Court Opinion

ID: 9578618
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:46:47.734421+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:57.916058
License: Public Domain

Birdsong, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
A decision should be overruled to the extent that it states the wrong law, even if the result was appropriate under the facts. We may find facts to mitigate bad law, but if the statement of the law is never overruled, the courts must use all sorts of contortions to get around it. It is not enough to say a wrong statement is “incomplete,” or that a case can be distinguished from it, for it will cause trouble when its language is quoted out of context. This is inevitable. When due process rights are at stake, the danger of mistake is too great to shrug off our responsibility to correct the law.
OCGA § 15-11-26 (a) requires that the court shall fix “a time for hearing . . . which . . . shall not be later than ten days after the filing of the petition.” Of course a valid continuance may be granted, as many cases have held. In this case the petition was filed August 5, 1993,, at which time the hearing was scheduled to be held August 17, 1993. Thus, within ten days of the filing of the petition, the juvenile court fixed a hearing date, but that hearing date was not set to be held within ten days of the filing of the petition. The question of continuance does not arise, so those cases approving a hearing held after ten days because a valid continuance was granted or no objection was made, have no application to this case.
The only reason the trial court held these proceedings met the requirements of OCGA § 15-11-26 (a) “and those cases decided thereunder” is that it thought all it had to do within ten days was “fix.” It got this idea from cases which made the loose remark that a hearing does not have to be “held” within ten days but need only be “set” within ten days; but the cases which made that loose remark were cases where hearings wére set to be held within the ten days but were properly continued. The trial court’s confusion is understandable, because as the majority points out, the special concurrence in P. L. A. v. *63State, 172 Ga. App. 820, 822 (324 SE2d 781) perceived the same confusion and tried to clarify it by saying, “the court would have to, in advance of the hearing, fix a date. Thus it goes without saying that the fixing of the date must also be within that 10-day period.”
Decided July 15, 1994.
Fuller & McFarland, Thomas R. McFarland, Cecilia M. Cooper, for appellant.
John R. Parks, District Attorney, Henry 0. Jones III, Assistant District Attorney, for appellee.
This clarification was not enough, nor is the “justifying” by the majority. As long as we have cases, not overruled, which say the statute “ ‘require(s) only that a hearing date be set within ten days’ ” (see P. L. A., supra at 822 (physical precedent) citing J. B. v. State, 171 Ga. App. 373, 375 (319 SE2d 465)), the courts below will remain confused, with the result we see here: a delinquency petition must be dismissed because the trial court “set” within ten days a hearing date which was not to be “held” within ten days. This is a serious problem which we should not overlook or excuse merely because the cases which caused it can be distinguished.
This court should overrule those cases which state wrong principles of law; the statements cannot be justified as “incomplete” where they give the wrong direction, as acknowledged in the special concurrence in P. L. A., and as proved in this case. The correct statement of law is that the court must set a hearing to be held within ten days of the filing of the petition, but if valid continuances have been granted, or no objection made, dismissal of the petition is not necessarily required. Any other statement of law gives the wrong direction to the trial court and results in confusion, and ultimately, delinquency petitions will be dismissed.
I respectfully dissent.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge McMurray joins in this dissent.