Lee v. Green Land Co., Inc.

527 S.E.2d 204, 272 Ga. 107, 2000 Fulton County D. Rep. 812, 2000 Ga. LEXIS 128

• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Decided: February 28, 2000
• Docket: S99A1493
• Status: Published

Opinions

Sears, Justice.

This appeal is brought from the trial court’s denial of a request for the specific performance of appellant’s proposal to make a contract for the sale of land. Under the Supreme Court’s precedent concerning equity jurisdiction, this Court is without jurisdiction to decide this type of appeal, and therefore it is transferred to the Court of Appeals.

Appellant Lee sought to purchase timber property owned by Alabama Life Insurance Company (ALIC), and the two parties executed a document titled “Offer to Purchase,” which included a contingency provision requiring ALIC to obtain a building permit. Appellant gave ALIC a binder, and when ALIC determined it could not satisfy the contingency, it refunded the binder. Appellant then informed ALIC that he waived the contingency and demanded that ALIC close a sale of the property. ALIC refused, and appellant sought specific performance of their “agreement.” As ALIC was in receivership, its parent, appellee Green Land Company, Inc., acquired the property subject to Lee’s claim. This appeal is brought from the trial court’s award of summary judgment in appellee’s favor.

As conceded by the parties in their respective filings both before this Court and the trial court, appellant’s arguments hinge upon whether the “Offer to Purchase” established either a binding contractual offer to sell or an agreement to purchase the subject property. Otherwise, there can be no claim for specific performance. Naturally, resolution of this dispositive issue will depend upon construing the document’s terms.

Cases in which the grant or denial of equitable relief is “merely ancillary to underlying issues of law, or would [be] a matter of routine once the underlying issues of law [are] resolved,” do not fall within the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over “equity cases.”¹ Generally, the construction of a document, here the “Offer to Purchase,” is a matter of law.² Because the appeal’s resolution turns entirely upon a legal question (i.e., construction of an underlying document), and the availability of equitable relief flows directly therefrom, the appeal is clearly outside of the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction.

Furthermore, this Court has plainly stated that it does not have jurisdiction over cases seeking the specific performance of contractual terms where the issues raised on appeal include the question of whether a valid contract was accepted or rejected.³That is the exact type of appeal at issue here, and its subject matter simply is not within the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over “equity cases.”

Bernstein v. Fagelson⁴ does not compel a different result, as that case pre-dates by approximately 70 years the intensive effort to define the scope of the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over “equity cases” that began with Beauchamp, supra. Nor is a different result compelled by Geriner v. Branigar Organization,⁵ or Eickhoff v. Eickhoff,6 since those two cases wrongly rejected Beauchamp’s pronouncement that whenever the grant or denial of equitable relief is ancillary to an underlying issue of law, the appeal is not within the Supreme Court’s equitable jurisdiction, and instead asserted that the Supreme Court has jurisdiction over any appeal in which “the viability” of a claim for specific performance is an issue to be decided on appeal. Because this “viability” analysis is at odds with Beauchamp’s pronouncements on specific performance, both Geriner and Eickhoff are hereby overruled.

Appeal transferred.

All the Justices concur, except Hunstein, Carley and Thompson, JJ, who dissent.

1 Beauchamp v. Knight, 261 Ga. 608, 609 (409 SE2d 208) (1991).

2 See Carsello v. Touchton, 231 Ga. 878, 880 (204 SE2d 589) (1974).

3 Beauchamp, 261 Ga. at 610, n. 1.

4 166 Ga. 281 (142 SE 862) (1928).

5 268 Ga. 389 (489 SE2d 305) (1997).

6 263 Ga. 498 (435 SE2d 914) (1993).