Justia Georgia Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

The version of the apportionment statute at issue in this appeal, OCGA 51-12-33, was enacted as part of the Tort Reform Act of 2005. Subsection (b) required damages to be apportioned “among the persons who are liable according to the percentages of fault of each person.” Subsection (b) had a critical textual difference from subsection (a): although subsection (a) applied “[w]here an action is brought against one or more persons,” subsection (b) applied only “[w]here an action is brought against more than one person . . . .” Although the Georgia Supreme Court previously decided at least one case in which the provisions of subsection (b) were applied in single-defendant cases, the Court expressly left open the question of whether such an application was proper. In this case, the Court of Appeals answered that open question by determining that the apportionment by percentage of fault directed by subsection (b) did not apply in single-defendant cases. The Supreme Court granted certiorari on the question of whether subsection (b) applied in single-defendant cases and also on the question of whether an expenses-of-litigation award under OCGA 13-6-11 was subject to apportionment. Although the Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals on the latter question and held that such expenses were not categorically excluded from apportionment, the Court concluded the Court of Appeals was correct on the scope of application of the apportionment directed by subsection (b): it applied only in cases “brought against more than one person,” not in single-defendant lawsuits like this one. Thus, the Supreme Court affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded for further proceedings regarding the trial court’s apportionment of the expenses-of-litigation award. View "Alston & Bird, LLP v. Hatcher Management Holdings, LLC" on Justia Law

Jereno Kinslow's felony conviction for computer trespass was premised on evidence that Kinslow altered his employer’s computer network settings so that e-mail messages meant for Kinslow’s boss would also be copied and forwarded to Kinslow’s personal e-mail account. The Court of Appeals affirmed Kinslow’s conviction, and the Georgia Supreme Court granted Kinslow’s petition for certiorari, posing the question of whether Kinslow’s conduct constituted a violation of OCGA 16-9-93 (b)(2). The Court found that although the statute in general was extremely broad, the portion of (b)(2) on which the State exclusively relied did not reach Kinslow’s conduct. Accordingly, the Supreme Court concluded the evidence presented at Kinslow’s trial was insufficient to support his conviction under Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307 (1979), and thus reversed. View "Kinslow v. Georgia" on Justia Law

InComm Financial Services issued pre-paid debit and credit cards under the “Vanilla VISA” brand to cardholders who use the cards to buy goods and services. Global Payments, Inc. was a financial data payment processor. Thieves purchased Vanilla VISA pre-paid debit and credit cards and used them to buy goods and services. Then, using certain merchants that were not the merchants who originally sold the goods and services, the thieves initiated counterfeit electronic “reversal transactions” – basically requests for refunds on behalf of the cardholders. Upon receiving the reversal transaction data from the merchants, Global relayed the data to the VISA network. The VISA network then submitted the reversal transaction data to InComm. InComm received the data, posted the reversal transactions to the cardholder accounts, and then issued credits to the merchants who, in turn, passed the credits on to the thieves holding the Vanilla VISA cards. The thieves then converted those credits (in excess of $1.5 million made over 3,600 transactions) to their use. InComm did not allege that Global participated in creating the counterfeit reversal transactions. InComm asserted that Global was liable for the losses InComm suffered as a consequence of those transactions because Global negligently supplied to the VISA network the data created by the reversal merchants. In support of its claim, InComm asserted that Global, as a payment processor, “had a duty to exercise reasonable care in supplying the VISA Network and its participants with the transactions initiated by the Reversal Merchants.” The Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's order dismissing InComm's negligent misrepresentation claim against Global. Global's petition for certiorari review was granted, and the Georgia Supreme Court concluded that because the allegations of the complaint showed that Global merely transmitted data concerning debit and credit card transactions without representing that the transactions were legitimate, the Court of Appeals erred, and the Supreme Court therefore reversed. View "Global Payments, Inc. v. InComm Financial Services, Inc." on Justia Law

Former DeKalb County Chief Executive Officer W. Burrell Ellis, Jr. was indicted in 2013 on fifteen counts of attempted extortion and other acts of alleged corruption. He was re=indicted in early 2014 on thirteen counts relating to attempted extortion, theft, coercion, bribery and perjury. The first indictment was nolle prossed, and his first trial ended in a mistrial. Ellis was retried in 2015 on nine counts: four counts of attempt to commit theft by extortion, three counts of perjury, one count of bribery and one count of theft by extortion. The extortion charge came from Ellis' alleged attempt to procure a $2500 political campaign contribution from a DeKalb County vendor by threatening to cut the vendor's contract with the County if the Vendor did not pay. The perjury charges stemmed from Ellis allegedly lying to a Special Purpose Grand Jury about his role in cutting the contract of the same DeKalb County vendor. On appeal, Ellis contended, among other things, that his rights to substantive due process and equal protection of the laws were violated based on the inapplicability of the former version of OCGA 45-11-4 to his case, and that the trial court erred with respect to various evidentiary matters at his trial. The Supreme Court found that, although the trial court properly concluded that the inapplicability of former OCGA 45-11-4 to Ellis’ case did not result in any violation of his constitutional rights, the Court nevertheless reversed Ellis’ convictions based on certain evidentiary errors that occurred at his trial. Accordingly, the Court affirmed in part and reversed in part to allow for a retrial on the charges of criminal attempt to commit theft by extortion and perjury. View "Ellis v. Georgia" on Justia Law

Katherine Fleming was indicted on two counts of identity fraud and two counts of financial transaction fraud. She entered a negotiated guilty plea, which allowed for deferred sentencing and participation in a drug court program. Her plea agreement specified that she would be sentenced to eight years of probation if she completed the drug court program, but she would be sentenced to ten years, with the first four to be served in prison and the remaining six to be served on probation, including residential substance abuse treatment, if she failed to complete the program. The agreement also provided that she would make restitution payments under either scenario. After more than two years in the program, Fleming was terminated from the drug court program for failure to comply with its rules. Consistent with the plea agreement, the trial court then imposed a ten-year sentence, the first four to be served in prison and the remaining six to be served on probation, including residential substance abuse treatment. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to determine under what circumstances a defendant may receive sentence credit for participation in a drug court program established under OCGA 15-1-15. After that review, the Court held that no sentence credit for participation in a drug court program was warranted in this particular case. View "Fleming v. Georgia" on Justia Law

Stephen Jenkins brought a tort action against Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. alleging that a Bank teller had improperly accessed Jenkins’s confidential information and given it to her husband, allowing the husband to steal Jenkins’s identity. Jenkins claimed the Bank negligently failed to protect the information, breached a duty of confidentiality, and invaded his privacy. The trial court granted the Bank’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. The Court of Appeals reversed as to Jenkins’s negligence claim after finding that the allegations of his complaint established the elements of negligence. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the Court of Appeals erred in holding that a violation of an alleged duty imposed the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act gave rise to a cause of action for negligence under Georgia law. The Supreme Court concluded that the holding was in error, and reversed that portion of the judgment of the Court of Appeals. View "Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Jenkins" on Justia Law