--- title: JOHN DA GROSA SMITH v. RYAN MILLSAP collection: opinions id: S24C0302 cite_as: JOHN DA GROSA SMITH v. RYAN MILLSAP, 319 Ga. 175 (2024) canonical_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24C0302 md_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24C0302.md text_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24C0302/text source_url: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10680326/john-da-grosa-smith-v-ryan-millsap/ date: 2024-05-29 status: published corpus_version: opinions-2026-09-14 license: Public record of the Supreme Court of Georgia, via CourtListener and the court's own website; see about.md publisher: Georgia Commons, an independent project of Georgia Civic Data. Not the State of Georgia. Not legal advice. up: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/2024.md previous: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24A0351.md next: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24Y0549.md index: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/index.md omitted: opinion extras omitted_chars: 1661 omitted_url: https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24C0302.md?full=1 docket: S24C0302 citation: 319 Ga. 175 court: Supreme Court of Georgia case_type: civil authoring_justice: Peterson disposition: Certiorari petition denied vote: All the Justices concur word_count: 396 date_filed_source: courtlistener record_source: courtlistener legal_areas: - civil procedure - property upstream_id: "10680326" summaries_model: claude-sonnet-5 --- # JOHN DA GROSA SMITH v. RYAN MILLSAP Supreme Court of Georgia, docket S24C0302, filed 2024-05-29, 319 Ga. 175. ## Opinion 319 Ga. 175 FINAL COPY S24C0302. SMITH et al. v. MILLSAP et al. ORDER OF THE COURT. The Supreme Court today denied the petition for certiorari in this case. All the Justices concur. PETERSON, Presiding Justice, concurring. John Smith’s certiorari petition raises an issue of possible gravity: whether the broad power of trial courts to order disputed funds to be paid into the registry of the court pending resolution of the dispute includes an equally broad power to disburse funds from the registry before the dispute has been resolved. But this is an issue of gravity warranting our review in this case only if Smith is correct that the Court of Appeals actually held that trial courts have such broad power. He is not. Although some text in the Court of Appeals’s decision might be read as Smith does, such a reading requires taking that text out of the narrow context of the long and complex procedural posture of this case. That makes all the difference. “[A] decision’s holding is limited to the factual context of the case being decided and the issues that context necessarily raises. Language that sounds like a holding — but actually exceeds the scope of the case’s factual context — is not a holding no matter how much it sounds like one.” Schoicket v. State, 312 Ga. 825, 832 (1) (865 SE2d 170) (2021) (punctuation omitted) (quoting Ga. Interlocal Risk Mgmt. Agency v. City of Sandy Springs, 337 Ga. App. 340, 340 n.1 (788 SE2d 74) (2016)); see also American Anesthesiology of Ga. v. Northside Hosp., 362 Ga. App. 350, 357 (1) (867 SE2d 531) (2021) (citing the quoted language as support for its conclusion that a previous decision “must be read as limited by its facts”). So understood, the holding of the Court of Appeals was simply that the trial court had authority to disburse the funds at issue given the specific circumstances of this case. This narrow holding was plainly correct. Accordingly, I concur in the denial of Smith’s petition for a writ of certiorari. I am authorized to state that Justice McMillian joins in this concurral. Ordered May 29, 2024. Certiorari to the Court of Appeals of Georgia — 369 Ga. App. 430. Blaska Holm, Jeffrey T. Holm, for appellants. Gamble Clark, David T. Houtsma, Aaron M. Clark; Krevolin & Horst, Halsey G. Knapp, Jessica Cino, for appellees. ## Summaries written by Georgia Commons The following was written by claude-sonnet-5 from the opinion above and is not part of the court's opinion. Quote the opinion, not the summary. The Supreme Court of Georgia declined to review a Court of Appeals ruling about disbursing disputed funds held by a trial court, with a concurring opinion explaining why the lower court's decision was too narrow to raise a serious legal question. ### Plain-language summary John Smith asked the Supreme Court of Georgia to review a decision by the Court of Appeals of Georgia in a dispute over money that had been paid into a trial court's registry pending resolution of a lawsuit. Smith argued the Court of Appeals had ruled broadly that trial courts can release such disputed funds before the underlying dispute is even resolved, and he wanted the Supreme Court to weigh in on that broad question. The Supreme Court denied his petition for certiorari, meaning it chose not to take up the case. In a concurring opinion, one Justice explained that the Court of Appeals never actually made the sweeping ruling Smith described. Read in the specific procedural context of this case, the Court of Appeals only held that the trial court had authority to release the funds under these particular circumstances, and that narrower holding was correct. ### Holding, as summarized The court denied review, and the concurring opinion clarified that the Court of Appeals' decision should not be read as granting trial courts broad power to disburse disputed funds before a case is resolved; its holding was limited to the narrow facts of this case, where releasing the funds was proper. ### Disposition Certiorari petition denied. All the Justices concur. ### Why it matters The order leaves intact the Court of Appeals ruling allowing the trial court to release the disputed funds in this specific case, but it does not establish a broad rule for other Georgia cases about when courts can disburse registry funds before a dispute is resolved. > The summarized reasoning, checked quotes, suggested questions, and the CourtListener opinion records (1,661 characters) are at https://georgiacommons.org/opinions/S24C0302.md?full=1