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51 Mercer L. Rev. 73 (1999-2000)
Georgia's Public Duty Doctrine: The Supreme Court Held Hostage

handle is hein.journals/mercer51 and id is 87 raw text is: Georgia's Public Duty Doctrine: The Supreme Court Held Hostage by R. Perry Sentell, Jr.* A study published in 1994 sought to determine the single most litigated topic in Georgia local government law over the past thirty years.' What legal issue of local government administration had most often confronted Georgia's appellate courts over that recent but considerable span of time?2 The revealed answer to that inquiry commanded serious consideration-not because of its unexpectedness but rather its unequivocal conclusiveness: Local government liability for the alleged misconduct of officers and employees dwarfs all other subtopics. For the past thirty years, liability has extracted more time and attention from Georgia's appellate courts than any other subject of local government law. Liability will assuredly constitute this century's thorn in the crown of local govern- ment administration.' * Carter Professor of Law, University of Georgia (A.B., 1956; LL.B., 1958); Harvard University (LL.M., 1961). Member, State Bar of Georgia. 1. R. Perry Sentell, Jr., Georgia Local Government Law: A Reflection on Thirty Surveys, 46 MERCER L. REv. 1 (1994). The study was a part of the effort to summarize the surveys of important developments in Georgia local government law over the past thirty years. It purported to categorize topics litigated during the past three decades, to calculate the frequency of their appearances in the appellate courts, and to highlight those topics proving the most controversial. The article attempted to trace the thirty-year substantive developments of the four most popular litigated topics and, finally, to obtain from the then- members of Georgia's appellate courts their impressions on the corpus of local government law. 2. Id. at 11. The study reported a total of 1,563 surveyed cases and determined that five subjects accounted for a remarkable 68% of those cases. Id. 3. Id. at 13. The other, but considerably lesser, dominating sub-topics were as follows: Zoning, Officers and Employees, Taxation, and Powers. Id.

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