A Georgia appellate court has reversed a lower court which granted a defendant radio station a new trial based on an award of damages in a defamation trial, finding that the jury award of damages in the first trial was not excessive and the judge erred therefore in granting the defendant’s request for the new trial.

A Glynn County jury found Golden Isles Broadcasting, LLC, liable to Travis S. Riddle for defamatory statements made in a radio broadcast and awarded him $100,000 in damages. Following the grant of a new trial as to damages only, a second jury awarded Riddle $25,000. Riddle appeals, contending, among other things, that the court abused its discretion in granting a new trial as to damages only pursuant to OCGA §51-12-12. For the following reasons, we agree and reverse.

An order granting a motion for new trial is not a final, directly appealable judgment. It may be challenged in a proper interlocutory appeal or pursued, as in this case, following the entry of the final judgment in the new trial…. Riddle contends the trial court abused its discretion in finding that the first jury’s award of $100,000 for slander per se was contrary to the preponderance of the evidence adduced in that trial and, therefore, erred in granting a new trial on the issue of damages only pursuant to OCGA §51-12-12. The record reveals that, following a hearing on Golden Isles’s motion for new trial, the trial court stated that “I feel like the amount [of the verdict] is excessive, so I am going to — unless [Riddle] agrees to reduce it to sixty thousand dollars, I’m going to grant a new trial.” The judge did not explain his basis for concluding that the award was excessive, noting only that he had “never seen or heard about a slander case in any of the jurisdictions where [he] was the trial judge.” Riddle did not agree to remit $40,000 of the damages awarded; consequently, the court issued an order finding the award of damages “excessive in that it was inconsistent with the preponderance of the evidence,” and granted a new trial “as to the issue of damages only,” pursuant to “OCGA §51-12-12 (b).”