BCSD’s 1st Interrogatories (COS)
Filed 2026-04-03 · By Caroline L. Scalf (“CLS”) and Bennett D. Bryan (“BDB”) (Parker Poe), for Bibb County School District (“BCSD”) · Document type Uniform Superior Court Rule 5.2 Certificate of Service (COS — proof a document was served on the other side) View the PDF →
Legal shorthand used on this page: BCSD = Bibb County School District. COS = Certificate of Service. USCR = Uniform Superior Court Rules (Georgia Superior Court’s procedural rulebook). RFA = Request for Admission. RFP = Request for Production (of documents). MSJ = Motion for Summary Judgment (asking the judge to rule without a trial). Ga. CPA = Georgia Civil Practice Act (the state court procedure rules). O.C.G.A. § = Official Code of Georgia Annotated, section (Georgia’s state statutes).
What is this document?
This is another one-page certificate of service, similar to the one BCSD filed on December 29, 2025. It tells the court that on April 3, 2026, at 4:38 PM, BCSD served its First Continuing Interrogatories (written questions the other side must answer in writing, under oath) on the Macon Melody. The interrogatories themselves — the actual list of written questions — are not attached; under Uniform Superior Court Rule 5.2 (USCR 5.2 — part of the Uniform Superior Court Rules, Georgia Superior Court’s procedural rulebook), discovery requests stay off the public docket and are exchanged privately between counsel.
What makes this filing strategically interesting is its timing. The court’s existing scheduling order set the discovery cutoff at April 13, 2026. By serving interrogatories on April 3 — exactly ten days before that cutoff — BCSD created a problem that could only be solved one way: by extending discovery.
The Melody’s new lead counsel Lucas W. Andrews was the named recipient. Ten days later, on the same day the discovery period was scheduled to close, BCSD filed a motion asking the court for roughly ninety more days. This certificate is the structural predicate for that extension motion — a piece of paper placed on the docket specifically so BCSD could point to it and say, “Look, we have outstanding discovery that cannot possibly be completed on time.”
At a glance
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Filed | April 3, 2026, 4:38 PM |
| Filed by | Caroline L. Scalf and Bennett D. Bryan (Parker Poe), for BCSD |
| Document type | USCR 5.2 Certificate of Service (First Continuing Interrogatories) |
| Served on | Lucas W. Andrews (Stanton Law LLC), for the Macon Melody |
Deep dive — legal concepts, explained
What are interrogatories?
Interrogatories are written questions that one party formally sends to the other. The receiving party must answer them in writing, under oath, within 30 days. They’re governed by O.C.G.A. § 9-11-33 (Official Code of Georgia Annotated, section 9-11-33).
Unlike Requests for Admission (RFAs — which ask you to lock in specific facts) or Requests for Production (RFPs — which ask you to hand over documents), interrogatories ask you to explain things. They’re the most open-ended and time-consuming of the written-discovery tools. A typical interrogatory might read: “Identify every person who has knowledge of the facts alleged in paragraph 12 of the Complaint, and for each person, describe the substance of what they know.” Answering that well takes hours of work.
Georgia caps interrogatories at 50 per side by default, counting subparts. The word “continuing” in the title of BCSD’s set doesn’t add requests; it adds an obligation. A continuing interrogatory requires the responding party to keep the answer updated — if new responsive information comes to light later, the responding party has to supplement the answer rather than hide behind the cutoff date.
Why serving them 10 days before discovery closes is a calculated move
Under the scheduling in this case, the discovery period was set to close April 13, 2026. Interrogatories carry a 30-day response window by statute. If you do the arithmetic, serving interrogatories on April 3 means the responses aren’t due until May 3 — three weeks after the discovery period is supposed to end.
Lawyers know this math cold. Serving interrogatories ten days before the close of discovery is not a mistake or a scramble. It’s a deliberate choice. It guarantees one of two outcomes:
- The responding party answers early, inside an unreasonably short window — which almost never happens with a fully-worked interrogatory set; or
- The serving party has a clean, mechanical argument that the schedule must be extended.
Option 2 is the point. The interrogatories don’t need to be answered before the cutoff — the rule is that they can’t be, given the statute. BCSD built the dilemma on purpose.
The 30-day response window
O.C.G.A. § 9-11-33(a)(2) gives the answering party 30 days from service to respond. The clock starts the day after service. Parties can agree to extensions, or the court can order one, but absent agreement or order, 30 days is what the statute allows.
There’s nothing discretionary about this for BCSD’s arithmetic. Interrogatories served April 3 create a May 3 response deadline. There is no mechanism for the court to compel faster answers to properly-served, non-abusive interrogatories. If the Melody is going to answer them at all — and it will have to, the same way it answered the first RFAs and RFPs — the case schedule simply cannot accommodate that inside the existing April 13 cutoff.
How this sets up the motion to extend
This one-page certificate, filed April 3, is a foundation stone. Ten days later, on April 13, BCSD filed its Motion to Extend Discovery. That motion points at the April 3 interrogatories as one of the principal reasons the court should grant a 90-day extension: interrogatory responses are not yet due, depositions of two Melody reporters have not yet occurred, the plaintiff’s amended RFA and RFP responses (served March 19 after a March 16 meet-and-confer) are claimed deficient — the list of “unfinished” discovery BCSD presents all depends on BCSD having served the interrogatories in the first place.
Read in sequence: December 29 RFAs/RFPs open the first front. March 16 meet-and-confer and March 19 amended responses create the dispute record. April 3 interrogatories add fresh, unexpired requests that physically cannot be answered by the cutoff. April 13 motion collects all of it into one extension request. April 14 the court signs an order extending discovery through July 13.
The interrogatory COS is a single sheet of paper. But it’s the sheet of paper that made the extension unavoidable.
Why this matters
For a reader trying to understand why this case keeps dragging on: this is where you can see the mechanism. Open-records cases are supposed to be summary — fast and on the merits. BCSD has been steadily filling the case with procedural obligations that extend its timeline. Serving interrogatories ten days before the cutoff is the cleanest example.
It also matters because every extra day of discovery pushes the merits further away. The Melody’s partial motion for summary judgment (MPSJ — asking the judge to decide part of the case without a trial) is set for hearing on April 29, 2026. By the time that hearing happens, discovery will have just been formally extended to July 13. BCSD will ask the court to defer any summary-judgment ruling until discovery finishes — a Ga. CPA § 9-11-56(f) argument (Ga. CPA is the Georgia Civil Practice Act, the state court procedure rules; § 9-11-56(f) is the rule that lets a side say “I need more discovery before the judge can rule on summary judgment”) — and the fact that BCSD served interrogatories that couldn’t be answered in time becomes evidence that “discovery isn’t complete.” It’s a self-fulfilling delay machine.
Whether this succeeds depends on how skeptically Judge Smith reads the sequence. A judge who sees a district burying a newspaper in procedure can shut the extension down. A judge who takes each filing at face value, in isolation, will probably let it proceed.
Read the original
Part of Court Filings · Case No. 2025-CV-083495 · Bibb County Superior Court