HALL v. DAVIS LAWN CARE SERVICE, INC.

After Shauntrice Jones died in a car accident, her mother Margaret Hill sued the driver and his employer on behalf of Jones's two young children in Thomas County, acting as their next friend and later guardian ad litem. Separately, a probate court appointed Michael Hall as the children's conservator, the person legally in charge of their property and, under Georgia law, their litigation decisions. Hall tried to move the case to Gwinnett County and get the Thomas County case dismissed, but courts kept him in the Thomas County case as an involuntary party instead. The Court of Appeals of Georgia had ruled that Hall gave up, or forfeited, his exclusive right to control the litigation because he refused to join voluntarily and instead sought dismissal. The Supreme Court of Georgia disagreed, holding that trying to exclude others and end litigation is itself an exercise of a conservator's exclusive power, not a forfeiture of it. The court reversed that part of the ruling and sent the case back for further proceedings.

A conservator's exclusive statutory power to bring, defend, or participate in litigation for a minor is not forfeited simply because the conservator initially declined to join a pending lawsuit voluntarily and sought its dismissal; those actions are attempts to exercise, not abandon, that power.

The ruling clarifies that conservators appointed to manage a minor's affairs in Georgia keep their exclusive control over lawsuits on the minor's behalf even if they initially resist joining a case filed by someone else, protecting minors' interests from being controlled by whoever sued first.

Reversed in part, vacated in part, and remanded

1. Georgia law gives a court-appointed conservator, someone appointed to manage a minor's property and legal affairs, an 'exclusive power' to bring, defend, or participate in lawsuits on the minor's behalf (O.C.G.A. § 29-3-22 (a) (6)), and this power vests automatically upon appointment without any court order.
2. Because the power is exclusive, it includes not just the ability to litigate but also the ability to exclude other people, like a grandmother acting as guardian ad litem, from litigating on the minor's behalf.
3. The Court of Appeals had ruled the conservator forfeited this power by refusing to join the existing lawsuit and instead seeking its dismissal, relying on the doctrine of invited error, which bars a party from complaining about a ruling caused by its own conduct.
4. The Supreme Court of Georgia found invited error inapplicable because the conservator never got the outcome he sought; every one of his attempts to dismiss or relocate the case was rejected, so he could not have invited any error against himself.
5. The forfeiture theory also conflicted with Georgia's involuntary-joinder rule (O.C.G.A. § 9-11-19 (a)), which lets a court force a reluctant person into a case as a party specifically so that person's rights can be protected; treating a forced-in conservator as having already forfeited his rights would make that joinder rule pointless.
6. Seeking to exclude others from a lawsuit and to have it dismissed is itself an exercise of the exclusive litigation power, not conduct contrary to it, so the conservator's actions could not amount to a forfeiture of that power.

• conservator rights
• wrongful death lawsuit
• involuntary joinder
• guardian ad litem
• minor children's estate