Court Opinion

ID: 9566683
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:41:59.214015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:38:54.974121
License: Public Domain

On Motion roe Rehearing.
Counsel for the defendant in error contends that the general rule as to special injury in suits for malicious use of civil process, as stated in Dixie Broadcasting Corp. v. Rivers, supra, applies to count 1 of the present action and that the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Slater case, supra, was based upon its finding that the plaintiff’s loss of boarders from her boarding house, from which she was threatened to be expelled by the dispossessorywarrant proceedings, constituted a special injury, whereas no such special injury was here alleged. After deciding that loss of boarders was special damage, the Supreme Court, in the Slater case, headnote 2, expressly held: “So too were trouble and expense, including counsel fees, incurred by the tenant in giving bond and security to prevent summary expulsion from the premises by virtue of the malicious process.” This latter injury is the one on which the Supreme Court, in Dixie Broadcasting Corp. v. Rivers, noted the difference in the situation in the Slater case from those in the cases following the general rule. Both the cases of Swain v. American Surety Co., 47 Ga. App. 501 (171 SE 217) and Jacksonville Paper Co. v. Owen, 193 Ga. 23, supra, *88relied on in Price v. Fidelity Trust Co., 74 Ga. App. 836, supra, involved situations other than dispossessory-warrant proceedings, and thus are not inconsistent with either the Slater or the Dixie Broadcasting Corp. case. Whether the Slater case can be reconciled with the fact that the threat of eviction is a necessary result in all dispossessory-warrant proceedings is immaterial since this ruling was made, whether rightly or wrongly, in the Slater case and recognized in the Dixie Broadcasting Corp. case, and, never having been overruled, it is binding on this court.

Rehearing denied.