Court Opinion

ID: 9575357
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:13:18.150042+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:09.182110
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
dissenting.
The majority is correct in that the first question is whether we have jurisdiction to consider this direct appeal or whether appellant followed the wrong procedure and should have filed an application for a discretionary appeal.
OCGA § 5-6-35 relegates to the category of “discretionary appeals” certain classes of cases. It was amended several times in 1984 to add more types of cases in which the appellate courts could exercise their judgment in granting full appeal- instead of being required to provide it.
*560Subsection (a) (6) added the following to the classes of cases for discretionary treatment: “Appeals in all actions for damages in which the judgment is $2500 or less.” First, it is apparent that subsection (6) relates to cases in which there is a judgment for money in the amount of $2,500 or less. Second, it refers to actions for damages, which of course can be brought by complainants, counterclaimants or cross-claimants. Third, it refers to judgments, not to “amounts in controversy.”
The legislature could have more clearly articulated its intent by adding the words “for a claimant” after “judgment” so that this exception to the right of direct appeal would read: “Appeals in all actions for damages in which the judgment for a claimant is $2500.00 or less; ...” That it did not do so does not diminish the import of the language used, in context. As to the amount of the judgment being the critical factor, I would not construe this to mean “amount in controversy,” as the word used is “judgment” and we are dealing with what is and not with what we think it ought to be; that is a matter of legislative policy, when it has spoken.
We all agree that the obvious objective, reading the 1984 amendments and discerning their purpose, was to expand the category of discretionary versus mandatory appeal cases for the appellate courts, in a manner which already existed by that statute. What is carved out generally involve areas in which there is not likely to be a substantial miscarriage of justice if the losing party has a right to only a preliminary review by the appellate court rather than a full-blown appeal.
Such treatment is afforded to cases where judgment for a claimant, rendered by a judge or a jury, is $2,500 or less, regardless of the amount sought. It is too small an amount, says the law, for the party who challenges it (be it plaintiff or defendant) to be given the right to appeal. The judicial resources, limited especially in time as they are, should not be required to review such small judgments. Where, after full judicial determination below, the dispute has been boiled down to a requirement for one party to pay another $2,500 or less, that amount is too small to mandatorily require full review. Its monetary value to both sides, i.e., the one who has prevailed and the one who must pay, is not worth the cost of full appellate resources of time, energy, and money unless the court in its discretion deems it warranted. The category speaks to the amount being fought over at the appellate level, not to the amount in issue at the trial level. Discretionary appeal is sufficient because the trial level has already examined the total amount in controversy, i.e., the amount claimed, and adjudged the claim worth $2,500 (or less). The majority has gone too far; the statute directs attention to the final result below, the judgment, not to the amount the claimant started out demanding. An example would be a plaintiff who claimed $200,000 including punitive *561damages and won $2,000. Liability was established and the question of damages resolved. The legislature says to defendant: you are going to have to pay, but it is such a relatively small amount that if you appeal, the court will be permitted to examine your application first before devoting the full resources of the court to it. And to the plaintiff who wants to appeal that amount, it says: you have already had one full consideration of the amount of damages and an opportunity to prove the amount of your claim as being more than you received in judgment. So again, the court may first consider your application.
It may be that the legislature so provided because the “amount in controversy” criterion is an easy target for abuse: a party could just claim more than $2,500 in order to assure a direct appeal, thus rendering the $2,500 category customer-less.
If this category should be “amount in controversy,” that is a policy question for the legislature, not for the court when the legislature has clearly pegged it to “judgment.”
The plain language shows the intent of the legislature to be to restrict what otherwise would be a right of direct appeal, by requiring in this category an application for a discretionary appeal for those cases where the judgment is for a claimant and is in the amount of $2,500 or a lesser amount of money. Accordingly, as appellant recovered zero on his counterclaim, i.e., suffered a judgment for counter-defendant and against him, he is entitled to a direct appeal.
I do agree with the majority that the legislature did not intend to relegate to discretionary appeal status all the cases in which the verdict was for defendant on the basis that it is a judgment for “less” than $2,500. If such a construction were given, then regardless of the nature of the plaintiff’s claim, the amount of injury allegedly sustained, the effect of loss on plaintiff or his business, the fact that the judge or jury found against him would render the appealability of the decision only to discretionary status. If the legislature meant to go that far in narrowing the types of cases which traditionally had enjoyed a right to appeal, its use of language was all too obtuse.
A defendant’s verdict, that is, a zero judgment, means plaintiff is out of court all together. That is left to direct appeal entitlement, and rightly so, because it goes to the heart of the plaintiff’s case; his claim has been declared remedy-less, either because of some legal deficiency such as the procedure he followed or because of perceived lack of merit or because of some legal impediment. In such cases, as I understand the statute, direct appeal would lie regardless of the amount claimed. This is not without good reason, because the claimant has brought a claim to court and has obtained no relief. The focus there is not on how much he was seeking, but whether for some reason he is not entitled to any amount whatsoever.
I am authorized to state that Judge Pope joins in this dissent.
*562Decided July 15, 1985
Rehearing denied July 30, 1985
W. E. Lockette, Johnnie M. Graham, Phyllis Holmen, Paul Kauffman, John L. Cromartie, Jr., for appellant.
T. Lee Bishop, Jr., for appellee.