Appellate Conflicts in Local Government Law: the Disagreements of a Decade - R. Perry Sentell, Jr.

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal,Georgia
• Publication year: 2004
• Citation: Vol. 56 No. 1

Special Contribution

Appellate Conflicts in Local

Government Law: The Disagreements of a Decadeby R. Perry Sentell, Jr.^*

I. Introduction

In awesome solemnity, Chief Justice John Marshall thundered in 1803, "[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."¹ Marshall's historic declaration has borne both lavish praise and unstinting criticism,² and it serves as the commonly understood sentiment underlying the legal order of our country. At both federal and state levels, the "judicial department" rules our daily lives by virtue of saying "what the law is."

At the state level, constitutions and statutes typically establish a judicial branch of government and populate that branch with all manner of courts—local, trial, and appellate. Those courts apply and interpret statutory strictures and common law principles, ultimately resolving the rights and obligations of both government and individual.

The Georgia Constitution fashions a bi-level appellate system, composed of an intermediate appellate court, the Georgia Court of Appeals,³ and at the apex, the Georgia Supreme Court.⁴ Each court is styled "a court of review,"⁵ each possesses a described jurisdiction,⁶ and via various procedures, the supreme court reviews at least some of the court of appeals decisions.⁷ Additionally, "[t]he decisions of the [Georgia] Supreme Court bind all other courts as precedents."⁸ Because they are final, the supreme court's dispositions provide the (legally) "correct" solutions to the issues litigated.

Inevitably, the supreme court occasionally encounters a decision by the court of appeals with which it differs. In that event the supreme court must "correct" the perceived "error," thereby reversing the court of appeals resolution of the case. These reversals occur across the illimitable substantive spectrum of Georgia law, extending randomly throughout the pages of the Georgia Reports. An effort merely to designate and catalogue their total instances would summon a persistence of herculean proportions.

Perhaps, however, a severely restricted focus upon a single subject area, extending over a relatively brief period, would serve a useful purpose. Such an exercise might yield results of general interest on the phenomena of appellate reversals and more explicit edification on the selected subject.

On the subject of local government law, articles annually surveying the field will provide a perspective for ponder and a means of measure-ment.⁹ A canvas of the last ten survey articles will identify the cases in which the supreme court reversed the court of appeals, as well as the specific legal issues drawing the appellate conflicts.¹⁰ The effort will reflect, for the law of local government, the appellate disagreements of a decade.

II. A Decade of Reversals: Numerical Facets

Attention initially devolves to facets amenable to absolute numerical calculation. Pivotal, of course, are the total instances of reversals and the years in which they occurred. Those revelations operate to unfold an entire decade of local government law's appellate divisiveness. Additionally, an identification of the subject cases themselves will disclose whether the supreme court was unanimous in its decision of reversal and whether its action ultimately favored the local government. Finally, some focus on "causation" might prove insightful, i.e., whether the court of appeals original decision reversed or affirmed the trial court in the case, and consequently, the eventual impact upon the trial's result occasioned by the supreme court's subsequent reversal. These numerical facets can be elaborated in a fairly brief order.

A. Total Reversals

The following table chronicles the total occasions upon which the Georgia Supreme Court reversed (over the past ten survey years) decisions by the Georgia Court of Appeals dealing with issues of local government law.¹¹

TABLE I

Number of Cases in Which Supreme Court Reversed Court of Appeals 1994-2003

Survey Year	Cases	Survey Year	Cases
1994	1	1999	2
1995	3	2000	4
1996	1	2001	2
1997	3	2002	0
1998	0	2003	2
Total	18 Cases

Whatever notoriety reversals may attract within the local government bar, their occurrence in the recent past has proceeded at a relatively steady judicial pace. As Table I reveals, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed the Georgia Court of Appeals in a total of eighteen local government cases during the last ten survey years. That combination of time and total yields a decade reversal average of 1.8 cases per decisional year. As further reflected, the total reversals ranged from a high of four cases in the survey year 2000 to a low of no cases in survey years 1998 and 2002. As they are distributed over the ten-survey-year period, the reversals reflect no particularly significant trend in frequency of occurrence, and only a slight increase over the course of the decade. (The first five years of the surveyed period produced a total of eight reversals as compared with ten disagreements during the final five years.) Finally, as with many statistical findings, evaluation is controlled by perspective. On one hand, given local government law's pervasive reach, a reversal rate averaging less than two cases per year might be viewed as fairly minimal appellate correctional scrutiny. Contrarily, in such a unique practice, an average reversal rate of almost two cases per decisional year might be considered fairly substantial appellate oversight.

For the sake of completeness, Table II transfers the ten survey years into the eleven calendar years in which the cases were actually decided.

Table II

Calendar Years in Which Supreme Court Reversed Court of Appeals 1993-2003

Calendar Year	Cases	Calendar Year	Cases
1993	1	1998	1
1994	2	1999	5
1995	2	2000	1
1996	2	2001	1
1997	1	2002	0
2003	2
Total	18 Cases

The effect of this translation of survey years into calendar years is to add an additional year (1993) to the total, and with one exception, to spread the cases more evenly throughout the period. The year containing the largest number of reversals moves from 2000 back to 1999. With number and time of reversals tabulated, a focus upon the individual cases of appellate disagreement appears appropriate at this juncture.

B. The Cases and the Nature of the Reversals

The following table reflects the style of each of the eighteen cases reversed and the calendar year of each decision.¹² Additionally, the table indicates whether the supreme court's decision of reversal was unanimous¹³ and whether the reversal ultimately favored the local government.¹⁴

Table III

Cases & The Nature of The Reversals

Case	Unanimous	For Local
Court	Government
DeKalb County v. J&A Pipeline Co. (1993)	Yes	Yes
Mixon v. City of Warner Robbins (1994)	Yes	No
Gilbert v. Richardson (1994)	Yes	No
Athens-Clarke County v. Walton Elec. Corp.
(1995)	Yes	Yes
City of Winder v. Girone (1995)	Yes	Yes
Hibbs v. City of Riverdale (1996)	Yes	No
City of Atlanta v. Watson (1996)	Yes	Yes
Roberts v. Burke County School Dist. (1997)	No	Yes
Seay v. Cleveland (1998)	Yes	Yes
City of Tybee Island v. Godinho (1999)	Yes	Yes
City of Marietta v. Edwards (1999)	Yes	Yes
City of Douglasville v. Queen (1999)	No	Yes
Rowe v. Coffey (1999)	No	Yes
Adams v. Hazelwood (1999)	Yes	Yes
Jackson v. Shadix (2000)	No	Yes
Dudley v. State (2001)	Yes	Yes
City of Winder v. McDougald (2003)	No	Yes
City of Decatur v. DeKalb County (2003)	Yes	Yes
Totals 18 Cases	Yes 13 (72%)	Yes 15 (83%)
No 5 (28%)	No 3 (17%)

As styled, the chronologically arranged cases in Table III indicate the local government (including the local government officer or employee) involved in the litigation and the opposing party.¹⁵ Dated to survey period, only two years (1998 and 2002) contained no reversals; when translated into calendar period, that number decreases to only one year (2002). As for the "nature" of the supreme court's reversing decisions, the table focuses upon two primary factors: court composition and ultimate prevailing party.

Table III reflects that when the supreme court reverses a local government decision by the court of appeals, the justices are usually united in that determination. Thus, in almost three-quarters of the reversals (72%), the justices decided in unanimity. That finding, in turn, elicits two further impressions. First, when the court of appeals is reversed, its position is one typically deemed erroneous by the entire membership of the supreme court. Perhaps it is that overwhelming concurrence among themselves that convinces the justices to take the drastic step of reversal. Alternatively, the point may at least support a rationalization for taking the step. Second, the fact of unanimity also serves to expose an abiding analytical enigma: How can precisely the same legal issues so clearly resolvable in one fashion by the court of appeals propel every justice on the supreme court to the opposite solution? The perpetual presence of this enigma in judicial law making does not diminish its discordant perplexity.

Table III also reveals an intriguing aspect concerning the minority of reversals (28%) in which the justices were not unanimous in their decision. In not a single one of those instances did the majority of the justices decide against the local government. Thus, in every case in which one (or more) of the justices dissented, the supreme court reached a conclusion favoring the local government. What might logically be deduced from this facet is problematic, but it is clear at a minimum that the dissenters did not dissent to prevent the opposing party from prevailing.

Aside from the supreme court's composition on the occasions of its reversing decisions, Table...