Court Opinion

ID: 9846568
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:43:47.493302+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:38.929983
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
dissenting.
I agree that attorney fees are not awardable in this case. However, the trial court erred in vacating the award “in its entirety” and remanding the case to the AAA “to begin anew with a new arbitrator.”
OCGA § 9-9-97 governs “other expenses” involved in this dispute. Subsection (a) expressly precludes counsel fees. Subsection (b) provides that “[u]pon application, the court may reduce or disallow any fees or expenses it finds excessive or may allocate them as justice *661requires.” Currahee moved to vacate the award. This subsection by its terms contemplates broad authority of the court over “arbitrators’ expenses and fees” and “other expenses” of the arbitration, even allowing its own allocation based on its own discretion. As to these specific incidental items alone, it is not restricted to vacating the award under OCGA § 9-9-93 nor limited to the strictures of its subsection (b). The court in Hughes & Peden, Inc. v. Budd Contracting Co., 193 Ga. App. 656 (388 SE2d 753) (1989), did not rule on the applicability of OCGA § 9-9-97’s subsection (b).
Decided November 20, 1990.
Smith & Fleming, Richard J. Storrs, for appellant.
Cornwell, Church & Healy, James E. Cornwell, Jr., for appellee.
Although this broader authority was eliminated in 1988, see OCGA § 9-9-17, it was extant in this case. It empowers the court to disallow the counsel fees as excessive because Walton is entitled to zero attorney fees. This the court should have done, as a matter of law.
It is wasteful and serves neither justice nor any useful purpose to send the whole matter back, for rearbitration with a new arbitrator and new potential applications to the trial court and a new appeal, when the law is clear.
I am authorized to state that Judge Birdsong and Judge Sognier join in this dissent.