Condon v. Vickery

This is a malicious prosecution case in which the trial court granted summary judgment to the defendants. Because the trial court’s summary judgment ruling is erroneous as a matter of law, it must be reversed. John Condon and his wife own 27 acres of land in Henry County that is adjacent to property owned by Charles Vickery. Since 1997, the neighbors have brought various civil and criminal actions against one another. One such action began in December 1999, when Vickery, his wife and their teenaged daughter accused Condon of having committed the offense of stalking over a year-and-a-half earlier by videotaping the daughter and a friend while they were nude in a bathroom inside the Vickerys’ house. A preliminary hearing was held before a magistrate court judge, who found probable cause for stalking and bound the case over to state court. The case was eventually tried before a jury, which found Condon not guilty of stalking.

Condon subsequently filed the instant malicious prosecution action against the Vickerys based on their pursuit of the stalking charge. The Vickerys moved for summary judgment on the ground that the magistrate court’s preliminary finding of probable cause to bind the case over to state court is an absolute bar to the malicious prosecution claim. The trial court agreed and granted summary judgment to the Vickerys on that basis, expressly holding that the magistrate court’s finding of probable cause for the stalking prosecution is dispositive of that issue.