MACON, Ga. — A panel of Georgia Court of Appeals judges were skeptical of Macon-Bibb County's efforts to seize a west Macon apartment complex with a long history of crime, drugs and shootings.
Back in August, Macon-Bibb County announced it was trying to place the Green Meadows Townhomes in a receivership, where a court-appointed manager takes over an entity. A Bibb County Superior Court judge signed off, saying the apartment complex met the definition of a “nuisance” under Georgia law.
But the attorney for the townhome says the county and the trial court had erred. They primarily argue that the court needed to prove the owner's actions caused an increase in violent crime.
“If you are unable to effectively resolve third-party criminal activity on your property – despite your best effort – the government can come in and commandeer that property,” attorney Harold Melton told the court of appeals. “That is Macon-Bibb County’s position; that is flat wrong.”
On Wednesday, Melton and Macon-Bibb County attorney Michael McNeill faced off before a panel of three judges in Georgia’s Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
It is the highest-profile challenge to Macon-Bibb County's use of Georgia's nuisance law in recent memory. In previous cases, the Georgia nuisance statute has been used to shut down gas stations, liquor stores or bars with histories of violence.
Melton and the judges criticized the county for not giving Green Meadows the chance to fix these problems on their own. Melton said the county or the sheriff's office had never given the company any instructions to fix anything before issuing the receivership and seizing the property.
But the county said the previous judges were right to issue the order because violence at the Green Meadows had long been a problem.
“The difference is, over the two years that they did own the property, the conditions got worse and worse,” McNeill argued.
In the complaint, Macon-Bibb County says the townhomes had not done enough to curb rampant violence. They point to the 133 shootings at the townhomes between March 2022 and June 2023 and argue management failed to address drug dealing and gangs at the complex.
In total, the sheriff's office received over 1,800 calls between March 2020 and August 2023 originating from the townhomes, the county argued in its complaint. They called it statistically the most dangerous property in Macon-Bibb County.
Tough questions:
The county received a tense welcome from Chief Judge Stephen Louis A. Dillard, who lives in Macon.
“I’m just going to tell you, counsel, I am stunned at Macon-Bibb County’s behavior in this case,” Dillard said. “I am absolutely stunned that you thought that you could take someone’s business away, remove control. You don’t contact them, you don’t give them any chance to remediate the problem… You just rush to a judge, you install a receiver, who takes over someone’s business without due process.”
McNeill and the judges clashed over the county turning to a receiver and seizing the business rather than turning directly to the townhomes to address those issues on their own.
“They ran a terrible business,” Judge J. Wade Padgett said. “That gives you the authority to go take it?”
But McNeill said the townhomes were a danger to the community under its previous management.
”They ran a business that was so terrible that they endangered 155,000 residents of Macon-Bibb,” McNeill said. “Whenever there was a criminal incident there and the sheriff’s office had to respond, they had to bring one squad to process the crime scene and they had to pull every police officer – every uniformed patrol officer in the entire county – to protect the responding squadron… They would fight the deputies who were responding.”
McNeill said the previous judges found there was “knowing and intentional misconduct in managing this property in a way that endangered all the people who were there.”
“I agree that is an extraordinary measure,” McNeill said. “But the two trial court judges that considered this matter found that this was the lightest touch.”
The judges challenged that argument, but McNeill said the other option was to kick all the residents out.
McNeill said they had seen crime at Green Meadows decrease by roughly 90% before the court issued a stay, installing the original management as the case moved through the courts.
However, the townhome's attorney Melton argued the trial court did not complete the necessary analysis under the law. They say the court had to prove the townhomes were responsible for the “creation, continuance or maintenance of a harm.” He argues the court and the county failed to do that.
Crime was a problem before the company purchased the complex, and they don’t believe the county proved that the company’s ownership directly led to the crime problem or made it worse, Melton argued.
“This is a very dangerous tool Macon-Bibb wants to use,” Melton said. “We need this court to make sure that it is not allowed, and vacate the lower court’s decision.”
Under Georgia Law, a nuisance is anything that "causes hurt, inconvenience or damage to another," but the statute notes that even if the act itself is legal, a court can still find the result to be a nuisance. The standard for an "inconvenience," under the statute, is if it would be seen that way by "an ordinary reasonable man." The county argues that this standard was met.
After the receivership, the county says the hope is to get the property back into the hands of the company after the issues are addressed, Mayor Lester Miller said.
You can find the whole video of the hearing here.