§ 9-11-81.Applicability

Georgia’s statutes create plenty of causes of action outside the Civil Practice Act — mandamus, quo warranto, and other special statutory proceedings among them. This section makes the Act the default procedural framework for all of them, stepping aside only to the extent a specific, conflicting rule of practice and procedure is expressly prescribed by law for that particular proceeding.

Even where a special proceeding’s own statute does displace the Act’s general procedure, a defined list of core doctrines still applies regardless: the sufficiency of pleadings, defenses, amendments, counterclaims, cross-claims, third-party practice, joinder of parties and causes, making parties, discovery and depositions, interpleader, intervention, evidence, motions, summary judgment, relief from judgments, and the effect of judgments. That list functions as a floor beneath every special statutory proceeding — one that a proceeding’s own enabling statute cannot dig beneath, since the exception in the first clause covers only conflicting rules of practice and procedure, not these specifically preserved doctrines.

The upshot is procedural consistency across Georgia’s many separately codified causes of action: a litigant pursuing a special statutory remedy doesn’t need to relearn how discovery, joinder, or summary judgment work from scratch, because the same Civil Practice Act rules that govern an ordinary civil action carry over.