IN RE: A 2ND CHANCE BAIL BONDS. (2026)

A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds ¹ appeals the denial of its motion to relieve it from liability on a bond it insured that was forfeited after its principal failed to appear for his arraignment. More precisely, A2CBB argues the trial court failed to comply with the requirements in OCGA § 17-6-71(a). For the following reasons, we agree and reverse the trial court's ruling.

Randal Youmans was charged—via accusation in the Superior Court of Clayton County—with failure to register as a sex offender. The trial court set his arraignment for September 6, 2024, but he failed to appear. As a result, on September 9, 2024, the court issued a bench warrant for Youmans's arrest. That same day, the court issued an order, notifying A2CBB (as surety) that the $5,700.00 appearance bond was forfeited and a hearing would be held on January 28, 2025—144 days after the failure to appear—to show cause why a final judgment should not be entered on the forfeited bond. Notice of the bond forfeiture and hearing was served on A2CBB on September 12, 2024.

On January 28, 2025, Youmans again failed to appear at the hearing; and so, on January 31, 2025, the trial court issued an order ruling the bond forfeited. But on April 3, 2025, A2CBB filed a motion for relief of liability on the bond, arguing that in scheduling the hearing 144 days after Youmans's failure to appear, the court failed to comply with OCGA § 17-6-71(a), which required such a hearing to be scheduled not sooner than 150 days after a failure to appear. Later, the court scheduled a hearing on the motion for August 7, 2025. Even so, A2CBB tendered the total bond amount to the Clayton County Sheriff's Office on June 30, 2025.

At some point before the scheduled hearing, Youmans was located, and on August 5, 2025, he pleaded guilty to the charge in the accusation. Two days later, the trial court issued an order granting A2CBB's motion for relief on liability for the bond, canceling the forfeiture. But when A2CBB presented the order to the Clayton County Sheriff's Office for a refund, the sheriff informed A2CBB that the order needed to be amended to an order directing remission.

On September 15, 2025, A2CBB filed a motion to amend the earlier order to an order of remission, with an attached proposed order to which the County attorney consented. But in a departure from its previous order, on September 30, 2025, the trial court denied A2CBB's motion, ruling that setting the execution hearing date earlier than delineated by the plain language of OCGA § 17-6-71(a) did not relieve the surety of liability on the bond. This appeal follows.

In its sole enumeration of error, A2CBB contends the trial court erred in denying its motion to relieve it from liability on the forfeited bond, arguing that, in doing so, it failed to comply with OCGA § 17-6-71(a).² We agree.

We begin our analysis with “familiar and binding canons of construction.”³ In considering any statute's meaning, our charge is to “presume that the [legislature] meant what it said and said what it meant.”⁴ Toward that end, we must afford the statutory text its plain and ordinary meaning,⁵ consider the text contextually,⁶ read the text “in its most natural and reasonable way, as an ordinary speaker of the English language would,”⁷ and seek to “avoid a construction that makes some language mere surplusage.”⁸ In sum, when the language of a statute is “plain and susceptible of only one natural and reasonable construction, courts must construe the statute accordingly.”⁹

Turning to the statute at issue, OCGA § 17-6-71(a) provides:

The judge shall, at the end of the court day, upon the failure of the principal to appear, forfeit the bond and issue a bench warrant for the principal's arrest. If the forfeiture and bench warrant are not issued and signed within ten days of the failure to appear, the surety shall be relieved of liability on the appearance bond. Upon forfeiting the bond, the judge shall order an execution hearing not sooner than 150 days but not later than 180 days after such failure to appear. Notice of the execution hearing and a copy of the bench warrant shall be served by the clerk of the court in which the bond forfeiture occurred within ten days of such failure to appear by certified mail, return receipt requested, or by electronic means as provided in Code Section 17-6-50 to the surety at the address listed on the bond or by personal service to the surety within ten days of such failure to appear at its home office or to its designated registered agent. Service shall be considered complete upon the mailing of such certified notice. Such ten-day notice shall be adhered to strictly. If notice of the execution hearing and bench warrant are not served as specified in this subsection, the surety shall be relieved of liability on the appearance bond.10

Contrary to the statute's text, the trial court set the hearing on the execution for the bond forfeiture for 144 days after the principal's failure to appear, rather than the 150-day minimum period provided for in the plain language of the text. And although it initially granted A2CBB relief from liability, it later reversed its position, ruling that only the ten-day notice provision in the statute required strict adherence. In doing so, the court erred.

As we have held, the execution hearing “must take place within a window of [150 to 180] days after the principal's failure to appear.”¹¹ Indeed, as we explained in analyzing an earlier version of the statute, it is apparent from the plain meaning of the statutory language that the General Assembly “provided the specific time frame for the execution in order to give the surety a reasonable opportunity to find the principal.”¹² And this codified purpose, even under the earlier version, is “evident from the statutory right of at least 120 days but no more than 150 days.”¹³ Significantly, over the years, this statutory time period “has been made specific rather than open-ended, and it has been lengthened to the benefit of sureties.”¹⁴ In fact, only one year before the trial court denied A2CBB's motion, the General Assembly again amended the statute to the benefit of sureties—lengthening the minimum number of days before an execution can be scheduled from 120 to 150.¹⁵

Even so, in its order denying A2CBB's motion, the trial court reasoned that its failure to comply with the time frame for setting an execution hearing does not relieve a surety of liability because the General Assembly only required strict adherence to the ten-day notice provision in OCGA § 17-7-71(a). This is a perplexing reading of the statute,¹⁶ and it runs afoul of the canons of statutory construction noted above.¹⁷ The General Assembly's decision to require strict adherence to the ten-day notice provision in no way relaxes (or expands) the explicit statutory time frame—“not sooner than 150 days but not later than 180 days after a failure to appear”—in which a judge may order an execution hearing. This statutory text is not ambiguous. A trial court may only hold an execution hearing within that specific window of time, and any hearing held before or after that time frame is in violation of the statute. In sum, the court's interpretation of OCGA § 17-7-71(a) is untenable, and we reject it.¹⁸

Given these circumstances, the trial court erred in denying A2CBB's motion to relieve it from liability on the forfeited bond.¹⁹ As a result, we reverse the ruling below and remand for the court to enter an order remitting the bond payment to A2CBB.

Judgment reversed and case remanded with direction.

FOOTNOTES

1.   For ease of reference, we refer to A 2nd Chance Bail Bonds as “A2CBB” throughout the opinion.

2.   Although the record before us indicates that A2CBB's notice of appeal was served on the district attorney for Clayton County, no appellee's brief was filed by the State. But given that this case is not an appeal of a criminal case, the State did not have to file a responsive brief. See Ct. App. R. 23(b) (“Appellees are encouraged but, other than the State in a criminal case, are not required to file a brief.” (emphasis added)).

3.   Holcomb v. Long, 329 Ga. App. 515, 517 (1), 765 S.E.2d 687 (2014). Accord Flanders v. Jackson, 344 Ga. App. 493, 495(1), 810 S.E.2d 656 (2018); In the Interest of L. T., 325 Ga. App. 590, 591, 754 S.E.2d 380 (2014).

4.   Deal v. Coleman, 294 Ga. 170, 172(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337 (2013) (punctuation omitted). Accord Flanders, 344 Ga. App. at 495(1), 810 S.E.2d 656; Holcomb, 329 Ga. App. at 517(1), 765 S.E.2d 687; Martinez v. State, 325 Ga. App. 267, 273(2), 750 S.E.2d 504 (2013).

5.   Deal, 294 Ga. at 172(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337. Accord Flanders, 344 Ga. App. at 495–96(1), 810 S.E.2d 656; Holcomb, 329 Ga. App. at 517 (1), 765 S.E.2d 687. See Tibbles v. Teachers Retirement Sys. of Ga., 297 Ga. 557, 558(1), 775 S.E.2d 527 (2015) (“A statute draws it meaning, of course, from its text.” (punctuation and citation omitted)); Chan v. Ellis, 296 Ga. 838, 839(1), 770 S.E.2d 851 (2015) (same); State v. Able, 321 Ga. App. 632, 636, 742 S.E.2d 149 (2013) (“A judge is charged with interpreting the law in accordance with the original and/or plain meaning of the text at issue (and all that the text fairly implies)․ .”); Singletary v. State, 310 Ga. App. 570, 572, 713 S.E.2d 698 (2011) (“In construing these statutes, we apply the fundamental rules of statutory construction that require us to construe the statutes according to their terms, [and] to give words their plain and ordinary meaning ․ .” (punctuation omitted)).

6.   See Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Ariz., Inc., 570 U.S. 10(II)(B), 133 S.Ct. 2247, 186 LE2d 239 (2013) (Scalia, J.) (“Words that can have more than one meaning are given content, however, by their surroundings.” (punctuation omitted)); Deal, 294 Ga. at 172(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337 (“[W]e must view the statutory text in the context in which it appears[.]”). See also Tibbles, 297 Ga. at 558(1), 775 S.E.2d 527 (“The common and customary usages of the words are important, but so is their context.” (punctuation and citation omitted)); Scherr v. Marriott Int'l, Inc., 703 F.3d 1069, 1077 (II)(C)(2) (7th Cir. 2013) (Manion, J.) (noting that in statutory construction cases, courts “begin with the language of the statute itself and the specific context in which that language is used” (punctuation and citation omitted)).

7.   Deal, 294 Ga. at 172-73(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337. Accord Holcomb, 329 Ga. App. at 518(1), 765 S.E.2d 687.

8.   In the Interest of L.T., 325 Ga. App. at 592, 754 S.E.2d 380 (punctuation omitted). Accord Holcomb, 329 Ga. App. at 518(1), 765 S.E.2d 687.

9.   Holcomb, 329 Ga. App. at 518(1), 765 S.E.2d 687 (punctuation omitted). See Deal, 294 Ga. at 173(1)(a), 751 S.E.2d 337 (“[I]f the statutory text is clear and unambiguous, we attribute to the statute its plain meaning, and our search for statutory meaning is at an end.” (punctuation omitted)).

10.   (Emphasis added ).

11.   Powell v. State, 313 Ga. App. 535, 536, 722 S.E.2d 158 (2012).

12.   U.S. Bonds v. State, 224 Ga. App. 758, 760, 481 S.E.2d 887 (1997) (Beasley, J., concurring specially).

13.   Id.

14.   Id.

15.   See Ga. L. 2024, p. 505, § 9/SB 63 (effective July 1, 2024) (deleting “not sooner than 120 days but not later than 150 days” and replacing it with “not sooner than 150 days but not later than 180 days”).

16.   This is an especially curious take when, as noted above, the General Assembly just recently amended the statute to lengthen the minimum period before such a hearing can be held.

17.   See supra notes 3-9 and accompanying text.

18.   See Mathis v. State, 336 Ga. App. 257, 259, 784 S.E.2d 98 (2016) (“[W]e must construe statutes to give sensible and intelligent effect to all of their provisions and to refrain from any interpretation which renders any part of the statutes meaningless.”) (citation and punctuation omitted); see also supra ns. 3-9 and accompanying text.

19.   Anytime Bail Bonding, Inc.v. State, 350 Ga. App. 288, 291, 828 S.E.2d 662 (2019) (declining to adopt the trial court's interpretation of OCGA § 17-6-71(a) that would render part of the statute meaningless).

Dillard, Presiding Judge.

Gobeil and Pipkin, JJ., concur.