31-7-412. It is entirely possible, in my view, that it is these flaws that have led to the majority’s strained analysis.
*198Decided July 14, 2000
Meadows, Ichter & Trigg, Michael J. Bowers, T. Joshua R. Archer, Stockton & Stockton, Lawrence A. Stockton, Jr., for appellants.
Charles L. Clay, for appellees.