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Supreme Court of Georgia
Jane Hansen, Public Information Officer 244 Washington Street, Suite 572 Atlanta, Georgia 30334 404-651-9385 hansenj@gasupreme.us

SUMMARIES OF OPINIONS
Published February 15, 2010 Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Public Information Office for the general public and news media. Summaries are not prepared for every opinion released by the Court, but only for those cases considered of great public interest or in which a Justice dissented or the Court reviewed a case from the Court of Appeals. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official opinions of the Court. The full text of these and all other recent Court opinions are available on the Supreme Court website at www.gasupreme.us . SPURLOCK V. DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES ET AL. (S09A1475) The Georgia Supreme Court has reversed a Bibb County court order that decreased a man's child support payment, but not by as much as he wa nted. Following the 2005 divorce of Scott and Lois Spurlock, the court ordered Scott to pay Lois $1,063 a month in child support. Three years later, Scott asked the Department of Human Resources to review the amount, and the department subsequently recommended to the court that his obligation be reduced to $718 a month. The court instead reduced the monthly amount by $63 to $1,000. Scott then filed an "application to appeal" with the Georgia Court of Appeals, asking for permission to appeal. That court granted his application and asked the lower court to send it the record so it could consider his appeal. In addition to the merits of the case, one of the issues in this appeal is the proper procedure the appellate courts should follow when someone files an application to appeal in the wrong court. After the Court of Appeals granted Scott's application, it realized it lacked jurisdiction and transferred the case to the state Supreme Court. In today's opinion, written by Presiding Justice George Carley, the high court has reversed the lower court's decision and is sending the case back to that court. While the trial court put in its order that due to Scott's high income, it was raising the father's obligation to an amount higher than recommended by the child support guidelines, it failed to put in writing its consideration of several factors required by state law, including how the higher amount would be in the best interest of the child. However, the bulk of today's 10 -page opinion, as well as the 23-page "special concurrence" written by Justice David Nahmias , is devoted to the issues of jurisdiction and

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procedure. All the Justices agree that the state Supreme Court, not the Court of Appeals, had jurisdiction over this appeal because it involved the modification of a child support award which arose from a prior divorce or alimony action. The high court has jurisdiction regardless of whether the request to modify the child support amount comes from a parent or from the state Department of Human Resources. The Justices disagree, however, over what happened once the Court of Appeals realized its mistake in ititally accepting the case. The majority states it was not necessary to strike and re-file the application to appeal, as the special concurrence recommends, "to preserve our ultimate jurisdiction over the application." While the high court could have dismissed the appeal at any time as having been improperly granted, it instead has "implicitly determined that the application was properly granted." "In that way, w e have not only exercised our jurisdiction, we have also chosen not to slow down the already delayed appellate consideration of this case." The special concurrence, joined by Justices P. Harris Hines and Harold Melton, says the high court has been inconsistent in how it has handled similar cases. Upon realizing its mistake, the Court of Appeals should have vacated its order granting the application to appeal, then transferred to the Supreme Court everything related to the appeal, including Scott Spurlock's application to appeal. If the Court of Appeals failed to vacate its order, "this Court should always strike the appeal granted (without jurisdiction) by the Court of Appeals..., re docket the case as an application, and then make our own decision whether or not to grant the application and decide the appeal," the special concurrence says. "I believe I am right on these points, but my larger objective in writing this opinion was to ensure that the Court debate and resolve these jurisdictional and procedural i ssues in a published opinion." Attorney for Appellant (Scott): Scott Spurlock, representing himself (pro se) Attorneys for Appellee (DHR): Martin Fierman, John Sikes, Thurbert Baker, Attorney General, Shalen Nelson, Mark Cicero, Department of Law

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Download February 15, 2009 - SUMMARY for NOTEWORTHY OPINION.pdf

Georgia Law