Syfert Injury Law Firm

Your Trusted Partner in Personal Injury & Workers' Compensation

Call Now: 904-383-7448

2018 Georgia Code 12-3-81 | Car Wreck Lawyer

Link to State of Georgia Official Statute 2018 Georgia Code Annotated (sourced from legal.resource.org)
O.C.G.A. 12-3-81 Case Law from Google Scholar Amendments to OCGA 12-3-81

TITLE 12 CONSERVATION AND NATURAL RESOURCES

Section 3. Parks, Historic Areas, Memorials, and Recreation, 12-3-1 through 12-3-708.

ARTICLE 3 HISTORIC AREAS

12-3-81. Department named custodian of submerged cultural resources; rules and regulations; reporting findings; duties of state archeologist.

  1. The custodian of all submerged cultural resources shall be the Department of Natural Resources. The Board of Natural Resources is empowered to promulgate such rules and regulations as may be necessary to preserve, survey, protect, and recover such underwater properties and are necessary for the effective administration of this part.
  2. All findings of submerged cultural resources shall be reported to the department within two days, Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays excluded, after being found.
  3. The state archeologist shall have such duties in conducting and supervising the surveillance, protection, preservation, survey, and recovery of submerged cultural resources as he is given by Code Section 12-3-53 for similar land resources.

(Code 1981, §12-3-81, enacted by Ga. L. 1985, p. 906, § 4; Ga. L. 1988, p. 945, § 2.)

Administrative Rules and Regulations.

- Submerged cultural resources, Official Compilation of the Rules and Regulations of the State of Georgia, Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Chapter 391-5-9.

JUDICIAL DECISIONS

Neither O.C.G.A. § 12-3-81 nor O.C.G.A. § 12-3-82(a) are unconstitutional because the statutes do not impinge on federal salvage law and the statutes are not preempted by federal salvage law. Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 584 F. Supp. 2d 1367 (S.D. Ga. 2008), aff'd, 594 F.3d 1330 (11th Cir. Ga. 2010).

State's right to underwater abandoned pre-cut logs.

- State of Georgia asserted a colorable claim to abandoned pre-cut logs that sank in a Georgia river decades earlier under O.C.G.A. § 12-3-81 and the Submerged Lands Act of 1953, 43 U.S.C. § 1311(a)(1), which was one of three grounds the state was required to establish in order to assert the state's immunity from suit under U.S. Const., amend. XI and deprive a federal district court of jurisdiction over a salvor's suit to recover the logs. Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 584 F. Supp. 2d 1367 (S.D. Ga. 2008), aff'd, 594 F.3d 1330 (11th Cir. Ga. 2010).

Constructive possession of submerged logs, as claimed by intervenor state under O.C.G.A. §§ 12-3-81 and12-3-82, was an insufficient interest in the logs to permit the state to assert the state's sovereign immunity to bar plaintiff salvor's suit under U.S. Const., amend. XI; the state did not have possession so as to defeat admiralty jurisdiction due to Eleventh Amendment immunity. Aqua Log, Inc. v. Lost & Abandoned Pre-cut Logs & Rafts of Logs, 632 F. Supp. 2d 1342 (M.D. Ga. 2008).

RESEARCH REFERENCES

ALR.

- Validity, construction, and application of Submerged Lands Act (SLA) of 1953, 43 U.S.C.A. §§ 1301 et seq., 68 A.L.R. Fed. 2d 363.

No results found for Georgia Code 12-3-81.