§ 9-11-12.Answer, defenses, and objections; when and how presented and heard; when defenses waived; stay of discovery

This section is where Georgia defendants find their first formal options for responding to a complaint. Subsection (a) sets the baseline: a defendant answers within 30 days after being served, unless another statute says otherwise, and a cross-claim or counterclaim doesn’t require an answer at all — it automatically stands denied unless the court orders one. Filing a motion under this section resets the answer clock: 15 days after the court denies the motion or defers it to trial, or 15 days after the court-ordered more definite statement gets served.

Subsection (b) is the heart of the section. Every defense to a claim can go in the responsive pleading, but seven specific defenses may instead be raised by pre-answer motion at the pleader’s option: lack of subject matter jurisdiction, lack of personal jurisdiction, improper venue, insufficiency of process, insufficiency of service of process, failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted — Georgia’s answer to the FRCP 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss — and failure to join a party required under Code Section 9-11-19. Raising several of these together in one motion doesn’t waive any of them, and if outside evidence gets presented on a failure-to-state-a-claim motion and the court doesn’t exclude it, the motion converts into one for summary judgment under Code Section 9-11-56, with both sides getting a fair chance to present material relevant to that standard. Subsection (c) applies the same conversion rule to a post-pleadings motion for judgment on the pleadings.

The remaining tools round out pretrial motion practice: subsection (d) requires the seven enumerated defenses and a motion for judgment on the pleadings to be heard and decided before trial unless the court defers that ruling; subsection (e) lets a party move for a more definite statement against a pleading too vague to answer, with the court able to strike the pleading if its order isn’t obeyed within 15 days; and subsection (f) lets a party move — within 30 days of being served the pleading, or the court act on its own — to strike an insufficient defense or redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter. Subsection (g) requires a party to consolidate every available defense into one motion or lose the right to raise an omitted one later, subject to the specific exceptions in subsection (h): personal jurisdiction, venue, process, and service-of-process defenses are waived if left out of a consolidated motion or out of the first responsive pleading, while failure to state a claim, failure to join an indispensable party, and failure to state a legal defense can be raised anytime through trial, and lack of subject matter jurisdiction can be raised at any point and requires dismissal whenever the court notices it.

Subsection (j), added in 2025, adds an automatic discovery stay: filing a motion to dismiss before answering stays discovery until the court rules, though a defendant who answers before the ruling ends the stay for that defendant, and the court must decide the motion within 90 days after briefing closes. The discovery period is extended by however long the stay lasts, and if the court hasn’t ruled within that 90-day window, a party may move to end or modify the stay for good cause. Limited discovery is still available during the stay when it’s needed to respond to certain of the enumerated defenses, to identify parties who should be joined, or to establish the court’s jurisdiction.