The Paulding County Board of Commissioners issued zoning permits for a development, and adjacent landowners Thad and Melissa Morrison sued the Board and its members, alleging wrongdoing and seeking damages. In defensive answers, the Board requested attorney fees for responding to the complaints. The superior court treated those prayers as counterclaims under Georgia’s anti-SLAPP statute, struck them, and ordered the Board and its lawyer to pay more than $265,000 in sanctions. The Georgia Court of Appeals reversed all four related orders. It held that a prayer for attorney fees in an answer is not, by itself, a counterclaim, and that Georgia law permits a defendant to preserve a fee request without asserting an independent claim. Because the Board had not asserted anti-SLAPP claims, the statutory verification and sanction provisions did not apply. The court also held that the trial court’s approach could not stand because the underlying defenses had not been adjudicated and the fee award rested on unsupported testimony rather than properly apportioned proof. The ruling clarifies the boundary between defensive pleadings and claims that trigger anti-SLAPP procedures, while preserving the statute’s purpose of protecting speech and petitions to government from abusive litigation. The judgment was reversed.