O.C.G.A. § 24-11-3 (2019)
Appointment of auditor; hearing; establishment of duplicates
(a) The court shall either appoint an auditor for such petition in accordance with Chapter 7 of Title 9 or shall conduct a hearing on the petition. If an auditor is appointed, the provisions of Code Sections 9-7-1 through 9-7-16 and Code Section 9-7-21 shall apply to such proceedings. An auditor shall receive compensation for services rendered as may be allowed by the court, to be paid out of the funds of the office of the custodian whose records were lost, mutilated, stolen, or destroyed.
(b) If the court hears the petition, after receiving evidence, the court shall determine whether the purported duplicate is, in fact, the same as the original record which has been lost, mutilated, stolen, or destroyed, and it shall be discretionary with the court to order the whole or any part of such records established. The court shall give precedence to a petition filed pursuant to this article and hear the petition as speedily as possible.
(c) The duplicates which are established pursuant to this Code section, as nearly as may be possible, shall specify and conform to the original book and pages of the same on which they originally existed.
History
Code 1981, § 24-11-3, enacted by Ga. L. 2011, p. 99, § 2/HB 24.
Annotations
JUDICIAL DECISIONS Editor’s notes. - In light of the similarity of the statutory provisions, decisions under former Code 1933, § 38-617, and former O.C.G.A. § 24-8-4 are included in the annotations for this Code section. Discretion of trial court. - In equity cases, the Supreme Court would not interfere with the discretion of a trial judge in overruling exceptions of fact to an auditor’s report, unless it appeared that there had been a manifest abuse of such discretion. Christian v. Bremer, 199 Ga. 285, 34 S.E.2d 40, 1945 Ga. LEXIS 303 (1945) (decided under former Code 1933, § 38617). Copy of zoning ordinance. - Former O.C.G.A. § 24-8-4 expressly contemplated the hearing of evidence and summoning of witnesses, and former O.C.G.A. § 24-8-3 (see now O.C.G.A. § 24-11-2) required that the copy established must conform as nearly as may be possible to the pages on which they originally existed. When a proceeding was instituted to establish a
copy of a public record which had been lost for many years, circumstantial evidence must be resorted to, and any circumstance legitimately offering an inference that the record was as contended could be considered. Establishment of a lost record was necessarily by parol evidence. East Georgia Land & Dev. Co. v. Baker, 286 Ga. 551, 690 S.E.2d 145, 2010 Ga. LEXIS 86 (2010) (decided under former O.C.G.A. § 24-8-4). Burden of proof. - When error was assigned upon the refusal of the judge to approve an exception of fact to an auditor’s report in an equity case, the burden was upon the plaintiff in error to show to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court that the finding of the auditor was unsupported by evidence, the presumption being that the finding was correct; and, if it did not distinctly appear that the finding is unsupported, the judgment refusing to approve the exceptions of fact would be affirmed. Christian v. Bremer, 199 Ga. 285, 34 S.E.2d 40, 1945 Ga. LEXIS 303 (1945) (decided under former Code 1933, § 38-617).
RESEARCH REFERENCES ALR. Admissibility in evidence of audit or
testimony of auditor or accountant, 52 A.L.R. 1266.
ARTICLE 2 PRIVATE PAPERS Law reviews. For article on the 2011 enactment of
this article, see 28 Ga. St. U.L. Rev. 1 (2011).