Fulton County Commissioner Liz Hausmann filed a lawsuit today in Superior Court against the county’s tax commissioner, Arthur Ferdinand, alleging retaliation.

Hausmann has publicly called for an investigation into Ferdinand’s tax lien sales, which opponents say may have deprived the county of revenue and property owners of adequate time to pay their debts, and has rebuked Ferdinand’s use of a county-paid vehicle.

Hausmann’s attorney, Josh Belinfante, a partner at Robbins Ross Alloy Belinfante Littlefield and former ethics commissioner, said Ferdinand is disputing Hausmann’s vehicle registration and threatening to revoke the license of Hausmann’s car, which is used by her daughter.

“Defendant, without authority, has revoked the registration, even though all taxes due have been timely paid, ostensibly because Hausmann failed to provide proof of her place of residence to Ferdinand’s satisfaction,” the complaint states. “In reality, Ferdinand revoked Hausmann’s vehicle registration in retaliation for a recent inquiry by Hausmann regarding Ferdinand’s personal use of a county vehicle.”

The complaint asserts that Hausmann is a resident of Johns Creek.

Ferdinand was not available for comment. An attorney for him was not listed on the complaint.

Hausmann is seeking a temporary restraining order halting the revocation of her vehicle registration and injunctive relief ordering Ferdinand to reinstate her car tag. She is also seeking unspecified damages.

The case is Hausmann v. Ferdinand, No. 2103CV231746

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter denied prosecutors’ request for a gag order in the Atlanta Public Schools test-cheating case Friday, blasting District Attorney Paul Howard and the special investigators he appointed for numerous public statements asserting that former APS Superintendant Beverly Hall and 34 co-defendants had engaged in a massive cheating conspiracy.

“Do ya’ll believe in the concept of presumption of innocence?” Baxter asked Senior Assistant District Attorney Christopher Quinn, who was supporting a motion to bar any attorneys or their clients from discussing the case outside of court.

“These folks have been vilified and tried in the court of public opinion,” said Baxter, “and your office has pretty much led the charge.”

Baxter pointed to an hour-long press conference Howard held when the indictments were announced in March, as well as numerous statements to the press by former Georgia Attorney General Michael Bowers, one of Howards’s specially appointed district attorneys, and asked Quinn why his office was suddenly so concerned about anyone making outside comments on the case.

“It may be very difficult, based on what’s gone on, to find a jury that can give these folks the presumption of innocence,” Baxter said.

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One of two guns seized the same day.

The General Assembly seems to have given up on the idea of allowing guns to be carried in Georgia courthouses, but – judging from the continuing seizure of weapons at the security checkpoints at the Fulton County Courthouse – some members of the public just can’t wait.

According to a release sent out Thursday evening by Fulton County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Tracy Flanagan, security staff have seized seven weapons so far this year, including four handguns.

Two of the guns were seized the same day: The stylish pink Glock 9 mm above belonged to Tomesha Jordan, 35, who told deputies she was there “to show support for a relative who had a court appearance” after her March 13 arrest on charges of carrying a concealed weapon in an unauthorized location, according to the release.

On the same day another woman, 22-year-old Shimeika Cargill, tried to enter the courthouse with a Taurus .22 caliber pistol with a seven-round magazine and a chambered cartridge.

She was discovered to be wanted in DeKalb County and transferred to the authorities there.

On Wednesday, Yvan Maxey was arrested for trying to bring a Bersa .380 into the courthouse. In January, and unidentified man was arrested when his backpack was found to contain a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and magazine loaded with hollow-point bullets.

The charges against him were subsequently dismissed. In 2012, seven guns were seized by courthouse security, according to the release. — Greg Land

The husband of Jacqueline Culp, who died after her car was rammed by a police cruiser that ran through a red light last summer in southwest Atlanta, has sued the city of Atlanta. The officer driving the patrol car, Joshua Sieck, was charged with vehicular homicide and fired a few days after the wreck. He is not named in the suit.

Culp, 59, died at Grady Memorial Hospital two days after Sieck’s police cruiser sped through the signal on Cascade Road, striking Culp’s BMW 740 as she was driving on Fairburn Road. The filing said Sieck was on his way “an emergency suicide call which was in excess of 30 minutes old.”

The suit, filed Wednesday in Fulton County State Court on behalf of Culp’s widower, Ralph Culp, includes a copy of a Dec. 4 letter from his lawyers, Cuffie Law Firm partner Thomas Cuffie and Harold Spence, demanding the $500,000 liability limit the city bears under Georgia’s sovereign immunity statutes.

“The response we’ve gotten so far is that [the city] is looking into it and investigating,” said Spence. “What’s particularly disturbing to us is that six days after the accident, they felt they had enough evidence to end Joshua Sieck’s police career and fire him, but …  they still don’t have enough information to do what’s right by this family.”

Deputy City Attorney Eric Richardson said the city was still gathering information on the accident.

“I won’t comment on the specifics of the suit,” Richardson said. “We got the claim, we are investigating the claim and have been ever since we got the ante litem notice. We want to do a complete and thorough investigation: We’re talking about a serious incident and substantial injuries.”

Two suits seeking damages from Atlanta-based rent-to-own company Aaron’s and its largest franchisee have been filed in Fulton County courts over claims that spyware the companies installed on rental computers secretly captured images of users and recorded sensitive data, then transmitted that data to the program’s installers.

A suit filed Wednesday in Fulton County Superior Court seeks class status for a portion of what the filing attorney estimates are at least 800 customers whose rental computers had the program installed. Federal suits naming Aaron’s and its franchisees, as well as Texas rent-to-own franchiser ColorTyme Inc., have also been filed in California and Pennsylvania. In September the Federal Trade Commission announced that it had settled with now-closed Pennsylvania-based software designer DesignerWare LLC and seven rental companies that had installed the firm’s PC Rental Agent software on its computers.

The putative class action in Fulton names SEI/Aarons Inc.–the largest Aaron’s franchisee, with 100 stores in nine states–as a defendant, along with Aaron’s. A similar suit filed last week with a single plaintiff names Aaron’s and a Washington-based franchisee as defendants.

An Aaron’s spokeswoman forwarded a statement laying any responsibility for the offending software on its franchisees.

“Not one of our 1,300-plus company-operated stores has used PC Rental Agent or any other product developed by Designerware LLC,” it said in part. “Aaron’s disagrees with the claims made in the litigation and will defend the litigation vigorously.”

Aaron’s has more than 700 franchisees, according to its website.

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The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the murder convictions and sentences for two men that a Fulton County judge tossed out because one page of a three-page investigative report was missing at the time of their trial.

In separate trials in 2008, Christopher James and Herman Lawson were convicted of murdering Fatima Fisher and Jeremiah Ingram; a third co-defendant indicted on the same charges was later acquitted by a jury.

In 2011, now-retired Fulton County Superior court Judge Marvin Arrington Sr. ordered new trials for both men, agreeing with their lawyers that a missing page of a three-page report from the medical examiner’s office was a “critical piece of evidence” that could have helped fix the time of the murders and possibly helped their cases.

In a five-page opinion for a unanimous court, Justice Robert Benham noted that the copies of the report in both the prosecution and defense files were missing the page, which Arrington’s order said was likely due to the report being photocopied on a copier set to print double-sided documents. Benham’s opinion said the lower court “made it clear that it found no evidence of malfeasance or misfeasance with regard to the missing page” on the part of the state.

That the third defendant’s attorneys were able to easily ascertain that a page was missing – they were numbered, Benham noted – and acquire the full report prior to the trial indicated that the full document could have been obtained “by the exercise of reasonable diligence.”

“That their co-indictee’s defense team recognized that a page was missing and obtained it defeats appellees’ claim of suppression,” wrote Benham, granting the state’s motion to overturn Arrington’s order.

The office of Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard had no response to the ruling, according to spokeswoman Yvette Jones.

Roswell defense attorney Raina Nadler, who represented the inmates on appeal along with Riverdale attorney Barbara Collins, said they had not had a chance to discuss the order with the clients.

The murder trial against Andrea Sneiderman will likely take place in July, according to a filing by her attorneys in a related civil case.

The potential trial date was mentioned in a motion by attorneys Mark Trigg and Douglas Chalmers Jr. asking Fulton County Superior Court Judge Doris Downs to postpone a deposition of Sneiderman until after the criminal trial.

Sneiderman was arrested Aug. 2, 2012, on charges that she worked with her boss, Hemy Neuman, to kill her husband, Rusty Sneiderman, so that they could be together and benefit from $2 million in life insurance. The motion, dated Jan. 4, came in litigation over the forfeiture of her assets, including the life insurance proceeds.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Gregory Adams has not set a trial date.

The motion said the deposition should be delayed because information gained from Sneiderman could be used against her in her criminal case. The plaintiff in the case is Steven Sneiderman, who is Rusty Sneiderman’s brother and the executor of his estate, and Esther Panitch is one of his attorneys.

“Counsel for the Estate is working hand in glove with the DeKalb County prosecutors and will structure her deposition questions in a manner best designed to help the prosecutors in the Criminal Case,” the motion said.

To support their motion, Sneiderman’s attorneys cited a recent decision in the litigation between DeKalb County School District and project management company Heery International. In that case, retired federal appeals court judge Stanley Birch Jr., who is serving as a special master for discovery issues, allowed the deposition of former school superintendent Crawford Lewis to be postponed until after his criminal trial, which is scheduled to start April 15.

Clayton Sheriff Victor Hill’s attorney said Monday that he believes that efforts by a Clayton County neighborhood activist to force Governor Nathan Deal to appoint a commission to consider suspending Hill  are misplaced and that state law, in Hill’s case, does not apply.

“To try to apply it to Victor Hill would mean you would take exception to the literal meaning of the statute,” said attorney Steven Frey.

On Friday, Atlanta attorney Page Pate filed the a petition for a writ of mandamus in Fulton County Superior Court on behalf of Clayton resident James Buckman. The petition challenged the governor’s  decision not to appoint a commission and claimed that Deal had refused to execute his statutory obligations. Buckman is one of the founders of the Lake Spivey Civic Association, Pate said.

The special commission, if Deal had named one,  would have considered whether to suspend Hill, who was indicted last February on multiple charges, including racketeering, stemming from his first term as sheriff.  When Hill was indicted, he was a civilian, having been defeated for re-election in 2008.

Hill is awaiting trial while pretrial matters in the case are on appeal. But while under indictment, he won his campaign to regain the sheriff’s post against Kem Kimbrough, who had defeated Hill in 2008.

Deal’s office announced last week that he had decided not to appoint a panel to consider Hill’s suspension after evaluating state law and the facts in the case. State law allows the governor to appoint a three-member panel to investigate indicted public officials.

Frey said that the state law in question concerned only public officials who were indicted while in office. “The intent of the statute… is to protect the public from a public official who is indicted during the course of his public duties,” Frey said. “That does not apply here.”

Because Hill was indicted while he was a private citizen and voted into office by county residents despite the indictment, “The citizens need no protection because they chose to elect him despite his being indicted,” Frey explained.

“The public need not be protected. They made an informed decision.”

The writ petition—which has been assigned to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kelly Amanda Lee—claims that Deal’s interpretation of the statute “forges a loophole for indicted public officials that strains a plain reading of the statute and is inconsistent with the legislative intent of the Georgia State Legislature.”

And, he added, “If you tinker with this statute so as to make it apply to Victor Hill, all that does is give a zealous district attorney that much more power.”

Frey also called Hill’s indictment politically motivated and without merit. Hill was not indicted, he said, “until two months after he announces he is going to run again.”

A Clayton County resident filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in Fulton County Superior Court today, seeking to compel Gov. Nathan Deal to appoint a review commission that would consider suspending Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill until the criminal charges against him are resolved.

Atlanta attorney Page Pate filed the writ petition on behalf of Clayton resident James Buckman, challenging Deal’s decision not to appoint a panel and claiming that in doing so, the governor has refused to execute his statutory obligations. Buckman is a community activist and one of the founders of the Lake Spivey Civic Association, Pate said.

Deal announced Thursday that he would not seek to suspend Hill, who was re-elected as Clayton’s sheriff even though he has been charged with multiple felonies, including racketeering.

The governor said he decided not to appoint a panel to consider Hill’s suspension after evaluating state law and the facts in the case. State law allows the governor to appoint a three-member panel to investigate indicted public officials.

A press release from Deal’s office said that he “concluded that the law outlining the procedures for the suspension of public officials under indictment applies only to officials indicted while holding their elected office.”

Hill was not the county sheriff when he was indicted.

The writ petition—which has been assigned to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Kelly Amanda Lee—claims that Deal’s interpretation of the statute “forges a loophole for indicted public officials that strains a plain reading of the statute and is inconsistent with the legislative intent of the Georgia State Legislature.”

It also asserts that “a defect of legal justice would ensue from a failure of Governor Deal to appoint a review commission” and that, absent the writ petition, “There is no other specific legal remedy at hand.”

The writ petition asserts that the purpose of a review commission under state law is to determine whether the indictment “relates to and adversely affects the administration of the office of the indicted public official and that the rights and interests of the public are adversely affected.” If the commission makes such a finding, it “shall recommend that the public official be suspended from office” and that the governor may suspend the indicted official “immediately and without further action pending the final disposition of the case.”

The writ petition also asserts that the governor “shall … appoint a review commission” upon receiving a copy of the indictment.

Pate said today that filing a petition for the writ of mandamus was the only option remaining in seeking Hill’s suspension. “It’s the only thing we can do,” he said. “You can ask the governor to look at it again, please. But the sheriff association has already asked him to do that.

Hill was first elected as Clayton’s sheriff in 2004 but he lost a re-election bid in 2008. Last year a Clayton County grand jury indicted Hill on 37 counts, including racketeering, making a false statement, theft by taking, violating his oath of office and influencing a witness – all related to his term as sheriff.  Although the charges are pending, Hill ran again for sheriff last year, defeating incumbent sheriff Kem Kimbrough, who had beaten Hill in 2008.

Hill’s lawyer, Jonesboro attorney Steven Frey, could not be reached for comment.

Deal spokeswoman Stephanie Mayfield referred questions to state Attorney General Sam Olens.  Olens’ spokeswoman, Lauren Kane said, “We have not reviewed the lawsuit so we have no comment.”

Eight years on the Fulton County Juvenile Court bench were enough for Belinda Edwards, the county’s superior court judges have decided.

Fulton Superior Court Chief Judge Cynthia Wright confirmed she and her colleagues had decided not to reappoint Edwards to another four-year term. Edwards, who had been serving as her court’s chief judge, is a former general counsel for Morris Brown  College first tapped for the juvenile court bench in November 2004.

Wright declined to divulge the tally of the superior court judges’ Dec. 6 vote on Edwards’ reappointment and was close-mouthed about the reasons Edwards’ term was not renewed. “The superior court judges just felt like it was time to move in a different direction,” said Wright, explaining there will be a separate process to fill the vacancy on the court.  “I can’t speak to why anyone cast their vote in any particular manner, but it was a  decision that the bench made.”

In the wake of the judges’ decision not to renew her term, Edwards purported to fire juvenile court administrator Omotayo Alli, according to Wright. Wright said she put a stop to that in a Dec. 21 order. “I just thought that was a decision that should not be made by someone with hours left in her administration,” Wright said.

Attempts to reach Edwards have been unsuccessful.