A Gwinnett County State Court jury returned a $9.8 million verdict Thursday evening against a family that ran a home day care center near Buford where a child drowned, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said.

The jury apportioned half the verdict to Tanya Moon, who operated the day care and split the rest between her husband, Shawn Moon, and his father, Terry Moon, who owned the house.

“It’s a terrible case,” said R. Alan Cleveland, attorney for plaintiffs Kemi Green and Gbolahan Bankolemoh, whose son Abiola Bankolemoh was just under 2 when he fell into a swimming pool outside the home where he and his brother were staying for day care. Cleveland tried the case along with Jeffrey R. Harris of Harris Penn Lowry DelCampo.

Cleveland and Harris said a high-low agreement was in place between the plaintiffs and defendants, but they did not disclose the amounts.

The Moons were defended by James T. Perry, staff counsel for Cincinnati Insurance Co. He could not be reached immediately by phone or email Friday

A Notre Dame law professor writes in Slate today that when a student in his torts class asked about Penn State’s potential liability in the sex abuse scandal, the professor decided to confront his own history: “So here it is: I am a victim of sexual abuse.”

Professor Mark McKenna’s article makes a particularly interesting point: “[I]t is a mistake to characterize Jerry Sandusky as some kind of subhuman monster. The inclination to do so is entirely understandable, for his behavior was unequivocally monstrous. But to describe him as a monster shields us from the reality that human beings have the capacity for tremendous evil.”

The article can be found here.

A Washington lawyer and a Georgia assistant attorney general are battling in a Chatham County Superior Court over whether Savannah businessman Greg Parker should be banned from advertising his PumpPal gasoline discount card, reports the Savannah Morning News on Savannahnow.com.

Attorney Shannen Coffin of Washington told Judge Louisa Abbot that PumpPal is “a loyalty card protected as commercial free speech,” the newspaper reported.

State Senior Assistant Attorney General Devon Orland “argued the scheme Parker is using employs deceptive advertising to draw customers to his stores at the expense of competitors.” The alleged deception is that customers must sign up to be PumpPal members to get the discount card.

Parker asserted that “his competitors are behind the plan to end it” because the program has been “hugely successful.”

The judge promised a quick ruling on whether to allow the advertising to continue.

The Albany Herald is reporting today that the family of a former Lee County Commissioner murdered a year ago has filed a wrongful death suit against the company monitoring the electronic device that the shooting suspect was ordered to wear.

The complaint filed in Dougherty County State Court names Tifton-based Professional Court Services as a defendant in the death of Walter Phelps, the newspaper reports.

The complaint said the company was “asleep at the wheel” when it was supposed to monitor Jordan Harris’ activities through an ankle monitor he was supposed to wear while on house arrest on other charges.

The suit alleges that the company’s failure to report that Harris had left his home allowed him to shoot and kill Phelps during a robbery attempt at Phelps’ hardware store.

Attorneys for a woman who claims she was pushed from an Atlanta rapper’s car in January filed a civil suit today in DeKalb County State Court seeking punitive damages.

The suit alleges that on Jan. 28 Radric Delantic Davis, who goes by Gucci Mane, pushed Diana Graham out of his Hummer on Brannen Road while the vehicle was still moving after Graham refused his proposition to go to a hotel in exchange for $150.

Davis pleaded guilty on Sept. 13 to two counts of battery, two counts of reckless conduct and one count of disorderly conduct stemming from the incident. He was sentenced to six months in jail.

Davis appeared in Judge Eleanor L. Ross’ courtroom on Friday morning to ask that his sentence be reduced.

Davis’ attorney, Dennis R. Scheib, said his client wanted to put on a charity concert and donate the proceeds to a women’s shelter in DeKalb County in exchange for less time.

“This wouldn’t just be paying a fine; it would be giving money to women and children,” Scheib said after the hearing. “This is an example of when a judge needs to broaden their scope of what to do with a defendant rather than have them sitting in jail.”

The judge denied Davis’ request.

Shortly after, Graham’s attorney, B.J. Bernstein, filed the civil complaint against Davis. Besides punitive damages, the plaintiff also is seeking recovery of out-of-pocket legal expenses and attorney fees and unspecified compensatory damages for pain, mental anguish and emotional distress.

“Gucci, from his music and interviews, always has indicated that money is very much a part of what rules him and motivates him. The civil sanctions are important to stop him from continually violating the law” said Bernstein. “And in this case, throwing someone out of a moving Hummer is not something to be laughed off.”

Scheib said the suit is “typical of what happens to people who have money and are celebrities. People target celebrities and go after them and claim certain things happen so they can go after large sums of money.”

This piece written by a Minnesota trial judge, published in The New York Times’ “Modern Love” spot on Sunday, may warm your heart and offer insight into the pressure a judge feels during a trial.

It also may suggest why some judges aren’t sympathetic to pleas for deadline extensions.

As Judge Lloyd Zimmerman writes:

“The protracted and petty legal combat I had just suffered through was a case that should have been settled but for bad blood in a family relationship. I’d survived, presiding over a trial that was neither great nor good. It was done, but it was not my proudest moment as a judge. My day of emergencies had followed weeks of emergencies that had not been broken up by a vacation. I felt like putting one of those bumper stickers on my door that read: ‘Your poor planning is not my emergency.’

“All I wanted was a drink.”

But keep reading, as the judge proves to be more than a stickler for deadlines. The full article can be found here.

 The state Supreme Court has voted 4-3 to revisit whether a Savannah-area golf club and homeowners association may be liable for damage inflicted by alligators that live in a system of lagoons on the property.

The lawsuit before the court was brought by the heirs of 83-year-old Gwyneth Williams, whose mangled body was found floating in one of the lagoons at a gated community near Savannah in October 2007. The plaintiffs contend the club and association didn’t do enough to monitor the lagoons and remove large alligators.

An alligator trapper killed an 8-foot long, 130-pound alligator that had parts of Williams’ body in its stomach, but there is some dispute over whether the alligator killed Williams. Although the county medical examiner said an 8-foot alligator was to blame for Willilams’ death, the club and association have argued that Williams, who was in poor health, may have died from a heart attack before encountering the alligator, which would have discovered the body and dragged it into the lagoon.

In March, a divided state Court of Appeals ruled the case could go forward. The majority said case law that generally immunizes landowners from liability for wild animals doesn’t preclude recovery against the defendants in Williams’ case, because the defendants knew alligators were common in the lagoon system. A dissent said it was unreasonable to expect the defendants to continually patrol the coastal community to identify and remove large alligators.

Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein, Presiding Judge George H. Carley and Justice Robert Benham dissented from today’s decision to grant the defendants’ petitions for certiorari.

Reuters’ Alison Frankel reports that a federal judge in New York has rejected a bid by CNN’s Nancy Grace (a former Fulton County prosecutor) to toss a breach of contract suit brought by Grace’s former producer. The producer, Patricia Caruso, claims Grace broke an agreement to start a new legal show with her. The story is here.

Judge Clarence Seeliger ruled from the bench today that King & Spalding can remain counsel to the DeKalb County school system in a bitter dispute with construction companies. Kathleen Joyner was in the courtroom today and is preparing her story, which will be online soon. She says that Seeliger said, “I’ve had lots of cases, but this has probably infuriated me more than any other.”

A key part of the challenge to K&S’ representation was a contingency fee agreement the firm signed with the school system. You can read about that part of the dispute in Robin McDonald’s story from February here.

A Cobb County State Court jury returned a $40 million verdict this afternoon, concluding a two-week wrongful death trial over a wreck caused by a tractor trailer that ran through a stop sign into the four-lane Highway U.S. 27 in Blakely.

The jury rejected a bid for punitive damages. The entire verdict was for compensatory damages and believed to be a record in Georgia for a wrongful death case. The three-page verdict form shows $28 million for the value of the life of the driver who was killed, William F. Foster Jr., a high earning owner of an international weapons and ammunition business. The jury also awarded $11 million to Foster’s widow, Theresa K. Foster, the plaintiff in the lawsuit. Mrs. Foster was riding in the back seat of the truck. The lawsuit says she suffered broken ribs and cracked vertebrae, and had to witness her husband’s death.

The rest of the verdict was for general and property damages as well as about $34,000 in medical expenses for the Fosters.

A front seat passenger in Foster’s pickup truck, Jay Demott, was also killed in the 2007 crash but was not part of this lawsuit. His estate settled a separate lawsuit over the wreck last year, attorneys said.

The defendant in the case is the owner of the truck, Landstar Ranger Inc. The company has many levels of insurance, starting with a series of AIG Insurance Companies, attorneys said.

We received this news too close to deadline to include in our Monday newspaper, but we will have a full story on the case in our Tuesday edition.