ANDREANA WILLIAMS, CONSERVATOR v. REGENCY HOSPITAL COMPANY, LLC

Andreana Williams sued Regency Hospital and a nurse on behalf of Michelle Hewett, her mentally incapacitated ward, over care Hewett received in 2020. The hospital and nurse asked the trial court to dismiss the case because Georgia's medical malpractice statute of limitations does not pause, or toll, for people who are mentally incompetent, unlike the rule for most other types of lawsuits. Williams argued that this different treatment violates equal protection guarantees, but the trial court dismissed the case, saying the Supreme Court of Georgia had already rejected that argument in an earlier case called Deen v. Stevens. Williams appealed directly to the Supreme Court of Georgia, arguing her case raised a new constitutional issue because she was comparing mentally incompetent malpractice plaintiffs to mentally incompetent plaintiffs in other kinds of lawsuits, a distinction Deen did not address. The court agreed the issue might be new but found the trial court never actually ruled on it, since the trial judge simply treated Deen as controlling. Because a constitutional question must be clearly and distinctly ruled on below before the high court can take direct jurisdiction, the majority sent the case to the Court of Appeals instead. Four justices dissented, saying the trial court's dismissal necessarily rejected the new argument.

Because the trial court did not distinctly rule on the specific equal protection argument Williams raised, treating it instead as foreclosed by existing precedent, the Supreme Court of Georgia lacked the exclusive constitutional-question jurisdiction needed to keep the appeal and transferred the case to the Court of Appeals.

The ruling means Williams's appeal will be decided by the Court of Appeals of Georgia rather than the state's highest court, and it reinforces that trial judges must clearly address novel constitutional arguments, not just cite past precedent, if parties want the Supreme Court of Georgia to hear a direct appeal.

Case transferred to the Court of Appeals

1. The Supreme Court of Georgia has exclusive jurisdiction only over cases where the constitutionality of a law has been drawn in question, and to invoke that jurisdiction the constitutional question must have been raised and distinctly ruled upon by the trial court.
2. The appellant argued that Georgia's malpractice statute of limitations (OCGA § 9-3-73(b)), which does not pause the filing deadline for mentally incompetent malpractice plaintiffs the way it does for mentally incompetent plaintiffs in other lawsuits, violates equal protection, an argument the court found may differ from the one already rejected in Deen v. Stevens.
3. Even assuming this was a new constitutional question, the trial court's order only stated that the Supreme Court of Georgia had already decided the issue against the appellant in Deen, without separately addressing the narrower argument about disparate treatment among subclasses of incompetent plaintiffs.
4. Because the trial court treated the claim as foreclosed by existing precedent rather than distinctly ruling on any new question, the requirement for invoking the Supreme Court of Georgia's exclusive constitutional jurisdiction was not met.
5. With no other basis for jurisdiction, the majority transferred the case to the Court of Appeals of Georgia, while noting that court could send the case back to the trial court if it disagreed with the dismissal's rationale.

• statute of limitations
• equal protection
• mentally incompetent plaintiffs
• medical malpractice lawsuit
• appellate jurisdiction