Court Opinion

ID: 9850679
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:01:22.891902+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:41.526266
License: Public Domain

Blackburn, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
Because I believe that DeKalb County’s conduct, as identified in the trial court’s order, justified an award of attorney fees, I must respectfully dissent. In a special concurrence in DeKalb County v. Adams,17 I took exception with the majority’s denial of the inmates’ motion for penalties for frivolous appeal, stating that I would grant *205the motion for penalties “as there is no reasonable basis for [DeKalb County] to believe that they could deprive the trial court of jurisdiction to enforce its contempt order by ‘running out the clock’ on the settlement agreement.” In short, I believed that DeKalb County had no substantial legal justification for its position, but instead appealed in order to delay proceedings until the term of the settlement agreement expired.
We review an award of fees and costs under OCGA § 9-15-14 (b) for an abuse of discretion. As the majority points out, OCGA § 9-15-14 (b) allows a trial court to assess attorney fees if it finds either that a party brought an action that lacked substantial justification, or that the action was interposed for delay or harassment. In this case, the trial judge found, as I did in my special concurrence, that both conditions applied.
First, and contrary to the majority’s holding, the county’s argument that the trial court lost authority to enforce its civil contempt order after the settlement agreement expired lacks substantial justification. The legal issue in this case was whether the trial court had authority to enforce its contempt order. The county, however, argued that the trial court, in imposing conditions with which the county had to comply in order to purge itself of contempt, improperly modified the terms of the settlement agreement. This Court had no difficulty whatsoever, in DeKalb County v. Adams, supra, in rejecting that argument and concluding that “[t]he court’s November 2002 order did not alter the terms of the settlement agreement. Rather, it found that the county had failed to purge a prior finding of contempt that was made during the 18-month term of the agreement.” Id. at 245 (2). To put it another way, the trial court’s order had no effect at all on the settlement agreement; thus, the county’s argument was irrelevant, misleading, and groundless, a red herring meant to distract this Court from the central legal issue in the appeal.
In finding that the county’s argument was not completely without merit, the majority asserts that there is no controlling authority directly on point. I disagree. There is abundant controlling authority governing the legal issue in this case, i.e., whether a trial court has the power to compel obedience to its orders. See, e.g., OCGA § 15-1-3; In re Boswell;18 Carey Canada, Inc. v. Hinely;19 Hopkins v. Hopkins.20 That authority emphatically holds that a trial court does have that power. Further, while the county did in fact cite authority that “arguably supported its position” that a trial judge in a contempt proceeding has no authority to modify the terms of a consent decree, *206that fact is beside the point since the court did not alter the terms in the first place and the authority of a trial court to modify a consent decree was not at issue in this case. A party can cite volumes of authority supporting positions which are not at issue in a case, but doing so will not preclude a determination that those positions lack substantial justification.
By itself, the finding that the county’s action lacked substantial justification would have authorized the award of attorney fees, but, the trial court also found that the county filed its action for the purpose of delaying compliance with the settlement agreement. We cannot say that the trial court abused its discretion in so finding.
Rather than seeking to comply with the civil purge conditions of the trial court’s order, the county embarked on a course of appeal to this Court. On October 8, 2002, three weeks after the hearing at which Dr. Greifinger testified concerning the extent of the county’s compliance with the purge provision, the county attorney informed Dr. Greifinger that his role as consultant and monitor had run its course and he was no longer needed. The county attorney’s conclusion was based on the county’s legal argument that the settlement agreement, by its express terms, expired on September 26, 2002. The logic of the county is clear. As the trial court observed,
[u]nder this logic, the court would be unable to employ its powers of contempt as long as the case remained on appeal. Then, by the time the county’s appeals were exhausted, the court could not find the county in contempt because it was too late — the eighteen (18) months had run. Thus, the court could never enforce contempt against the county under the county’s argument because the county continued to delay what must have appeared to be the inevitable. In light of the county’s stringent efforts to avoid compliance without justification, the court finds the county interposed defenses and filed appeals, at least in part, for the purpose of delaying enforcement of the court’s decision in this matter.
Given the facts and the trial court’s long supervision of and acquaintance with this case, it is clear that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in so holding. That holding, alone, also justified an award of attorney fees. In the face of the trial court’s holdings that the county’s action lacked substantial justification and that it was interposed for the purpose of delay, and in light of the standard of review which we must apply to those holdings, the trial court’s decision should be affirmed.
I am authorized to state that Chief Judge Smith joins in this dissent.
*207Decided September 12, 2003.
Constangy, Brooks & Smith, Robert D. Ware, Wade W. Mitchell, King & Spalding, Michael C. Russ, Charles G. Hicks, William J. Linkous III, for appellants.
Tamara H. Serwer, for appellees.

 DeKalb County v. Adams, 262 Ga. App. 243, 247 (585 SE2d 178) (2003).

 In re Boswell, 148 Ga. App. 519, 520 (251 SE2d 596) (1978).

 Carey Canada, Inc. v. Hinely, 181 Ga. App. 364, 370 (352 SE2d 398) (1986).

 Hopkins v. Hopkins, 244 Ga. 66 (257 SE2d 900) (1979).