A Fulton County judge on Wednesday threw out essentially all of a dispute between the city of College Park and Clayton County over the division of tax revenue from alcohol sales at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, ruling the county is protected by sovereign immunity. The dispute has been brewing since 2015, when the city sued the county, saying it was improperly collecting and keeping taxes from wholesale and by-the-drink alcohol sales at the airport, where some areas of the concourse and terminals are in College Park and others in unincorporated Clayton. Clayton instructed vendors to split the taxes collected within the city limits but kept all of the taxes from unincorporated regions. College Park argued that it and the county should each collect taxes in their areas, then split the proceeds 50-50. Superior Court Judge Henry Newkirk agreed with College Park, ruling on summary judgment in 2015 that each party collect the taxes due in their jurisdiction and then divide the funds. He also ordered that the county to undergo an audit and hand over taxes it collected in years past, which at the time were estimated at about $2.5 million by the city's lawyer, Steven Fincher of Jonesboro's Fincher Denmark Minnifield. Fincher had said at the time that the city would realize about $80,000 to $100,00 a month from the tax split. Clayton County appealed, arguing among other thing, that the suit was barred by sovereign immunity. In 2017, the Georgia Supreme Court vacated and remanded the case, ruling the issue of whether sovereign immunity can be raised as a defense in disputes between political subdivisions was not settled law. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Michael Boggs, the high court said the issue “is a complex and important question, and one that we are reluctant to address in the first instance without affording the trial court an opportunity to consider the question and without complete briefing by the parties.” On June 12, Newkirk signed an order finding College Park's claims were “barred in their entirety by sovereign immunity,” with the exception of a takings claim the city included in its complaint. Prior Georgia Supreme Court rulings have stated that the state Constitution's takings clause, which provides for compensation as the remedy for an uncompensated taking, means such claims are not barred by sovereign immunity. The order said sovereign immunity also barred any claims against three county officials who were added to the complaint. The order was prepared by Clayton County's counsel, and notes that the issue of a county's immunity from a city lawsuit was decided in March by the Georgia justices in City of Union Point v. Greene County, S17A1878. That opinion, also authored by Boggs, found the county was immune to any of the city's claims for which a specific waiver of sovereign immunity had not been written into law. Clayton County's attorneys, Richard Carothers and Amy Cowan of Buford's Carothers & Mitchell, did not respond to requests for comment Friday, nor did Fincher.