Court Opinion

ID: 9580023
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:01:05.89639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:58.750067
License: Public Domain

ANDREWS, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially and in judgment only.
As the majority acknowledges, when Judge Carley concurred “in Divisions 1 and 2 and in the judgment” in the case of Gwinnett County Bd. of Tax Assessors v. Ackerman/Indian Trail Assn., 198 Ga. App. 723, 725 (402 SE2d 794) (1991), he withheld his approval from Division 3 of the same opinion, which had the effect of rendering that division as physical precedent only. When it asks the whole Court to disapprove of this same division, the majority is attempting to deprive Division 3 of the Gwinnett County case of precedential value it has never had.
In those rare cases in which a physical precedent provides the parties or the trial court with the only basis for a position, disapproval may be desirable. See, e.g., Chaparral Boats v. Heath, 269 Ga. App. 339, 344-345 (606 SE2d 567) (2004) (noting trial court’s reliance on physical precedent). Here, unambiguous statutory law contravenes the superior court’s decision. See OCGA §§ 48-5-311 (authorizing a de novo action for tax appeals); 5-3-29 (in any de novo appeal to a superior court, “[e] it her party is entitled to be heard on *887the whole merits of the case”). In the face of such authority, any physical precedent to the contrary has no precedential or persuasive value of any kind. And the authority cited by the majority for its characterization of physical precedent as potentially “persuasive” relies upon a special concurrence which itself lacks precedential value. See Pechin v. Lowder, 290 Ga. App. 203, 204-205 (659 SE2d 430) (2008), citing Chaparral Boats, 269 Ga. App. at 349-350 (Barnes, J., concurring specially to an eight-judge majority).
I therefore concur in the judgment only.