City of Macon et al. v. Brown

The trial court erred in denying defendants' motion for summary judgment in plaintiff's suit alleging that defendants were liable for damages for failing to maintain a public roadway that caused a collision because plaintiff's evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to create a genuine issue of fact as to whether defendants had constructive notice of the alleged defect.

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Bethel, Judge. James Nathan Brown (“Brown”) sued the City of Macon, Mayor Robert Reichart, and the members of Macon’s City Council^{^[1]} (hereinafter collectively referred to as the “City Defendants”) alleging that the City Defendants were liable for damages for failing to maintain a public roadway which caused a collision involving Brown. The trial court denied the City Defendants’ motion for summary judgment by concluding that photographs of the defect offered by Brown, which were taken two weeks after his accident, created a question of fact as to whether the City Defendants had constructive notice of the alleged defect. Because these photographs alone are insufficient as a matter of law to establish a question of fact as to the City Defendants’ constructive knowledge of the alleged defect, we reverse.Summary judgment is proper when the moving party shows that no genuine issue of material fact exists, and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. We apply a de novo standard of review to an appeal from a grant or denial of summary judgment and construe the evidence most favorably to the nonmovant.

Welch v. Ga. Dept. of Transp., 283 Ga. App. 903, 903 (642 SE2d 913) (2007) (footnotes omitted).However, summary judgment cannot be avoided based on speculation or conjecture; once the pleadings are pierced with actual evidence, the plaintiff must point to admissible evidence showing a genuine issue of fact. As our Supreme Court explained, while the evidence of the nonmovant is to be believed, and all justifiable inferences are to be drawn in his favor, that does not mean that a plaintiff may defeat a defendant’s properly supported motion for summary judgment without offering any concrete evidence from which a reasonable juror could, return a verdict in his favor and by merely asserting that the jury might, and legally could disbelieve the defendant’s denial of wrongdoing.

City of Macon et al. v. Brown

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