A motion to recuse a Georgia judge has two deadlines running at the same time, and missing either one is enough to lose.
The Two Deadlines
Uniform Superior Court Rule 25.1 requires filing and presentation to the judge “not later than five (5) days after the affiant first learned of the alleged grounds for disqualification, and not later than ten (10) days prior to the hearing or trial which is the subject of recusal … unless good cause be shown.”
The rule adds a limit no showing of good cause reaches: “[i]n no event shall the motion be allowed to delay the trial or proceeding.”
Weekends do not count against the five days. Echols v. Echols, 281 Ga. 546 (2007), notes that OCGA 1-3-1(d)(3) excludes Saturdays and Sundays when a filing period is under seven days.
The Clock Starts When You Learn the Grounds
In Echols, a divorce case, a wife moved to recuse based on the judge’s long personal and business ties to her husband’s family. Her husband had told her about those ties at the start of the litigation, and she began investigating them more than a year before she filed.
She argued her motion was timely because a recent scheduling order had confirmed her suspicions. The Georgia Supreme Court disagreed. That order “is not the basis for Ms. Echols’s motion”; the ties were, and she had known of those long before. The Court also found she had not acted in good faith by waiting a year.
Both Deadlines, Not One
In Dodson v. Dean, 256 Ga. App. 4 (2002), a recusal motion in a divorce failed both tests at once. Filed on July 11, it came more than five days after the movant learned the grounds and later than ten days before the July 16 final hearing.
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