Clay v. Morgan Cnty., No. A24A1013, 2024 WL 4341890 (Ga. Ct. App. Sept. 30, 2024)
As our Supreme Court has recognized, Georgia’s Public Lawsuits Act, OCGA § 50-15-1 et seq., is designed to protect the public from increased costs caused by the filing of non-meritorious or frivolous lawsuits opposing a public improvement project.4 In this vein, OCGA § 50-15-2 provides, generally, that a party bringing a public lawsuit may be required to post a surety bond in order to proceed with their suit. Additionally, OCGA § 50-15-4 limits the number of lawsuits that may be brought against a project: “After a public lawsuit is commenced, no other action relating to the same subject matter shall be commenced, and no trial court shall have jurisdiction of any such subsequent action.”
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Here, the plaintiffs brought lawsuits challenging the Rivian Project, and the opposing parties are clearly political subdivisions within the meaning of the Act. The question, then, is whether the Rivian Project is a “public improvement, project or facility.” The trial court decided this issue in the negative, focusing on the Project’s goal of constructing a private manufacturing plant rather than a public facility. After the trial court issued its order, however, we ruled that the plaintiffs’ Fulton County action challenging the Rivian Project was “clear[ly]” a public lawsuit. In our opinion, we emphasized that the Project was expected to bring a wide array of economic benefits to the community and concluded that the use of State-owned land for the Project therefore qualified as a governmental purpose.10 We now conclude that the instant Morgan County action, like the Fulton County proceeding, is a public lawsuit within the meaning of the Act.
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Under the Civil Practice Act, “[a] civil action is commenced by filing a complaint with the court.”17 “[I]f the statutory text is clear and unambiguous, [the reviewing court] attribute[s] to the statute its plain meaning, and [the court’s] search for statutory meaning is at an end.”18 We therefore conclude that, even though the plaintiffs’ first lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice, it was “commenced” within the meaning of the Act when it was filed with the court.
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Thus, although the plaintiffs listed the constitutional provisions they claim to be violated by the Public Lawsuits Act, they made no effort to demonstrate how the Act violated those provisions. Their conclusory statement, entirely devoid of argument and lacking any reference to applicable authority, was insufficient to preserve their argument that the Public Lawsuits Act is an unconstitutional restriction on the superior court’s jurisdiction.
