JOHN DA GROSA SMITH v. RYAN MILLSAP

319 Ga. 175

• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Decided: May 29, 2024
• Docket: S24C0302
• Status: Published

Opinion

319 Ga. 175 FINAL COPY

S24C0302. SMITH et al. v. MILLSAP et al.

ORDER OF THE COURT.

The Supreme Court today denied the petition for certiorari in this case.

All the Justices concur.

PETERSON, Presiding Justice, concurring.

John Smith’s certiorari petition raises an issue of possible

gravity: whether the broad power of trial courts to order disputed

funds to be paid into the registry of the court pending resolution of

the dispute includes an equally broad power to disburse funds from

the registry before the dispute has been resolved. But this is an issue

of gravity warranting our review in this case only if Smith is correct

that the Court of Appeals actually held that trial courts have such

broad power. He is not.

Although some text in the Court of Appeals’s decision might be

read as Smith does, such a reading requires taking that text out of

the narrow context of the long and complex procedural posture of this case. That makes all the difference. “[A] decision’s holding is

limited to the factual context of the case being decided and the issues

that context necessarily raises. Language that sounds like a holding

— but actually exceeds the scope of the case’s factual context — is

not a holding no matter how much it sounds like one.” Schoicket v.

State, 312 Ga. 825, 832 (1) (865 SE2d 170) (2021) (punctuation

omitted) (quoting Ga. Interlocal Risk Mgmt. Agency v. City of Sandy

Springs, 337 Ga. App. 340, 340 n.1 (788 SE2d 74) (2016)); see also

American Anesthesiology of Ga. v. Northside Hosp., 362 Ga. App.

350, 357 (1) (867 SE2d 531) (2021) (citing the quoted language as

support for its conclusion that a previous decision “must be read as

limited by its facts”).

So understood, the holding of the Court of Appeals was simply

that the trial court had authority to disburse the funds at issue given

the specific circumstances of this case. This narrow holding was

plainly correct. Accordingly, I concur in the denial of Smith’s petition

for a writ of certiorari.

2 I am authorized to state that Justice McMillian joins in this

concurral.

Ordered May 29, 2024.

Certiorari to the Court of Appeals of Georgia — 369 Ga. App.

430.

Blaska Holm, Jeffrey T. Holm, for appellants.

Gamble Clark, David T. Houtsma, Aaron M. Clark; Krevolin &

Horst, Halsey G. Knapp, Jessica Cino, for appellees.