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Alexander v. Gibson

Clerk of the court had a clear duty to file appellee's motion to compel under the requested case number without making an independent determination about whether a new case number should have been assigned, and the trial court therefore properly granted appellee's petition for a writ of mandamus to force clerk to file the motion under the requested case number.

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This case arises out of the refusal of Richard Alexander, in his capacity as the Clerk for the State Court of Gwinnett County, to file a motion to compel discovery under a particular case number requested by the filing party, Thomas Gibson. The requested case number had previously been assigned to a case to which the motion to compel was directly related, and Gibson filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in an effort to force Alexander to file the motion to compel under this case number. The trial court granted the mandamus petition, and Alexander appeals from this ruling. Because we find that Alexander had a clear duty as the Clerk of the court to file the motion to compel under the requested case number without making an independent determination about whether a new case number should be assigned, we affirm.

By way of background, on May 8, 2014, Gibson filed a complaint in Gwinnett County State Court against Samuel Wright, and the case was assigned Case No. 14-C-020432-2. When Wright failed to answer, a default judgment was entered against him on December 2, 2014. Gibson served post-judgment interrogatories on Wright on January 13, 2015, but again, Wright failed to respond. Gibson then prepared a motion to compel discovery, using Case No. 14-C-020432-2, which he presented for filing in Gwinnett County State Court on July 17, 2015. However, a representative of the Clerk’s office indicated to Gibson that the motion to compel would have to be filed under a new case number, 15-C-03773-2, because the motion was being filed more than thirty days after the default judgment had been entered against Wright. Despite Gibson’s repeated efforts to file the motion to compel under Case No. 14-C-020432-2, he was forced to proceed under Case No.15-C-03773-2.

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