Satcher v. Columbia Cnty., No. S24G0336, 2024 WL 3802370, at *1 (Ga. Aug. 13, 2024)
After briefing, oral argument, and review of the full record, we vacate the Court of Appeals’s opinion to the extent that it upheld the injunction entered by the trial court, with directions that the Court of Appeals vacate the trial court’s injunction as exceeding the bounds permitted by the Georgia Constitution’s limited waiver of sovereign immunity for such relief.
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The injunction entered here clearly exceeds the scope of the sovereign immunity waiver provided by the Just Compensation Provision. The trial court “permanently enjoined” the County “from maintaining a defective storm water drainage system that causes damage to Plaintiffs’ property.” Under Mixon, the waiver of sovereign immunity in this context is limited to that necessary “to stop the taking or damaging until such time as the authority fulfills its legal obligations that are conditions precedent to eminent domain”; i.e., prepayment of just and adequate compensation or exercise of the power of eminent domain under a statute that waives the general requirement of prepayment. 312 Ga. at 548, 864 S.E.2d 67. The injunction here is permanent; on its face, its duration is not limited to the extent of the sovereign immunity waiver recognized in Mixon.3 Thus, the injunction exceeds the waiver of sovereign immunity in this context.
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We also conclude that we should not have granted the property owners’ certiorari petition as to the Court of Appeals’s ruling under OCGA § 36-11-1. That ruling — properly understood — did not articulate a general rule of law of the sort that might have gravity warranting our review; instead, it simply held that the property owners here could not obtain certain damages under the particular facts of this case. Moreover, a review of the full record showed that the apparent tension between the Court of Appeals’s ruling and our decision in Wise Business Forms is not actually present, given a ruling by the trial court that the Court of Appeals did not disturb and is not within the scope of our grant of certiorari. We therefore vacate the order granting the property owners’ petition for a writ of certiorari and deny the petition in that case.
