A legal battle between the City of Brooklet and a company owned by the city’s mayor is more than 22 months old, but a resolution is nowhere in sight as the dispute is headed to the Georgia Court of Appeals once again.
Whether or not the suit will continue will be determined by the appeals court after a recent order by a Superior Court Judge denied the city’s request to dismiss the lawsuit altogether. At the center of the latest prong of the dispute is whether the city’s zoning ordinance and zoning maps were properly adopted.
Background
In 2024, the City of Brooklet determined that Mayor Nikky Gwinnett, via G3 Ventures LLC, was operating without a business license. G3 Ventures was established in February 2021 and, at some point, became the entity under which Gwinnett was operating a cabinet shop. The city could not issue a business license to Gwinnett because the property on Cromley Road, owned by G3 Ventures, is zoned R-1 single-family residential and cabinet shops fall under light industrial (I-1) or heavy industrial (I-2).
According to documents filed in Bulloch County Superior Court, Gwinnett sought to have the parcel rezoned from R-1 to C-2 commercial so Gwinnett could continue to operate. The issue, however, is that C-2 is a general commercial district, and cabinet shops are not permitted under C-2. The request was denied by both Planning & Zoning and the city council.
The city attorney requested that Gwinnett provide documentation showing continuous use as a cabinet shop that predates changes to the city’s zoning ordinance. Instead, Gwinnett retained legal counsel and sought an injunction.
G3 Venture LLC’s lawsuit contends that the city council’s decision was ‘arbitrary’ and violates Gwinnett’s rights as a landowner. It also claims that the city’s denial of the rezone ‘manifestly abused their rezoning power…amounting to a taking of Petitioner’s property rights without just and adequate compensation…”
In April 2025, Judge Michael Muldrew denied the city’s request to dismiss the lawsuit and the City appealed to the Georgia Court of Appeals. The court declined the City’s Application for Interlocutory Appeal, which sent the case back to Bulloch County Superior Court.
By November 2025, the city’s portion of legal bills to date topped $47,000. The city employs Oliver Maner out of Savannah for general legal matters but retained Smith Welch Webb & White for the litigation, a standard practice for municipalities and counties.
Following a series of depositions and filings by attorneys, the City again asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
Motion for Summary Judgment
In March 2026, attorneys for the City of Brooklet filed a Motion for Summary Judgment, asking the court to dismiss the suit citing an absent “genuine issue of material fact on any issue.” The motion listed five prongs including that G3 Ventures failed to exhaust administrative remedies available and the lacking constitutional right to engage in “an unlawful use prohibited” by the City’s Zoning Ordinance, among other things.
G3 Ventures opposed the Motion for Summary Judgment. Attorneys argued that the city did not adopt the ordinance in 2002 in accordance with state law, citing affidavits signed by J. Barney Sineath and mayor Nicky Gwinnett.
You can read more on the specifics of the Motion for Summary Judgment here.
Superior Court Judge Michael Muldrew held a hearing on the arguments by G3 Ventures and the City of Brooklet.
On June 26, Judge Muldrew denied the City of Brooklet’s Motion for Summary Judgment. He cited contrasting copies of certified council meeting minutes submitted by each of the parties ahead of the May 5 hearing.
Muldrew wrote that “a summary judgment, which is intended to dispose of litigation expeditiously and avoid the time and expense of a useless jury trial or unsubstantiated claims, may only be rendered when the record demonstrates “no genuine issues as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.”
He continued on to state that the Court is not a factfinder at this stage of the lawsuit and that substantial issues of fact will be decided by a jury. At this time, however, there is “a question of fact in this case as to whether [the city] adopted its zoning ordinance in the manner required by the [Zoning Procedure Law]” and an issue regarding whether the city properly adopted the zoning map.
For those reasons, Muldrew denied the Motion for Summary Judgment.
City of Brooklet Requests to Appeal
On June 30, attorneys for the City filed a Request for Certificate of Immediate Review.
A Certificate of Immediate Review is a required document in Georgia that allows a party to appeal a non-final order, such as a pre-trial motion, before the case goes to trial. By law, the presiding trial court judge must certify that the order is of such importance that an immediate appellate review should be had.
Attorneys for the City wrote:
“Both parties in this case will benefit from a final resolution of the Petitioner’s Motion for Summary Judgment now, instead of incurring the cost and time that will be associated with placing this matter before the Court for a trial or reopening discovery.
The validity of the Petitioner’s Zoning Ordinance and Zoning Maps is of the utmost importance, and whether Petitioner complied with the Georgia Zoning Procedures laws is dispositive of the entire case, and the ruling in this regard affects future proceedings in this case, as well as potentially all zoning decisions past, present, and future for the City.”
G3 Ventures Opposes Review by Higher Court
On July 1, attorneys for G3 Venture filed a response to the Request for Certificate of Immediate Review.
Attorney George Rountree said in his response on behalf of G3 Ventures that review by the Court of Appeals is only appropriate in “close cases” and this is not a close case. He also argued that a review by a higher court will not change the fact that “multiple issues of material fact” are present and appeal would require “much additional expense for the parties and delay of the resolution of the issue.” Rountree called the potential result “contrary to a judicially efficient outcome.”
Nevertheless, on July 6, the Certificate of Immediate Review was signed by Judge Muldrew.
Up Next…
The Court of Appeals is not required to take the case. The court will decide whether to grant or deny the application within 45 days of filing. If the higher court grants the application, trial court proceedings will be paused until the Court of Appeals issues a ruling.
The City of Brooklet is expected to adopt its FY 2027 budget Tuesday night. On the special-called meeting agenda released Tuesday morning, the city added executive session for ‘pending litigation’ to the list of action items for the meeting.
