This docket is one of four consolidated appeals arising from the Paulding County zoning litigation between the Board of Commissioners and adjacent landowners Thad and Melissa Morrison. The Board’s answers requested attorney fees for defending the complaints, and the superior court treated those prayers as anti-SLAPP counterclaims, struck them, and imposed sanctions exceeding $265,000. The Georgia Court of Appeals reversed. It held that a defensive prayer for attorney fees is not itself a counterclaim and does not trigger the anti-SLAPP verification and sanction provisions. The Board could preserve a fee request without asserting an independent claim. The court’s disposition reversed the related orders and left the underlying zoning and fraud litigation to proceed. This companion docket is governed by the same published consolidated opinion as A12A0035; the appellate holding, evidence, and remedy are therefore identical.