ULTRA GROUP OF COMPANIES, INC. v. PRINCE AND PRINCE, LLC

Ultra Group of Companies placed coin-operated amusement machines in a business owned by Prince and Prince, LLC, and a dispute arose over their contract. The Georgia Lottery Corporation, which oversees these machines, held an arbitration where a hearing officer first issued an 'Interim Award' resolving most issues, then later issued a 'Final Award' that adopted the interim ruling and resolved the remaining fee and cost disputes. Ultra sought review of the Final Award, not the earlier Interim Award, within the agency's deadlines. A Fulton County superior court dismissed Ultra's appeal, ruling Ultra should have separately appealed the Interim Award within 10 days, and the Court of Appeals of Georgia affirmed without an opinion. The Supreme Court of Georgia took up the case and decided that under the lottery agency's own rules, only a single final order, called an 'Executive Order,' can be appealed, and here that was the Final Award. Because Ultra appealed the Final Award on time, the courts below were wrong to dismiss the case.

Under the Georgia Lottery Corporation's rules, only a single 'Executive Order' resolving all issues in a dispute is appealable; an earlier 'Interim Award' that leaves claims unresolved is not a final, appealable order, so a party's appeal from the later Final Award, filed within the required time, preserves its appeal rights.

The decision clarifies how businesses that host coin-operated amusement machines and companies that supply them must navigate lottery agency dispute procedures, confirming they need not separately appeal preliminary rulings and can wait for a truly final order before appealing to superior court.

Judgment reversed

1. The court applied a de novo standard of review, meaning it examined the legal questions about the meaning of the lottery agency's appeal rules fresh, without deferring to the lower courts' conclusions.
2. The court read the lottery agency's rules in context, noting that Georgia law lets the Georgia Lottery Corporation define what counts as a final, appealable decision so long as that definition does not conflict with the Georgia Arbitration Code.
3. The court observed that the agency's rules require the hearing officer to issue a single capitalized 'Executive Order' containing the full determination and any penalties, and that this Order is the only document required to be served and executed, showing the rules contemplate one final order rather than separate interim and final orders.
4. Because the earlier Interim Award left Ultra's claims for fees and costs unresolved, it did not qualify as the Executive Order under the rules, and only the later Final Award, which resolved all remaining issues, counted as the appealable order.
5. Since Ultra filed its request for review of the Final Award within the ten-day window required by the agency's rules, Ultra preserved its right to appeal, meaning the superior court and the Court of Appeals of Georgia were wrong to dismiss the case for missing a deadline tied to the Interim Award.
6. The court disapproved of a prior Court of Appeals of Georgia decision, Lucky Fortune, LLC v. Ga. Lottery Corp., to the extent it assumed the agency's rules place no limit on which type of order can be appealed, because that assumption conflicted with the court's reading of the rules here.

• coin-operated amusement machines
• Georgia Lottery Corporation
• arbitration appeal deadlines
• final order rules
• COAM dispute