In Loudermilk, the Court held that Georgia's apportionment statute applies in tort cases in which alleged losses are purely monetary. In the context of the case, damages sought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) are not excluded from apportionment simply because the losses are purely economic.
The case came to the Court in three certified questions from the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. In the underlying case, the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance ordered the closure of the Buckhead Community bank after several large commercial loans the bank issued had failed. The FDIC was appointed as the bank's receiver, and subsequently sued multiple former directors and officers in Federal Court, alleging that they had been grossly negligent under Georgia law in their approval of 10 commercial real estate loans. The FDIC sought nearly $22 million in losses.
Pertinent to the Court's decision today, the District Court denied a motion asking the court to instruct the jury that it should apportion damages according to fault among bank officers found liable. On appeal from a judgement against them of nearly $5 million, the 11th Circuit sent three questions to the Supreme Court of Georgia:
- Does Georgia Code 51-12-33 apply to claims for purely money losses against bank directors and officers?
- Did the apportionment statute abolish Georgia's common-law rule imposing joint and several liability on wrongdoers who act in concert; and
- Us a decision by a bank's board of directors a "concerted action" so that the board members should be held jointly-and-severally liable" for negligence?
(emphasis added). Writing for the Court, Justice Warren answered yes to the first question, no to the second, and declined to further answer the third.
In holding that purely monetary losses may be apportioned, the Court emphasized that "the usual and customary meaning of the term 'property,' as used in a legal context . . . [includes] injuries to tangible and intangible property." (emphasis added).
The Court also indicated that the common law rule of joint and several liability for concerted action survived the enactment of 51-12-33, at least action is "concerted" in the traditional sense understood at common law where fault is not divisible (the "touchstone" of the apportionment statute).
Debelbot et al. v. The State (S18A1073)
In Debelbot the Court vacated the denial of a motion for new trial in the case of a U.S. Army couple convicted of killing their 2-day-old baby by fracturing her skull. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Peterson held that "the nature of the order below prevents meaningful review" of the couple's claims on appeal.
According to the couple, shortly after taking the child home from the hospital for the first time, they awoke in the middle of the night and discovered a lump on the baby's forehead. They child died shortly after they returned to the hospital. A GBI autopsy revealed severe head trauma, and lead the examiner to conclude that the child had died from either a series of blows to the head or a crushing type of injury. While the couple denied any knowledge of how the baby's skull was fractured, the State produced evidence that the child's father told a cellmate that the night the baby came home, he had gone out to buy crack cocaine and returned to find the baby not moving; the mother apparently told the father she had "spanked" the baby. Both parents were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The motion-for-new-trial court rejected the testimony offered by the parents' experts, which claimed the "injuries" were really the result of a birth defect.
In relevant part, the Court held that the nature of the motion-for-new-trial court's order made it difficult to review the parent's claims for ineffective assistance of counsel (based principally on the failure to offer an alternative explanation for how the baby was injured). The trial court's order summarily concluded that none of the parents' witnesses at the hearing were credible, despite having qualified them as expert witnesses, and refused to consider any of the medical evidence they offered as contrary to the Harper v. State (1982) "verifiable certainty" test for determining the admissibility of a scientific procedure. Therefore, rather than say that the new trial should have been granted, the Court vacated the denial and remanded the case for further consideration.
Justice Bethel concurred in the judgement, but wrote separately to criticize a suggestion in the prosecutor's closing argument that "reasonable doubt does not mean beyond all doubt It does not mean to a mathematical certainty . . . . You don't have to be 90 percent sure. You don't have to be 80 percent sure. You don't have to be 51 percent sure." (emphasis added). Justice Bethel emphasized the remark could easily invite the jury to misunderstand the nature of "reasonable doubt" and apply far too low a standard for imposing criminal punishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment