Lilly v. Heard

• Decision Date: 30 June 2014
• Docket Number: No. S14A0433.,S14A0433.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: LILLY et al. v. HEARD.

295 Ga. 399

761 S.E.2d 46

LILLY et al.

v.HEARD.

No. S14A0433.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 30, 2014.

Maurice Luther King, Jr., The Law Offices of Maurice Luther King, Jr., Albany, for appellant.

Lawton Chad Heard Jr., Cairo, for appellee.

HUNSTEIN, Justice.

Appellants Nettie Lilly and Janet Anderson filed a complaint against appellee Sharon Heard, seeking a writ of quo warranto to remove her from the Baker County Board of Education. Heard moved to dismiss the complaint on various grounds, and the trial court granted the motion. Appellants now appeal from that order. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

1. On November 6, 2012, Heard was elected to the Baker County Board of Education. In July 2013, Appellants filed this action, contending that Heard had been a registered voter in Thomas County from June 2007 until April 30, 2012, when she registered to vote in Baker County, and that she therefore could not meet the residency requirements to be a member of the Baker County Board of Education. See OCGA § 45–2–1(1) (“The residency requirement for a candidate for any county office ... shall be 12 months residency within the county”); Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. VIII, Sec. V, Par. II (providing that local “[s]chool board members shall reside within the territory embraced by the school system and shall have such compensation and additional qualifications as may be provided by law”). To their complaint, Appellants attached Heard's voter registration card from Thomas County, dated June 28, 2007, and documents from the Georgia Secretary of State showing that Heard registered to vote in Baker County on April 30, 2012, and first voted in Baker County on July 31, 2012. Appellants subsequently amended the paragraph of their complaint that alleged that, because Heard was a resident of Thomas County and not Baker County, she did not meet the one-year residency requirement, to allege that Heard “remains unqualified to serve on the Baker County Board of Education as [Heard] does not reside in the District that she represents.” See OCGA § 20–2–51(a) (“No person shall be eligible for election as a member of a local board of education who is not a resident of the school district in which that person seeks election and of the election district which such person seeks to represent.”).

Heard filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, contending that a qualified voter in Baker County, Mendell Cowart, had brought a pre-election challenge to her candidacy, see OCGA § 21–2–6, contending that she was ineligible to run for the local board of education because she had not resided in Baker County for 12 months preceding the election; that the Baker County Board of Elections had resolved that challenge in Heard's favor; and that the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel barred Appellants' action. Heard also moved to dismiss the complaint based on the doctrine of laches and on the ground that the case was moot since Heard took office before Appellants filed their action.

At the hearing on Heard's motion to dismiss, Heard introduced the minutes of the June 18, 2012 hearing held by the Baker County Board of Elections on Cowart's pre-election complaint that Heard was not qualified to run for the school board at the November 6, 2012 election. See OCGA § 21–2–6(b) (saying that “any elector who is eligible to vote” for a candidate for county office may file a pre-election “challenge [to] the qualifications of the candidate by filing a written complaint with the superintendent giving the reasons why the elector believes the candidate is not qualified to seek and hold the public office for which the candidate is offering”); OCGA § 21–2–2(35) (saying that “ ‘[s]uperintendent’ means: (A) Either the judge of the probate court of a county or the county board of elections....”); OCGA § 21–2–40(a) (authorizing the General Assembly to create “by local Act ... a board of elections in any county of this state and empower the board with the powers and duties of the election superintendent”). Those minutes reflect that Cowart, in support of her position that Heard was not a resident of Baker County for one year preceding the November 6, 2012 election, put in evidence that Heard was not on the September 18, 2011 and February 12, 2012 voter lists for Baker County.

In rebuttal, Heard said that she had been living in Baker County since early 2011 and had registered to vote in Baker County in April 2012. She also offered letters from 14 people, some saying that Heard had been living in Baker County for over a year and others saying that she had been living there since 2011, and a light bill from June 2012 that showed Heard's address as Dias Road, Newton, Georgia, which is located in Baker County. Heard's aunt told the election board that Heard had lived in Baker County since 2011, and several other people told the board that she had lived there for over a year.

On June 21, 2012, the election board issued a written ruling, finding that Heard “was a resident of Baker County for 12 months prior to the election as required by OCGA § 45–2–1 and is qualified to offer as a candidate for said office.” Although Cowart had a right to appeal the board's decision to superior court, she did not do so. See OCGA § 21–2–6(e).

On October 24, 2013, the trial court issued an order dismissing Appellants' complaint. It ruled that Appellants' action was barred by the doctrines of mootness, laches, res judicata, and collateral estoppel.

2. Appellants contend that the trial court erred in dismissing their complaint based on the doctrine of res judicata. We conclude that the trial court did not err.

The doctrine of res judicata provides that “[a] judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction shall be conclusive between the same parties and their privies as to all matters put in issue or which under the rules of law might have been put in issue in the cause wherein the judgment was rendered until the judgment is reversed or set aside.” OCGA § 9–12–40. Res judicata thus “prevents the re-litigation of all claims which have already been adjudicated, or which could have been adjudicated, between identical parties or their privies in identical causes of action.”Odom v. Odom, 291 Ga. 811, 812(1), 733 S.E.2d 741 (2012).

(a) We first address whether the Baker County Board of Elections constitutes a “court of competent jurisdiction” for purposes of res judicata.

“Georgia courts have repeatedly held that questions of fact ruled upon by an administrative body are thereafter precluded from relitigation in civil suits by the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel.” Malloy v. State, 293 Ga. 350, 354–355(2)(a), 744 S.E.2d 778 (2013). In doing so, however, our appellate courts have rarely addressed how to decide whether a determination by an administrative agency or board should be accorded the same effect under the rules of res judicata as a judgment of a court. In Ga. Cas. & Surety Co. v. Randall, 162 Ga.App. 532, 292 S.E.2d 118 (1982), overruled on other grounds, Bahadori v. Nat'l Union Fire Ins. Co., 270 Ga. 203(1), 507 S.E.2d 467 (1998), the Court of Appeals addressed the issue, holding that because the Workers' Compensation Act authorized the Board of Workers' Compensation to determine the issue in dispute in that case, the board was acting as a court of competent jurisdiction for purposes of res judicata. Id. at 533–534, 507 S.E.2d 467. And the United States Supreme Court has spoken on the requirements for an administrative adjudication to have preclusive effect.

We have long favored application of the common-law doctrines of collateral estoppel (as to issues) and res judicata (as to claims) to those determinations of administrative bodies that have attained finality. “When an administrative agency is acting in a judicial capacity and resolves disputed issues of fact properly before it which the parties have had an adequate opportunity to litigate, the courts have not hesitated to apply res judicata to enforce repose.” Such repose is justified on the sound and obvious principle of judicial policy that a losing litigant deserves no rematch after a defeat fairly suffered, in adversarial proceedings, on an issue identical in substance to the one he subsequently seeks to raise.

Astoria Fed. Sav. & Loan Assn. v. Solimino, 501 U.S. 104, 107–108, 111 S.Ct. 2166, 115 L.Ed.2d 96 (1991) (citations omitted). Furthermore, the Restatement of the Law, Second, Judgments explains that

[w]here an administrative agency is engaged in deciding specific legal claims or issues through a procedure substantially similar to those employed by courts, the agency is in substance engaged in adjudication. Decisional processes using procedures whose formality approximates those of courts may properly be accorded the conclusiveness that attaches to judicial judgments.

Restatement of the Law, Second, Judgments, § 83, comment (b).

Here, the General Assembly has specifically authorized local boards of elections to resolve factual disputes regarding a candidate's eligibility to run for office, see OCGA § 21–2–6(b), (c), making them the finders of fact and weighers of the credibility of evidence. See id. at (e) (in reviewing a board of elections' decision, a superior court's “review shall be conducted by the court without a jury and shall be confined to the record. The court shall not substitute its judgment for that of the [board of elections] as to the weight of the evidence on questions of fact”). Furthermore, with regard to challenges based on a candidate's residency, the General Assembly has formulated rules to guide local boards of elections, see OCGA § 21–2–217, and has prescribed basic procedural requirements for adjudication of such challenges. See OCGA § 21–2–6(b) (notice requirements); id. at (e) (appeal procedure). It is true, however, that local boards of elections do not operate under the same extent of procedural rules as some other boards to whose rulings our courts have accorded...