The Recorder's Court of Chatham County v. the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah

Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia

ATLANTA,____________________ May 22, 2017

The Court of Appeals hereby passes the following order:

A17A0598. THE RECORDER’S COURT OF CHATHAM COUNTY et al. v. THE MAYOR AND ALDERMEN OF THE CITY OF SAVANNAH.

The Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Savannah (“the City”) has moved to dismiss this appeal as moot. For the reasons set forth below, we grant the motion and dismiss the appeal. The appeal is from two orders: (1) the trial court’s September 6, 2016, order granting the City’s request for a declaratory judgment that the City was authorized to release certain documents in response to a request under Georgia’s Open Records Act, OCGA § 50-18-70 et seq., and enjoining the Recorder’s Court of Chatham County (“the Recorder’s Court”) and its Chief Judge from enforcing an order exempting those documents from release; and (2) the trial court’s August 31, 2016, order adding the Chief Judge of the Recorder’s Court as a defendant in the underlying declaratory judgment action. We hereby dismiss the appeal from the September 6 order. It is undisputed that, at this point, the City has released the documents. Consequently, the parties’ disputes over the City’s rights and responsibilities regarding the release of the documents under the Open Records Act and the enforceability of the Recorder’s Court order exempting the documents’ release are moot. See Clark v. Deal, 298 Ga. 893, 894 (2) (785 SE2d 524) (2016). Conceding that these issues are “effectively moot,” the Recorder’s Court and the Chief Judge argue that we should still address the issues in the interest of determining their counterclaims for attorney fees, which the trial court did not address in his orders and which appear to remain pending below. But as we have held in rejecting a similar argument, an “appellate court is not required to retain

a moot case and decide it because a party might possibly derive some future benefit from a favorable adjudication on an abstract question.” Ladder Now v. Hancock Roofing & Constr., 337 Ga. App. 399, 400 (787 SE2d 775) (2016) (citation and punctuation omitted). We also dismiss the appeal from the August 31 order. “No longer piggybacked on th[e] directly appealable issue [of the correctness of the September 6 order granting a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief], the [interlocutory order adding the Chief Judge as a party-defendant] has no independent basis for direct appeal. For that reason, the appeal from the [August 31] order . . . must be dismissed as well.” Ladder Now, 337 Ga. App. at 400-401 (citations omitted). Accordingly, the City’s motion to dismiss this appeal is GRANTED.

Court of Appeals of the State of Georgia Clerk’s Office, Atlanta,____________________ 05/22/2017 I certify that the above is a true extract from the minutes of the Court of Appeals of Georgia. Witness my signature and the seal of said court hereto affixed the day and year last above written.

, Clerk.