Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
Docket: S20G1536
Opinion Date: November 23, 2021
Judge: Carla Wong McMillian
Areas of Law: Government & Administrative Law, Personal Injury
Gai Spann filed suit against Rashida Davis and Kyra Dixon, administrators of the City of Atlanta Municipal Court (“the Clerks”), alleging that she was wrongfully arrested and detained as a result of the Clerks’ failure to withdraw a failure-to-appear warrant after it had been canceled by a municipal court. The Clerks raised sovereign immunity and official immunity as defenses in a motion to dismiss, but the trial court instead sua sponte raised and granted the motion based on quasi-judicial immunity, with no prior notice to the parties. The Court of Appeals affirmed. The Georgia Supreme Court granted certiorari to review this case and held the Court of Appeals erred in concluding the trial court was correct to rule sua sponte on the issue of quasi-judicial immunity, even though the defendants did not raise quasi-judicial immunity in the motion to dismiss or the answer. The appellate court’s judgment was reversed and the matter was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings.
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