City of Sandy Springs v. Mills

There was evidence that the descendants of the grantor of a deed for a one acre tract of land that had been conveyed for the purposes of a family burial ground abandoned the tract and they therefore were not entitled to summary judgment in a declaratory judgment action.

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The City of Sandy Springs and 28 alleged “direct descendants” of the grantor of a deed and of one of several individuals named in the deed in whose favor a one acre tract of land had been conveyed in 1900 for the purposes of a family burial ground, appeal the trial court’s denial of their joint motion for summary judgment on a complaint for declaratory judgment Christopher Mills filed in August 2012.1 Mills, who was conveyed the property after it had been sold in a tax sale, filed the complaint after the City denied his request for a permit to build a single-family residence on the portion of the acre tract which contained no graves. The appellants also contend that the trial court committed reversible error by failing to address their contentions as to the validity of the tax sale by the county. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

Summary judgment is proper when there is no genuine issue of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.2 To prevail on a motion for summary judgment, the moving party must show that there is no genuine dispute as to a specific material fact and that this specific fact is enough, regardless of any other facts in the case, to entitle the moving party to judgment as a matter of law. When a defendant moves for summary judgment as to an element of the case for which the plaintiff, and not the defendant, will bear the burden of proof at trial, the defendant may show that he is entitled to summary judgment either by affirmatively disproving that element of the case or by pointing to an absence of evidence in the record by which the plaintiff might carry the burden to prove that element. And if the defendant does so, the plaintiff cannot rest on his pleadings, but rather must point to specific evidence giving rise to a triable issue. We review a grant or denial of summary judgment de novo and construe the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmovant.3

City of Sandy Springs v. Mills

There was evidence that the descendants of the grantor of a deed for a one acre tract of land that had been conveyed for the purposes of a family burial ground abandoned the tract and they therefore were not entitled to summary judgment in a declaratory judgment action.

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