Steven Setlock and his father, Eugene Setlock, entered an alleged oral agreement to purchase a lake house property located in Blairsville, Georgia “Lake House”. The agreement provided for Eugene to pay $150,000 of the $203,250 purchase price. Steven was to finance the remainder and pay the monthly mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance on the property. Despite the alleged oral agreement for the parties to purchase the property together, title to the property was acquired solely in Steven and his wife’s names, and Steven contends that Eugene and his wife were only allowed to live at the Lake House as Steven and his wife’s tenants. See, e.g., Browning v. Fed. Home Loan Mortgage Corp. , 210 Ga. App. 115 3 435 SE2d 450 1993. While Eugene and his wife were living on the property, a dispute arose between the parties, which eventually led to Steven filing a dispossessory action against Eugene and his wife in the Union County Magistrate Court in July 2007. Eugene filed counterclaims seeking to quiet title, a declaratory judgment, and an injunction, and pursuing money damages that exceeded the $15,000 jurisdictional limit1 of the magistrate court the “Lake House claims”.2 Based on his assertion of equitable claims and a request for money damages in excess of the magistrate court’s jurisdictional limit, Eugene petitioned to have the case removed to the Superior Court of Union County. However, the magistrate court denied transfer and entered a judgment, granting possession of the Lake House to Steven and granting a writ of possession in favor of Steven, requiring Eugene and his wife to vacate the premises. Eugene then attempted to appeal the magistrate court judgment to the Superior Court of Union County, but the superior court dismissed the appeal as untimely.
On May 22, 2008, Eugene then filed in the Superior Court of Union County a Petition to Quiet Title, which contained the same Lake House claims that he had previously filed as counterclaims in the magistrate court dispossessory action. Steven moved to dismiss the complaint, and the superior court granted the motion with regard to the Lake House claims, determining that the doctrine of res judicata barred Eugene from reviving in superior court the same claims that he had previously asserted as counterclaims in magistrate court. We granted Eugene’s application for discretionary appeal to determine whether the superior court erred in determining that Eugene’s Lake House claims were barred by res judicata. For the reasons that follow, we reverse.
