Chan v. Ellis, No. S14A1652.

• Court: Supreme Court of Georgia
• Writing for the Court: BLACKWELL, Justice.
• Citation: 770 S.E.2d 851,296 Ga. 838
• Docket Number: No. S14A1652.
• Decision Date: 27 March 2015
• Parties: CHAN v. ELLIS.

296 Ga. 838
770 S.E.2d 851

CHAN
v.
ELLIS.

No. S14A1652.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

March 27, 2015.

770 S.E.2d 852

William J. Mckenney, Mckenney & Froelich, Marietta, Oscar Michelen, Mineola, for appellant.

Elizabeth W. McBride, Page Scrantom Sprouse Tucker & Ford, for appellee.

James D. Summerville, Summerville Moore, S. Leighton Moore III, Eugene Volokh, Timothy B. McCormack, amici curiae.

Opinion

BLACKWELL, Justice.

296 Ga. 838

Matthew Chan has a website on which he and others publish commentary critical of copyright enforcement practices that they consider predatory. Linda Ellis is a poet, and her efforts to enforce the copyright in her poetry have drawn the ire of Chan and his fellow commentators. On his website, they have published nearly 2,000 posts about Ellis, many of which are mean-spirited, some of which are distasteful and crude, and some of which publicize information about Ellis that she would prefer not to be so public. At least one post is written in the style of an open letter to Ellis, referring to her in the second person, and threatening to publicize additional information about Ellis and her family if she continues to employ the practices of which Chan and the other commentators disapprove. It is undisputed that Chan never caused any of these posts to be delivered to Ellis or otherwise brought to her attention. But it also is undisputed that Chan anticipated that Ellis might see the commentary on his website, and he may have even intended that she see certain of the posts, including the open letter to her.

Ellis eventually did learn of the posts, and she sued Chan for injunctive relief under the Georgia stalking law,

770 S.E.2d 853

OCGA § 16–5–90 et seq.,¹ alleging that the electronic publication of the posts was a violation of OCGA § 16–5–90(a)(1), which forbids one to “contact” another for certain purposes without the consent of the other. Following an evidentiary hearing, the trial court agreed that the electronic publication of posts about Ellis amounted to stalking, and it entered a permanent injunction against Chan, directing him to, among other things, delete “all posts relating to Ms. Ellis” from his website. Chan appeals, contending that the evidence simply does not show that the publication of posts about Ellis on his website amounts

296 Ga. 839

to the sort of “contact” that is forbidden by OCGA § 16–5–90(a)(1). With that contention, we agree, and we reverse the judgment of the trial court.²

1. We begin with the settled principles that inform our consideration of the meaning of OCGA § 16–5–90(a)(1). A statute draws its meaning, of course, from its text. See Sentinel Offender SVCS. v. Glover, 296 Ga. 315, 328(3)(a), 766 S.E.2d 456 (2014). When we read the statutory text, “we must presume that the General Assembly meant what it said and said what it meant,” Deal v. Coleman, 294 Ga. 170, 172(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337 (2013) (citation and punctuation omitted), and so, “we must read the statutory text in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would.” FDIC v. Loudermilk, 295 Ga. 579, 588(2), 761 S.E.2d 332 (2014) (citation and punctuation omitted). The common and customary usages of the words are important, Hendry v. Hendry, 292 Ga. 1, 2–3(1), 734 S.E.2d 46 (2012), but so is their context. Smith v. Ellis, 291 Ga. 566, 573–574(3)(a), 731 S.E.2d 731 (2012). “For context, we may look to other provisions of the same statute, the structure and history of the whole statute, and the other law—constitutional, statutory, and common law alike—that forms the legal background of the statutory provision in question.”May v. State, 295 Ga. 388, 391–392, 761 S.E.2d 38 (2014) (citations omitted). With these principles in mind, we turn now to the relevant statutory text.

In pertinent part, OCGA § 16–5–90(a)(1) provides that “[a] person commits the offense of stalking when he or she ... contacts another person at or about a place or places without the consent of the other person for the purpose of harassing and intimidating the other person.”³ For purposes of the statute, one “contacts another person”

296 Ga. 840

when he “communicates with another person” through any medium, including an electronic medium. See OCGA § 16–5–90(a)(1).⁴

770 S.E.2d 854

See also Johnson v. State, 264 Ga. 590, 591(1), 449 S.E.2d 94 (1994) (as used in OCGA § 16–5–90, “[t]o ‘contact’ is readily understood by people of ordinary intelligence as meaning ‘to get in touch with; communicate with’ ” (citation and punctuation omitted)). Although one may “contact” another for the purposes of the statute by communicating with the other person through any medium, it nevertheless is essential that the communication be directed specifically to that other person, as opposed to a communication that is only directed generally to the public.⁵ Common and customary usage suggests as much,⁶ as does another provision of the stalking law, which defines “harassing and intimidating” in terms of “a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person. ” OCGA § 16–5–90(a)(1) (emphasis supplied).

2. That a communication is about a particular person does not mean necessarily that it is directed to that person. This principle is reflected in Collins v. Bazan, 256 Ga.App. 164, 568 S.E.2d 72 (2002),...