Can an employee be refused accumulated vacation pay after termination in the state of GA?

I own a company with 75 employees. We offer 2 weeks vacation pay benefits after one year of employment. A former employee was terminated for a variety of documented violations over this period. GA law states that these type benefits are only paid if it is a policy of the company, and that if no policy exists then it is based on how other instances have been treated in the past.

This former employee sued company for not paying these benefits and the magistrate judge made a judgement aganist the company to pay 4 days of the 10 day vacation pay which had accumulated. Our HR Manager represented our company and stated that she presented to the judge our company policy which states that we do not pay accumulated vacation benefits if terminated. How can the judge just flat out ignore the law. If we were wrong then why did he not award the former employee all 10 days?


We are appealing the ruling, because if this stands then this means we will have to honor other similar situations. What are the chances of an appeal infavor of our company? This time we will use an attorney to represent company. We did not use one this time because we thought that the law was clear in this case.

Thanks