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Kliesrath v. Estate of Davis

The Court of Appeals did not have jurisdiction over a direct appeal from a decision denying two police officers' motion for summary judgment based on official and qualified immunity in a lawsuit arising from a death after the officers tased a person multiple times, since the officers should have followed the interlocutory appeal procedures.

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In May 2010, Audrecas Davis died after being tased multiple times by DeKalb County police officers. Davis’s estate sued the officers, alleging state law claims and a claim under 42 USC § 1983. Appellants are four police officers who moved for summary judgment on the basis of official and qualified immunity. The trial court denied the motion, and the Court of Appeals affirmed without opinion pursuant to its Rule 36. See Kliesrath v. Estate of Davis, 331 Ga. App. XXIV Case No. A14A1934 decided Mar. 30, 2015. We granted certiorari to consider the merits of appellants’ immunity claims. However, because we now determine that the Court of Appeals did not have jurisdiction of the appeal, we vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

After the trial court denied appellants’ motion for summary judgment based on their claims of qualified and official immunity, appellants filed a direct appeal to the Court of Appeals. This Court, however, recently reiterated the rule that we established in Turner v. Giles, 264 Ga. 812, 813 450 SE2d 421 1994, that an order denying a motion based on an immunity defense is interlocutory, that it is not directly appealable under the collateral order doctrine, and that an appeal of such an order must proceed through the interlocutory appeal procedures of OCGA § 5-6-34 b. See Rivera v. Washington, __Ga.____Se2d__ 2016 Case No. S15G0887, decided Mar. 25, 2016 2016 Ga. Lexis 248, 11-17. In so ruling, we overruled numerous Court of Appeals cases that had applied the collateral order doctrine in cases claiming sovereign, official, qualified, or other immunity. See id. 17, n.7.

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