Comment on State Supreme Court to hear suit between Chatham County, Clerk of Superior Court

The Supreme Court of Georgia is set to hear arguments this week in a civil case between the Clerk of Superior Court in Chatham County and the board that issues his paychecks. The Chatham County commission has appealed a June 2015 order from Superior Court Judge Charles Rose of the Atlantic Circuit in Hinesville, who ruled that Superior Court Clerk Dan Massey is entitled to local cost-of-living adjustments and attorneys fees. Massey originally filed suit against the county in December 2014, alleging that the county had passed him over for state cost-of-living adjustments, a state-mandated increase in his salary when the county’s population rose above 250,000 and for 5 percent longevity increases when he was re-elected to his second and third terms in 2009 and 2013. Massey’s attorney, Steve Scheer of Savannah, has argued the oversight essentially decreased the clerk’s pay. But county attorneys have countered that because of an error, Massey instead received local cost-of-living adjustments that actually netted the clerk a higher payment than the one to which he was entitled by law. “The County acknowledges that its method of calculating the clerk’s salary omitted two longevity adjustments,” county attorneys wrote in a brief last spring.