Federal: 11th Circuit Says Georgia Comp Settlement Is Exempt From Garnishment

Construing Georgia’s post-judgment garnishment statute, O.C.G.A. § 18–4–60 et seq., the Eleventh Circuit of Appeals held that a bank account holder whose accounts included monies he had obtained from a workers’ compensation settlement and those that he received from monthly Social Security disability payments—both of which were exempt—had standing to seek declaratory and injunctive relief against a county clerk of court who was responsible for processing garnishments. That one creditor, after freezing the bank account holder’s funds for more than four months, had finally relented and agreed to a dissolution of the hold on the account did not render the action moot. The 11th Circuit agreed that it was substantially likely that the bank account holder’s exempt funds soon would again be the subject of a garnishment summons; the “capable of repetition, yet evading review” exception applied; the account holder need not wait until the next garnishment to seek relief. The 11th Circuit declined, however, to pass on the constitutionality of the garnishment statute until the district court had addressed the issue.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is a leading commentator and expert on the law of workers’ compensation.

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance. Bracketed citations link to lexis.com.

See Strickland v. Alexander, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 22060 (Nov. 20, 2014) [2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 22060 (Nov. 20, 2014)]

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 89.10 [89.10]

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.

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