A White County jury returned a verdict, awarding Gwendell Bulgin $12,600 as just and adequate compensation for condemned land taken by the Georgia Department of Transportation “DOT” for highway expansion, and the trial court entered a final judgment in this amount. Bulgin appeals, asserting several grounds. For the following reasons, we affirm. Viewed favorably to the verdict,1 the evidence shows that in December 2005, the DOT petitioned to condemn .072 acres belonging to Bulgin for an easement necessary for widening a highway. The DOT paid $2,740 into the court registry as just compensation for the taking. Bulgin appealed the award, seeking a jury trial. Following a trial, the jury awarded Bulgin $12,600 in compensation. Bulgin appeals, arguing that: 1 the petition to condemn should have been amended since it did not accurately identify the condemned land; 2 the petition to condemn should have been dismissed as it was not accompanied by a properly notified certificate of appraiser; 3 the trial court erred in failing to strike the testimony of DOT’s real estate appraiser; and 4 the trial court erred in failing to grant a mistrial. We address each argument in turn.
1. As a threshold matter, we must address certain violations of this Court’s rules, which have greatly hampered our review of this appeal. First, we note that appellant’s counsel, Richard Hubert, has disregarded this Court’s rule, which mandates that the sequence of arguments in the brief “shall follow the order of the enumeration of errors, and shall be numbered accordingly.”2 Hubert also has failed to follow Court of Appeals Rule 25 a 1, which requires that factual assertions be supported by citation to “such parts of the record or transcript essential to a consideration of the errors complained of . . . Record and transcript citations shall be to the volume or part of the record or transcript and the page numbers that appear on the appellate record or transcript as sent from the trial court.” Although Hubert’s brief does provide some citation to the record, there are many factual assertions that are unsupported. “We remind counsel that it is not the job of the Court of Appeals to cull the record on behalf of a party, and that a lack of proper citations greatly hinders our consideration of the issues on appeal.”3
