237 Ga. App. 716 - Sidwell v. Sidwell’s Empirical Analysis
1999
Citation profile
13 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently February 2020
13 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on 229 Ga. App. 119 - Stewart v. Turner · 198 Ga. App. 99 - First Union National Bank v. Floyd · 226 Ga. App. 812 - Holt v. Scott · 130 Ga. App. 228 - Coleman v. Dairyland Insurance · 140 Ga. App. 131 - B-X Corp. v. Fulton Plumbing Co.
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“When this case lapsed into default after the expiration of the 15-day statutory grace period, the [Cottons] became entitled to verdict and judgment by default as if every item and paragraph of [their] complaint was supported by proper evidence. OCGA § 9-11-55 (a). Instead, the trial court dismissed the complaint. Although OCGA § 9-11-55 (b) empowers a trial court with broad discretion to open default, that discretion is not without limit. By erroneously dismissing the [Cottons’] complaint, the trial court enabled [Lamb] to circumvent the strict requirements for opening default.”
1 later decision quote this exact passagee.g. Cotton v. Lamb“testified that they did not answer the lawsuit because they did not want to upset the elder [father], [and] they still did not bother to file a response until 25 days after he died”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.