Georgia Appellate Rules & Statutes Reference

Depends on: none

What this is

Complete, primary-source-verified current text of the Georgia Court of Appeals Rules, the Rules of the Supreme Court of Georgia, and all currently-operative chapters of O.C.G.A. Title 5 ("Appeal and Error"); ships with a downloadable reference package, plus a reverse-chronological changelog of recent amendments to all three sources.

A pure reference corpus — text and PDFs only, no workbook, no schema, no tracked fields. Unlike FTR-37 (which nests under FTR-36 because it ships its own discovery-tracking schema), this feature can be installed standalone in any project type, legal or otherwise, that touches Georgia appellate practice.

Relationship to FTR-37: natural companions, not overlapping. FTR-37 covers Georgia trial-court discovery (interrogatories/RFPs/RFAs, discovery caps, a tracking schema) with its own statutes-and-guide zip. This feature covers Georgia appellate practice (both appellate courts' own procedural rules, plus the appeal-and-error statutes) with no tracking schema of its own. A project running a Georgia case from trial through appeal would reasonably install both; a project starting at the appellate stage only needs this one.

It answers three questions a Georgia appellate matter always needs answered early: what the Court of Appeals' own rules require for a specific filing; whether the Supreme Court's rule set applies instead (or as well), and how it differs; and what the underlying Appeal and Error statute (O.C.G.A. Title 5) says about jurisdiction, timing, and procedure, independent of either court's own internal rules.

Assess first

• Is this a Georgia matter, and is it at the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court, or genuinely undetermined between the two? (Both are included regardless — most projects will use one court's subfolder far more than the other, that's fine.)
• Is the matter civil, criminal, or both? The O.C.G.A. Chapter 7 file (State's criminal appeals) only applies if there's a criminal component; a purely civil matter can treat that file as background-only.
• Does the project already have FTR-37 installed (trial-level discovery)? If so, this feature is a natural add rather than a replacement — no conflict, no shared schema.
• Does the project need its own copy under its own document-ID scheme, or is a shared/root-level install preferred? Either is fine; note which was chosen.

Ask, only if needed

• If it's unclear which court's rules will matter more, or whether a criminal component exists, ask directly rather than assume.
• If the project has its own document-tracking system (an Excel Document Register, a markdown index), confirm whether to register the package's files there using that project's own conventions.

Write

Corpus contents — what's in the zip

15 content files total, across 4 subfolders plus a top-level README:

GA_Appellate_Rules_Reference_Package/
  README.md                              top-level index: what's here, currency dates, known gaps
  Court_of_Appeals/
    README_Court_of_Appeals.md           exact source URL; how the Court publishes updates
    ..._Complete_Eff_2026-03-26_v1.pdf   the Court's own consolidated rules, all 46 rules
    ..._plaintext.txt                    plain-text extraction for fast keyword search
  Supreme_Court/
    README_Supreme_Court.md              exact source URLs; how the Court publishes amendments
    ..._Eff_2026-07-02_v1.pdf            the Court's own current rules, 85 pages
    ..._plaintext.txt                    plain-text extraction of the same
    ..._Rule_Changes_Chart_2026_v1.pdf   the Clerk's own old-vs-new comparison chart
    ..._Quick_Reference_v1.pdf           the Clerk's own quick-reference (word/page limits)
  OCGA_Statutes/
    README_OCGA_Statutes.md              exact source, free-vs-paid Lexis/Justia clarification
    ..._Ch6_Appellate_Practice_v1.md     full text, "Appellate Practice" (right-of-appeal/notice/jurisdiction/supersedeas)
    ..._Ch5_New_Trial_v1.md              full text, all 19 sections (grounds/procedure at trial-court level)
    ..._Ch6_Art1_General_Provisions_v1.md full text, all 16 sections (costs, frivolous-appeal damages, remittitur)
    ..._Ch7_State_Criminal_Appeals_v1.md  full text, all 6 active sections (criminal component only)
  Changelog/
    GA_Appeals_Rules_Changelog.md        reverse-chronological timeline, every change, exact source URLs

Every .md file follows the same internal structure: full verbatim statutory or rule text, the official history/amendment citation line, and (for the O.C.G.A. files specifically) a section-by-section relevance note written for whatever matter installed the package — a future installing project should re-run that relevance layer for its own facts, since the verbatim text and history lines are the durable, reusable part.

What this completes, statute-wise: every chapter of O.C.G.A. Title 5 that carries current operative text — Chapter 5, Chapter 6 (both articles), and Chapter 7. Chapters 1–2 are reserved (no text exists); Chapters 3–4 were confirmed via the Title 5 index but not pulled in full, since Chapter 6 covers the same procedural ground in force today.

Currency and how to check for updates

• Georgia Court of Appeals Rules — amended by the Court's own internal order; master list at gaappeals.gov/court-rules-updates/. Current through March 26, 2026 as of this build.
• Rules of the Supreme Court of Georgia — running log at gasupreme.us/rules/amendments-to-rules/, plus the Court's own comparison chart. Current through July 2, 2026 as of this build.
• O.C.G.A. Title 5 — changes only when the General Assembly passes a bill the Governor signs, usually effective July 1. Free official portal: lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/ (no paid subscription needed); Justia mirrors the same text and was the actual pull source.

Recommended re-verification cadence: before relying on this package in an active filing, re-check each of the three source pages above — the changelog documents the method used to build this snapshot, so re-running it is mechanical, not a rebuild from scratch.

Coverage and known gaps (flagged, not fabricated, not silently omitted)

• The Court of Appeals' pre-2024 update history (2017–2023, 16 dated entries) is listed by date in the changelog but not individually pulled in full text.
• O.C.G.A. Title 5, Chapters 3 and 4 were confirmed to exist via the chapter index but not pulled in full text (superseded in current practice by Chapter 6).
• O.C.G.A. Chapter 7 is included in full but confirmed to have no operative application to a purely civil matter — here for completeness, not because every installing project will need it.
• Nothing in this package required paywalled or login-gated access. A future addition that does turn out to be paywalled should be flagged and handed to a human to retrieve and paste in, not scraped.

Installation guidance (mirrors FTR-37's stated principle)

Unzip as a standalone folder inside the installing project's reference/research location. Reference it from the project's own Agent Instructions by path and purpose only — never duplicate the rule or statute text into the instructions file itself. If the project has its own document-tracking system, register the package's files there using that project's own conventions; filenames inside the zip carry the source project's own document IDs, so re-numbering on install is expected and fine.

Accompanying reference package — GA_Appellate_Rules_Reference_Package.zip

This feature ships with a downloadable reference package, separate from this spec document. On installation, this package should be:

1. Downloaded from the feature site alongside this spec.
2. Unzipped into the host project's research/reference location as its own top-level folder, GA_Appellate_Rules_Reference_Package\ — not merged file-by-file into an existing structure.
3. Referenced from the project's Agent Instructions or CLAUDE.md as a pointer only (path plus one-line purpose) — never re-summarized or duplicated into the instructions themselves.

Contents: verbatim current text of the Georgia Court of Appeals Rules and Rules of the Supreme Court of Georgia (both as PDF and plaintext), the Supreme Court Clerk's own rule-changes comparison chart and quick-reference sheet, four O.C.G.A. Title 5 chapters with full text plus relevance analysis, and a reverse-chronological changelog across all three sources. Download: data/items/ga-appellate-rules-statutes-reference.zip

What this doesn't cover

• Trial-court discovery practice — that's FTR-37, a natural companion, not a dependency.
• Re-running the per-section "Relevance to [matter]" notes for a new installing project's own facts — the verbatim text and history lines are reusable as-is; the relevance layer is matter-specific and should be redone per project.
• Automated re-verification of currency — re-checking the three source pages is a manual, on-request task, not something this feature runs on its own initiative.

Confirm

Confirm: Georgia Appellate Rules & Statutes Reference is installed — the reference package is unzipped into the project's research location and pointed to from Agent Instructions. Want to install another, or is that everything for now?