Court Opinion

ID: 9854112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:01:12.169863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:56.206074
License: Public Domain

Hall, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent to the grant of certiorari and the reversal of the judgments of the trial court and the Court of Appeals.
*452This is a routine "rear end” collision case in which there has never been any disagreement among the trial court, the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court nor the parties in litigation over any principle of law. Wynne v. Southern Bell Tel. & Tel. Co., 159 Ga. 623 (126 SE 388) (1925); Powell v. Berry, 145 Ga. 696 (89 SE 753) (1916); Wakefield v. A. R. Winter Co., 121 Ga. App. 259 (174 SE2d 178) (1970); Chotas v. J. P. Allen & Co., 113 Ga. App. 731 (149 SE2d 527) (1966). Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for certiorari to have been granted in this case. Furthermore, the principles of law discussed in the majority opinion are not limited to "rear end” collision cases. They apply as well to "front end” collision cases, "side” collision cases and to any other possible negligence issue in existence in the entire tort law area. Nothing new is said in that opinion.
This court granted certiorari by a vote of four to three. The only question which the four prevailing Justices wished to consider on certiorari was whether the Court of Appeals properly construed the facts. Counsel for both parties devoted their entire oral arguments to the facts. Neither of them cited a single decision in their arguments for the simple reason that the law was crystal clear.
Since 1916 when the Constitution was amended to allow the Supreme Court to exercise discretionary review of a decision of the Court of Appeals by writ of certiorari, this court has held that certiorari will not lie to review evidentiary matters, but only those of great public concern or gravity and importance. Frazier v. Southern R. Co., 200 Ga. 590, 591 (37 SE2d 774) (1946); Hicks v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 182 Ga. 595, 602 (186 SE 662) (1936); Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v. Tomlin, 161 Ga. 749, 761 (132 SE 90) (1926); Central of Ga. R. Co. v. Yesbik, 146 Ga. 620 (1) (91 SE 873) (1917). Even the Rules of this Court provide that "an application for the writ shall be granted only in cases involving gravity and importance.” Rule 36 (j), Rules of the Supreme Court of the State of Georgia, effective December 1, 1975.
Let us look at the operation of the appellate process. Looking first at the appeal itself, the reason for having an appeal is not because the appellate judges necessarily *453have more wisdom about the case than the trial judge (on the contrary they may have less); it is instead that a second look by someone else is always to the good. The Bible says, "in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom.” So the idea is that it is good to have a panel of three judges examine what one judge has done. Should the process end there? An English judge thought that it should; he said "one appellate court is a reasonable precaution but two suggests panic.” Nevertheless, in most states including Georgia there is another appellate court (usually seven justices) to exercise a discretionary review over the panel of three in what should be the very important cases. Again, the review is designed to allow seven to look at what three judges have done in matters of grave public concern. The review of right (three judges) is to determine whether the trial was conducted according to law and applicable procedure — to correct errors of the trial court. It is done primarily for the benefit of the parties to the appeal. Discretionary review in the highest court should be basically for the benefit of the public, to reconcile different holdings of the panel court and to declare the law on matters of gravity and public policy — this is called institutional review which is only incidentally for the benefit of the parties litigant. See II Study on Appellate Justice 171 (1975); ABA Standards Relating to Court Organization, 37 (1974); Meador, Appellate Courts, 2 (1974).
Unfortunately, under our archaic constitutional provision on the jurisdiction of our appellate courts, a losing litigant can obtain direct review as a matter of right before seven justices on such matters as divorce, alimony, child custody and disputes over land line cases. Code Ann. § 2-3704. In these matters our Supreme Court is serving the purpose of a traditional panel review for the benefit of the parties in litigation. Even with these and many other cases on our docket for direct review, we are constantly faced with hundreds of applications for certiorari in purely evidentiary matters. The current problem in the Supreme Court is our case load.1 In my *454opinion we do not have enough time now to decide the important cases before us, and we exacerbate the problem by granting certiorari to review evidentiary matters already decided by the Court of Appeals. The applicants for certiorari cannot be blamed because it is never known whether we will or will not limit certiorari to matters of great public concern or gravity and importance. If we grant certiorari in any run of the mill case, the losing attorney in all other cases will be prompted to seek it.
The grant of certiorari in routine cases has been condemned by many experts in the appellate process field. One of the finest articles on this is by the late Professor Edson R. Sunderland entitled "The Problem of Double Appeals,” reprinted in II Appellate Justice 186-187 (1975). He stated that "It is quite obvious that as a means of administering justice double appeals are seriously objectionable. In the first place they involve an economic waste of time, money and effort... Litigants cannot afford either the time or the expense of repeated appeals. The public cannot afford to maintain a judicial establishment for continually doing over again what ought to have been done well enough in the first place. In the second place double appeals discredit the judiciary. Public confidence in the courts is undermined by the spectacle of one appellate court reversing another, particularly when such reversals are by a divided court and the final decision may represent the opinion of the minority of the judges who passed upon the case. In the third place double appeals introduce a gambling element into litigation, which discourages resort to the courts and thereby impairs their usefulness as instruments of government... If the highest court exercises a general and undefined discretion, the latitude of the applicant in making this showing is almost without limits .. . The result is that no decision of the intermediate court is really final, and *455every one carries within it the possible grounds for second appeal.”
Another problem of double appeals is delay. For example, this accident occurred on January 15,1971. The suit was filed on August 21, 1972. The judgment was entered on February 15, 1974; the trial court directed a verdict for the plaintiff on the issue of liability and the jury awarded a verdict of $35,000 in damages. A motion for new trial was overruled on September 17, 1974. The case was in the trial court for approximately two years, and the case proceeded to the Court of Appeals where the decision of the trial court was affirmed on June 18, 1975. The time from the appeal from the trial court to a decision by the Court of Appeals was approximately nine months. The case then proceeded to this Court for a second "appeal” and will be decided in March, 1976. The time for the judgment of the Court of Appeals to a decision by this Court has been approximately nine months. Since the case will now have to be tried again, perhaps this Court will be reviewing it again two or three years from now.
Professor Sunderland ends his article by urging all states to consolidate the two appellate courts into one united appellate court. If this court continues its present policy of unlimited grants of certiorari, I respectfully submit that the public would be best served by the consolidation of our two appellate courts into one. Many members of the profession might say that this would destroy our Supreme Court as a historic institution, which, of course, it would; but the mortal wound would have been self-inflicted. We simply cannot act out our proper role in a dual-appellate-court system if we refuse to let the Court of Appeals handle the Court of Appeals’ cases that are of no particular gravity and therefore of no proper concern to us. The present case, a routine rear end automobile collision involving purely an evidentiary determination is a prime example of what we should not review.

 For the year 1975, 889 direct appeals were docketed *454by the Supreme Court and 288 applications for certiorari. This is two and one-half times the number of cases docketed ten years ago. In 1965, 364 direct appeals were docketed and 153 applications for certiorari.