Court Opinion

ID: 9781330
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:31:18.411523+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:24.237811
License: Public Domain

Nahmias, Justice,
concurring.
In accordance with our decision in Wilensky v. Blalock, 262 Ga. 95, 98 (414 SE2d 1) (1992), the majority opinion correctly holds that a claim for wrongful dissolution of a partnership may be based on damages arising from the excluded partner’s loss of “an existing, or continuing, business opportunity” or of income and material assets that existed “coincident to the dissolution,” not only damages due to the loss of the “new prosperity” of the partnership. Maj. Op. at 42. However, because dissolution is “essentially an act about the future,” id., a wrongful dissolution claim must include evidence of damages to the excluded partner resulting from the ending of the partnership, rather than damages arising solely from events that occurred while the partnership existed and cause no ongoing harm. Put another way, the tort claim must be based on losses caused by the bad faith termination of the partnership and not just losses from past acts that may have violated the partnership agreement, which instead are properly resolved by a claim for an accounting, breach of contract, or similar causes of action. See, e.g., OCGA § 14-8-22.
As the Court of Appeals held, see Moses v. Jordan, 310 Ga. App. 637, 642 (714 SE2d 262) (2011), the evidence in this case, construed in Moses’s favor against Jordan’s motion for summary judgment, may show that Jordan misappropriated from their partnership account a *45$180,000 fee around the time he decided to dissolve the partnership. That would be some evidence that he dissolved the partnership in bad faith, creating a material issue of fact on that element of the tort. However, that fee came from a completed case, and was fully paid, so the “misappropriation of partnership funds” (Maj. Op. at 44) by Jordan involved a past act under the existing partnership, for which Moses might recover damages on her breach of contract or similar claims but which would not appear to be damages attributable to the termination of the partnership that occurred several months later. On remand, unless Moses shows, in addition to Jordan’s bad faith, that the dissolution of the partnership resulted in her loss of a specifically identified and provable existing or future business opportunity or then-existing income and material assets of the partnership, her wrongful dissolution claim will fail.
Decided May 7, 2012.
Blasingame, Burch, Garrard & Ashley, Gary B. Blasingame, Killian & Boyd, Robert P. Killian, for appellant.
Martenson, Hasbrouck & Simon, Peter V. Hasbrouck, Mark E. Robinson, for appellee.
On this understanding of our decision today, I join the majority opinion in full.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Justice Carley joins in this concurrence.