Jessica Alred sued the Georgia Public Defender Council for legal malpractice. The trial court dismissed her tort claims after treating sovereign immunity as a bar to the action. The Court of Appeals of Georgia reversed and remanded. It held that a sovereign-immunity motion challenges subject-matter jurisdiction rather than the merits and that the party asserting a waiver bears the burden of establishing it. The trial court had relied on a ground that was not adequately developed in the record, so the case had to return for further proceedings.