Court Opinion

ID: 9539671
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:08:20.719979+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:59:12.627023
License: Public Domain

Benham, Judge,
dissenting.
While I agree with the majority’s statement of the facts and of the rules to be applied in reviewing a grant of summary judgment, I do not believe that those rules have been properly applied in this case. I must, therefore, dissent.
The thrust of the majority’s position is that appellee has offered bare conclusions of ultimate fact which are not sufficient to overcome the inferences raised by appellants’ assertions. That position misrepresents the nature of appellee’s sworn statements. They are not conclusions, but sworn statements of fact based on personal knowledge. The assertions of appellants, on the other hand, are no more than conclusions based on inferences. Apparently, the majority would have appellee bear the burden of explaining away every possible inference *183to be drawn from appellant Baine’s observations. That is not what is required for summary adjudication. Appellants alleged that appellee’s son was driving with appellee’s permission or as his agent. Appellee pierced those allegations by his sworn statement, on personal knowledge, to the contrary. “Appellee having thus pierced the allegations of the pleadings, it became incumbent upon appellants] to produce specific evidentiary facts in order to raise a genuine issue that [appellee’s son drove with his permission or as his agent]. Appellants] did not do so.” Griffith v. Stovall Tire &c., 174 Ga. App. 137, 139 (329 SE2d 234) (1985). (Emphasis supplied.)
Although the majority attempts to distinguish Pague v. Pendley, 177 Ga. App. 573 (340 SE2d 190) (1986), by saying the defendant there showed the “circumstances under which a legal conclusion of ‘no permission’ was compelled,” the holding in that case is not so easily dismissed. The holding in Division 1 of that case is not that the defendant supplied all the facts, but that after the defendant denied the existence of an agency relationship, which denial was a statement of fact, the burden shifted to the plaintiff to prove the agency. There, as here, the plaintiff failed to meet that burden. “ ‘When a party to an alleged agency relationship denies that such a relationship exists, “that is a statement of fact. On the other hand, the existence of the relationship is not within the personal knowledge of an outsider. What he may know are certain facts which might lead to that conclusion.” In other words, a bare assertion of the existence of an agency relationship, when made by an outsider to the alleged relationship, is not a statement of fact, but merely an unsupported conclusion of law.’ [Cit.]” Id. at 574. The same principle should hold true with regard to the question of permission: the one who grants permission and the one to whom permission is granted are in a position to declare, as a matter of fact, that there has been or has not been permission. All an outsider may know are facts which might lead to a conclusion that permission was granted. But a statement to that effect, from an outsider, would be a mere conclusion of law. Appellee has stated facts; appellants have offered conclusions and inferences. Appellee is entitled to judgment.
The majority opinion has fundamentally disturbed the law of summary judgment. Under their analysis, a sworn statement of fact, made on personal knowledge, is not sufficient to overcome what this court has clearly, labeled “an unsupported conclusion of law.” Id. I cannot condone this evisceration of so useful an adjudicatory vehicle as summary judgment.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Birdsong joins in this dissent.
*184Decided December 5, 1986.
Michael H. Saul, for appellants.
Walter B. McClelland, for appellee.