NOTICE: This opinion is subject to modification resulting from motions for reconsideration under Supreme Court
Rule 27, the Court’s reconsideration, and editorial revisions by the Reporter of Decisions. The version of the
opinion published in the Advance Sheets for the Georgia Reports, designated as the “Final Copy,” will replace any
prior version on the Court’s website and docket. A bound volume of the Georgia Reports will contain the final and
official text of the opinion.
SUPREME COURT OF GEORGIA
Case No. S24C0848
December 10, 2024
The Honorable Supreme Court met pursuant to adjournment.
The following order was passed:
TRENT SPECKHALS et al. v. GOLF & TENNIS PRO SHOP, INC.
et al.
The Supreme Court today denied the petition for certiorari in
this case.
All the Justices concur.
Court of Appeals Case No. A23A1532
SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF GEORGIA
Clerk’s Office, Atlanta
I certify that the above is a true extract from the
minutes of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
Witness my signature and the seal of said court hereto
affixed the day and year last above written.
, Clerk
In the Supreme Court of Georgia
Decided: December 10, 2024
S24C0848. SPECKHALS et al. v. GOLF & TENNIS PRO SHOP,
INC. et al.
WARREN, Justice, concurring in the denial of certiorari.
In this breach of contract action, involving whether petitioners
Trent Speckhals and Jorge Cora could exercise warrants for the
purchase of stock in Golf & Tennis Pro Shop, Inc. d/b/a PGA Tour
Superstore (“GTPS”), petitioners contend that the Court of Appeals
erred by summarily affirming under that court’s Rule 36 the trial
court’s grant of summary judgment to respondents (GTPS, AMB
Group LLC, and John Does 1-3) and denial of petitioners’ motion for
summary judgment. They also contend that the Court of Appeals
erred by affirming under Rule 36 the trial court’s ruling granting
respondents’ motion to strike certain documents that petitioners
filed in opposition to respondents’ motion for summary judgment. In
2
this regard, petitioners assert that the trial court’s determination
that those documents were untimely filed under OCGA § 9-11-6 (e)—
and the Court of Appeals’s affirmance of that ruling—were
erroneous.
Petitioners’ first contention presents a fact-specific issue that
asks for no more than error correction. However, petitioners present
a second question that is of “great concern, gravity, [and] importance
to the public”: whether OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) applies to email service
generated by an electronic filing service provider.1 For the reasons
that follow—and particularly given that the trial court offered an
alternate ground for deciding the summary judgment motion and
the Court of Appeals’s summary ruling may well have affirmed on
that alternative ground instead of the statutory ground—I agree
that we should not grant certiorari to answer that question in this
1 Petitioners also briefly assert a third contention: that we should grant
certiorari on the issue of the stricken documents to address whether,
alternatively, certain affidavits included in those documents were timely filed
under OCGA § 9-11-56 (c), which says that a party opposing a motion for
summary judgment “may serve opposing affidavits” “prior to the day of [the]
hearing” on the motion. But because, in my view, all of petitioners’ documents
opposing the motion for summary judgment were timely filed under OCGA
§ 9-11-6 (e), I do not address timeliness under OCGA § 9-11-56 (c).
3
case. But I write separately to express my concern about the trial
court’s interpretation of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e).
1. The factual scenario in which this legal question arises
illustrates the interpretive question the trial court had to answer
here. Petitioners moved for summary judgment; respondents
opposed it and filed a cross-motion for summary judgment; and then
petitioners filed a response opposing the cross-motion. The
problem—at least according to the trial court—is that petitioners
filed their response in opposition 33 days after respondents filed
their cross-motion.
Generally, a party responding to a motion for summary
judgment (here, a cross-motion) has 30 days to respond to that
motion. See Uniform Superior Court Rule 6.2. But OCGA § 9-11-6
(e) provides three additional days to respond when notice of the
document the party is responding to has been served by email. See
OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) (“Additional time after service by mail or e-mail.
Whenever a party has the right or is required to do some act or take
some proceedings within a prescribed period after the service of a
4
notice or other paper, other than process, upon him or her, and the
notice or paper is served upon the party by mail or e-mail, three days
shall be added to the prescribed period.”). Petitioners contend that
OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) provided them three additional days to respond
to respondents’ cross-motion for summary judgment because notice
of that motion was served by an email generated by an electronic
filing service provider and that they accordingly relied on OCGA §
9-11-6 (e) when they filed their response 33 days after respondents
filed their cross-motion.
The trial court disagreed and concluded that OCGA § 9-11-6 (e)
did not provide three additional days for petitioners to respond
because “[t]he 3-day rule applies to service by mail or e-mail, but not
to service by electronic filing.” The court reached this conclusion
even after acknowledging that “the electronic filing system does
send an e-mail alert to registrants after an electronic filing.” The
trial court therefore granted respondents’ motion to strike
petitioners’ response, and the Court of Appeals, relying on its Rule
36, summarily affirmed the trial court’s order, including its
5
interpretation of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e), in an unpublished opinion.
2. I do not agree with the trial court’s interpretation of OCGA
§ 9-11-6 (e); as explained below, the text of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) does
not appear to support the trial court’s construction of that provision.
And I am concerned that the trial court’s conclusion about the
inapplicability of the three-day rule to email notices generated by,
and served from, an electronic filing service provider will cause
confusion among litigants—plaintiffs, defendants, and other
interested parties—across Georgia. As amici point out, “Lawyers
and litigants can no longer rely on what was previously considered
clear—that under [OCGA] § 9-11-6 (e), three days were added to the
time to respond after receiving service by e-mail of e-filed
documents.”2
“When presented with a question of statutory interpretation,
we begin by examining the statute’s plain language, reading the text
‘in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of
2 I thank counsel for amici curiae Thirty-Seven Georgia Attorneys in
Support of Certiorari for a thoughtful amicus brief.
6
the English language would.’” Green v. State, 311 Ga. 238, 242 (857
SE2d 199) (2021) (citation omitted). And ‘“we must afford the
statutory text its plain and ordinary meaning, [viewed] in the
context in which it appears.’” Id. (citation omitted). The statute at
issue here—OCGA § 9-11-6 (e)—is titled “[a]dditional time after
service by mail or e-mail” and says, “Whenever a party has the right
or is required to do some act or take some proceedings within a
prescribed period after the service of a notice or other paper, other
than process, upon him or her, and the notice or paper is served upon
the party by mail or e-mail, three days shall be added to the
prescribed period.” The plain language of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) grants
additional time to respond to a notice that is served by email. The
statute says nothing about how that email is generated or sent, and
it does not contain any exceptions—let alone some type of carveout—for emails that are sent by an electronic filing service provider.
That leads me to the conclusion that the text of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e)
plainly applies the three-day rule to notices served by email, without
expressly limiting its application to any particular sort of emails.
7
This reading of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) is supported by the text of
OCGA § 9-11-5 (b), which governs the methods of service of
pleadings or other papers filed after an original complaint in civil
cases. In this respect, OCGA § 9-11-5 (b) provides that service on a
party’s attorney shall be made “by delivering a copy” to the attorney
or by “mailing” the copy to the attorney’s address (or if no address is
known, leaving it with the clerk of court). The statute defines
“‘delivery of a copy’” as follows: (1) handing the copy to the attorney;
(2) leaving it at the attorney’s office with a person in charge thereof
(or if they have no office, at the attorney’s dwelling house with a
person of suitable age and discretion residing therein); or (3)
“transmitting a copy via email in portable document format (PDF)
to the [attorney] using all email addresses provided pursuant to
subsection (f) of this Code section and showing in the subject line of
the email message the words ‘STATUTORY ELECTRONIC
SERVICE’ in capital letters.” Under subsection (f), which governs
the “[e]lectronic service of pleadings,” a person may consent to being
served with pleadings electronically in three ways: (1) by filing a
8
notice of consent to electronic service and including his email
address; (2) by including his email address in or below the signature
block of the complaint or answer; or (3) if the person is an attorney
and files a pleading through an electronic filing service provider. In
this third respect, OCGA § 9-11-5 (f) (4) says that the attorney will
“be served electronically with future pleadings for such case at the
primary email address on record with the electronic filing service
provider.”
Thus, the text of OCGA § 9-11-5 indicates that when a notice
is served on an attorney who has consented to be served pursuant to
an email generated by an electronic filing service provider under
subsection (f) (4), service has been made by delivery of a copy of the
notice by “transmitting [the] copy via email” under subsection (b).
Because OCGA § 9-11-5 suggests that an email generated by an
electronic filing service provider is an “email” for purposes of
accomplishing service, it supports the view that OCGA § 9-11-6 (e)’s
grant of additional time after service of a notice by “email” similarly
encompasses emails generated by an electronic filing service
9
provider. For these reasons, I disagree with the trial court’s
determination that the three-day rule in OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) does not
apply to service by electronic filing and with the Court of Appeals’s
summary affirmance of that ruling. 3
3. This case, however, is not the appropriate vehicle to address
the proper construction of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e). The trial court
expressly noted in its ruling striking petitioners’ response opposing
respondents’ motion for summary judgment that “consideration of
these materials would not change the [c]ourt’s decision on the crossmotions,” so it seems that the court’s exclusion of petitioners’
response had no effect on its summary-judgment ruling. And in
summarily affirming the trial court’s judgment, the Court of Appeals
did not expressly address in a published opinion the trial court’s
improper interpretation of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e). I therefore agree with
3 I also disagree with the trial court that cases such as Labat v. Bank of
Coweta, 218 Ga. App. 187, 188-189 (460 SE2d 831) (1995)—which held that the
three-day rule did not apply to papers served by certified mail—is a proper
analog to emails generated by an electronic filing system, or that it speaks to
whether the text of OCGA § 9-11-6 (e) precludes application of the three-day
rule to such emails.
10
this Court’s decision to deny certiorari, but note that we should
consider addressing this issue of statutory intepretation if it arises
again in an appropriate case.
I am authorized to state that Chief Justice Boggs, Presiding
Justice Peterson, Justice McMillian, and Justice Colvin join in this
concurrence.
11