re:SearchGA Docket Printout
Retrieved 2026-04-17 · By kerry@kerryhatcher.com · Document type Docket printout (research artifact) View the PDF →
Legal shorthand used here: d/b/a = “doing business as” (a trade name). v. = versus / against. BCSD = Bibb County School District. ORA = Open Records Act. USCR = Uniform Superior Court Rules (the procedural rulebook for Georgia Superior Court). O.C.G.A. = Official Code of Georgia Annotated (Georgia’s statutes); § = “section”; et seq. = Latin for “and following”. FERPA / IDEA = federal student-privacy and special-education laws. RFP / RFA = Request for Production / Request for Admission (discovery tools). MSJ = Motion for Summary Judgment. Rule Nisi = Latin for “unless” — a Georgia show-cause order. UUID = Universally Unique Identifier (a long random string used to label a file).
What is this document?
This is not a court filing. Nobody filed it, nobody signed it, and Judge Smith has never read it. It is a research artifact — a printout of the electronic case docket for Georgia Trust for Local News LLC d/b/a (doing business as) The Macon Melody v. (versus) Bibb County School District, Civil Action No. 2025-CV-083495, pulled from Georgia’s statewide court records portal (re:SearchGA) on April 17, 2026 by this site’s researcher.
Think of the docket as the table of contents to the lawsuit. Every time one of the lawyers files something — a motion, an answer, a response, a notice — the clerk’s office logs it with a date, a short title, and the name of the party who filed it. The docket is the master list. It does not contain the arguments themselves; it just tells you what was filed, when, and by whom.
We used this docket to build the rest of this archive. Every other “Court Filings” page on this site traces back to an entry on this list. When you see a date like “October 13, 2025 — BCSD Response to Rule Nisi,” that came from here. The printout also shows that the case is still open, that Judge Ken Smith is presiding, and that a Calendar Call Hearing is currently set for May 5, 2026 at 9:30 AM.
We’re including it in the archive so readers can verify our work. If we cite a filing you don’t see on this list, you caught us missing something. The docket is the source of truth.
At a glance
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Retrieved | April 17, 2026 |
| Retrieved by | kerry@kerryhatcher.com |
| Source | Tyler re:SearchGA (Georgia statewide court records portal) |
| Case number | 2025-CV-083495 |
| Court | Bibb County Superior Court |
| Judge | Ken Smith |
| Case status | Open |
| Events logged | 28 (Aug 3, 2025 – Apr 14, 2026) |
| Next hearing | Calendar Call — May 5, 2026, 9:30 AM |
| Document type | Docket printout (research artifact) |
Deep dive — public access to court records in Georgia
What is re:SearchGA?
re:SearchGA is the public-facing side of Georgia’s statewide electronic court records system. It’s operated by Tyler Technologies, a Texas-based company that runs the court software for most U.S. states under product names like Odyssey (the internal case management system the clerks use) and eFileGA (the attorney filing portal). re:SearchGA is the window the rest of us look through.
If you go to re-searchga.tylertech.cloud right now, you can register a free account, search by case number, party name, or attorney, and see the docket of almost any civil, criminal, or domestic case filed in a participating Georgia court. Bibb County Superior Court is participating, which is why this case is visible at all.
Access to the docket — the list of events — is free. Access to the actual documents behind each event usually costs money (see the companion Purchase Receipt page). That split is the practical reality of “public records” in Georgia: you can almost always see that a thing exists, but reading it can cost you.
How Georgia public records access works
Georgia’s open-courts tradition is old. The state constitution and common law both presume that court proceedings — and the papers filed in them — are public unless a judge seals them for a specific reason. That presumption is the whole reason re:SearchGA can exist.
In practice, three overlapping systems govern what you can see:
- The Georgia Open Records Act (O.C.G.A. § 50-18-70 et seq.) (O.C.G.A. = Official Code of Georgia Annotated, Georgia’s state statute book; § = “section”; et seq. is Latin for “and following”) — this is the statute The Macon Melody is suing under. It governs records held by state and local government agencies (like a school district), not courts. It has a 3-business-day response deadline and allows agencies to charge reasonable copying fees.
- Uniform Superior Court Rules (USCR) Rule 21 — the USCR is the procedural rulebook for Georgia Superior Court. Rule 21 governs access to records held by the courts themselves. It says court filings are presumptively open, and if a party wants to seal something they have to file a motion and justify it on the record.
- Tyler’s re:SearchGA platform — the technical layer that actually delivers the records. Rule 21 says filings are public; re:SearchGA is how “public” becomes something you can click on from your couch.
The lawsuit documented on this docket is, at its core, a fight about system #1 (the Open Records Act). But the docket itself is visible because of systems #2 and #3.
What a docket tells you
A docket is a running log of everything the court has received in a case. Each line — called a docket entry or event — typically shows:
- Filing date — when the clerk accepted the document
- Event type — “Motion,” “Order,” “Notice of Hearing,” “Response,” etc.
- Filing party — plaintiff, defendant, the judge, or the clerk
- Short description — a one-line summary the filer supplied
- Linked document — a PDF you can usually purchase and download
A docket does not tell you who is winning, what the judge thinks, or whether a motion will be granted. It only tells you the shape of the case — who pushed, who responded, how long it took, and what’s still pending. Reading a docket is a little like reading a box score without the play-by-play: you can see the score but not the game.
That said, a careful reader can learn a lot from the shape. A docket with long gaps suggests stalled discovery. A flurry of filings right before a hearing suggests a fight heating up. Recurring extension motions suggest somebody is struggling to meet deadlines. The rhythms tell a story even when the contents don’t.
Judge Ken Smith and the 28-event roadmap
This docket shows 28 events between August 3, 2025 (initial filing) and April 14, 2026 (the most recent order), all under Bibb County Superior Court Judge Ken Smith. Walking through the major waypoints:
- August 3–5, 2025 — The Macon Melody files the Complaint and, two days later, a Rule Nisi Motion asking the court to set a hearing on the merits quickly. “Rule Nisi” is Latin for “unless” — a show-cause order. In Georgia practice it’s shorthand for “schedule this now.”
- August 14, 2025 — A waiver is filed, likely related to service of process.
- October 13, 2025 — BCSD files its Response to the Rule Nisi Motion, opposing an expedited hearing.
- October 17, 2025 — The Melody files its Reply (the most expensive single document in the archive at $28.00, suggesting it’s long — see receipt).
- December 29, 2025 — BCSD files an Amended Answer plus Requests for Production (RFPs — discovery asks for documents) and Requests for Admission (RFAs — discovery asks to confirm or deny specific facts under oath). This is the point where discovery kicks into gear.
- March 10, 2026 — The Melody files a Motion for Summary Judgment (MSJ), with a Statement of Material Facts and a USCR 6.3 request for oral argument. MSJ is the plaintiff’s attempt to win without going to trial.
- April 1, 2026 — The parties file a stipulation, likely a procedural agreement.
- April 2, 2026 — A Notice of Hearing is filed.
- April 13, 2026 — BCSD files a Motion to Extend Discovery.
- April 14, 2026 — Judge Smith signs an Order Extending Discovery and a new Notice of Hearing is issued.
- May 5, 2026, 9:30 AM — Calendar Call hearing — the next item on the court’s calendar.
The 28-event arc tells a recognizable Georgia civil-litigation story: aggressive plaintiff pushing for speed (Rule Nisi, MSJ — Motion for Summary Judgment), defendant playing for time (late answer, discovery extension), and a judge moving the case forward in measured steps. The May 5 Calendar Call is where we find out what comes next.
Why this matters
A working democracy requires that citizens can watch their governments in court. When a school district refuses to disclose how much public money it paid to settle a claim, and a newspaper sues to force disclosure, the lawsuit itself must happen in the open — otherwise the secrecy just moves from City Hall to the courthouse.
The docket you’re looking at is the spine of that openness. It’s the reason we can tell you, on this website, the names of the motions, the dates of the filings, and the identity of the judge. Georgia has done the right thing by making dockets free to view on re:SearchGA. The underlying documents cost money to download (a question taken up on the Receipt page), but at least the map is free.
If you want to verify anything on this site, start here. Every filing we describe, we sourced from this list.
Read the original
Part of Court Filings · Case No. 2025-CV-083495 · Bibb County Superior Court