Good morning! We have plenty of new multimedia online for you this week from the Daily Report.

On our Facebook page is a slide show of before and after pictures of the homeless encampment near the Fulton County Courthouse/Gold Dome area. The associated story about the clearing of the people camped there, by staff reporter Greg Land, is here.

There are videos of arguments before the Georgia Supreme Court in Kesterson v. Jarrett, a case about whether a trial judge may exclude from the courtroom a plaintiff whose disabilities or disfigured features may attract undue attention from jurors. Reported by staff reporter Aly Palmer (subscription required).

Also before the Georgia Supreme Court this week, and on video, were oral arguments in Formal Advisory Opinion No. 10-1, a debate on how to govern public defenders’ handling of client conflicts. Story (subscription required) also by Palmer.

Stop by Daily Report Multimedia often for unique, legal-oriented media. And be sure to sign-up for our twice daily e-news alerts. Top right of the homepage, in red. No subscription needed for our news alerts. They’re free.

Thank you for reading and viewing all the unique media offered by the Daily Report. There’s always more to come.

Six months ago we wrote that Lin Wood–who became famous fighting for Richard Jewell, the Olympic Park security guard falsely suspected of planting the bomb he discovered–was leaving Bryan Cave to work on a whistleblower case with a small firm he was starting.

But Wood, who also has represented the parents of JonBenet Ramsey and the woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape, hasn’t lost his touch for landing in the middle of a media circus. Today he appeared at a press conference on behalf of embattled presidential candidate Herman Cain, according to this post from USA Today.

“Herman Cain finds himself over the course of the last several days now on trial in the court of public opinion. Falsely accused,” the article quotes Wood as saying.

Lawyers interested in filling a spot on the state Court of Appeals have just over two weeks to throw their hats in the ring.

Gov. Nathan Deal’s Judicial Nominating Commission today announced the schedule for vetting would-be successors to Presiding Judge J.D. Smith. Smith recently announced that he would retire from the court at the end of this year.

The commission of lawyers headed by J. Randolph Evans of McKenna Long & Aldridge and Pete Robinson of Troutman Sanders announced today the deadline for nominations would be Oct. 21. Nominations should be sent to the Judicial Nominating Commission, c/o Dana McGuire, 600 Peachtree, N.E., Suite 5200, Atlanta, Ga. 30308-2216, by fax to (404) 962-6919 or by email c/o dana.mcguire@troutmansanders.com).Those interested in the job may nominate themselves or be nominated by others.

 Nominees will be sent the commission’s application package, which is due to be received by the commission by Nov. 4.

Georgia, along with 25 other states, has filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in the ongoing legal challenge to the 2010 federal health care overhaul known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“We have said all along that this is a case that must ultimately be resolved by the Supreme Court, and that time is finally here,” said Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens in a written statement. “Federal health care reform grossly exceeds the enumerated powers of Congress, and the Court now has the opportunity to restore constitutional balance to federal government of limited powers. We are hopeful that the Court will grant cert quickly and strike down the law.”

On Aug. 12, the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals handed opponents of the health care act a partial win when a panel found 2-1 that the individual mandate portion of the act was unconstitutional. The individual mandate would have required most Americans to maintain a minimum level of health insurance coverage or pay a penalty.

However, the 26 states including Georgia, a group of small business owners and two individuals failed to convince the appellate court panel majority to strike down parts of the law that expand Medicaid eligibility and require insurance companies to provide coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions.

The cert petition asks for review of three questions: “Does Congress exceed its enumerated powers and violate basic principles of federalism when it coerces States into accepting onerous conditions that it could not impose directly by threatening to withhold all federal funding under the single largest grant-in-aid program, or does the limitation on Congress‘s spending power that this Court recognized in South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987), no longer apply? May Congress treat States no differently from any other employer when imposing invasive mandates as to the manner in which they provide their own employees with insurance coverage, as suggested by Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528 (1985), or has Garcia‘s approach been overtaken by subsequent cases in which this Court has explicitly recognized judicially enforceable limits on Congress‘s power to interfere with state sovereignty?  Does the Affordable Care Act‘s mandate that virtually every individual obtain health insurance exceed Congress‘s enumerated powers and, if so, to what extent (if any) can the mandate be severed from the remainder of the Act?”

Monday was the U.S. Justice Department’s deadline to seek an en banc review by the 11^th Circuit Court of Appeals, which the feds did not do.

From The Associated Press:

Appeals court won’t rehear water war ruling
RAY HENRY,Associated Press

 ATLANTA (AP) — A federal appeals court will not reconsider a ruling that gave metro Atlanta the right to tap a reservoir that provides water to roughly 3 million people, meaning Alabama and Florida must now decide whether to take their legal challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court.

King & Spalding has settled a legal malpractice suit brought by The Atlanta Spirit Group, the consortium that owns the Atlanta Hawks and, until recently, the Atlanta Thrashers.

In a Sept. 9 filing, the Spirit Group dismissed all claims with prejudice, ending litigation that accused K&S of mishandling an appraisal between the majority of the teams’ owners who were trying to buy out a fellow owner, Steve Belkin, who owned a 30 percent share of the group’s holdings.

When a dispute arose over the terms of an appraisal in 2006, Belkin sued his fellow owners for breach of contract in Maryland. The lengthy litigation ended in a settlement last year, and in January the consortium – known as HTPA (the Hawks, Thrashers and Philips Arena) Holding Company, sued their former law firm.

The two-count suit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court by attorneys with Doffermyre, Shields, Canfield & Knowles alleged professional malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty, and sought more than $130 million in damages and $14.5 million for its Maryland litigation expenses.

K&S’ attorney, Alston & Bird partner Steven M. Collins, was in a meeting and unavailable for comment, and the Daily Report was unable to immediately reach any of the HTPA attorneys.

This story from our affiliate, the National Law Journal, focuses on a senior lawyer at the Pentagon whose office was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, and the decisions he made that morning to get out of the building and that evening to stay at his job. http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202513414494

When the Alcovy Judicial Circuit, which covers Newton and Walton counties, built a new court website, one of the considerations was how to serve litigants who don’t have lawyers.

Superior Court Judge Samuel D. Ozburn said 40 to 50 percent of the parties in the court’s domestic actions are now pro se.

He calls it a sign of the economic times. “People just can’t afford an attorney,” he said. “Someone loses their job and gets $5,000 behind in their child support, then they can’t afford to pay an attorney $2,500. They have to do the best they can on their own.”

The court’s new website, which went live this week, features a rich repository of forms, which Ozburn said are useful to attorneys, though the court knows they will be used heavily by pro se parties. Ozburn said the court often receives filings with forms from other counties with names crossed out as people struggle to put together a case, “and that places us in a tough position.” He emphasized that the court is careful not to dispense legal advice, “but we want to help people access the courts.” Attorneys don’t mind the court helping pro se litigants, he added, because they know that people using the forms can’t afford to buy legal services.

Ozburn added that the website’s expanded information on courts, personnel and procedures, as well as downloadable calendars for each judge, should be especially useful for lawyers who visit the circuit. He estimated that about half of the attorneys who make appearances in the circuit are from elsewhere in Georgia—primarily the Athens and Gwinnett areas, but also Fulton and DeKalb.

The website is alcovycircuit.com.

Our next issue, coming online now and in print on Tuesday, is devoted to telling the stories of 12 Georgia lawyers and their experiences on Sept. 11, 2001, and in the subsequent decade. Our list of participants is below, but we know they represent only a fraction of the Georgia legal community’s collective memory. Please feel free to use the comments section to share your thoughts and memories as well.

-          Larry Thompson, former deputy U.S. attorney general, tells about being whisked to the “undisclosed location” as the attacks unfolded;

-          Gregory Riggs, then the general counsel for Delta Air Lines, was in the middle of a presentation about Pan Am’s liability in the Lockerbie bombing when he was called to Delta’s command center;

-          Joe D. Whitley, who in 2003 became the first general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security;

-          Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman and 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate, laments the tradeoff between national security and personal liberty;

-          Justin Anand, now a federal prosecutor but then an associate with Clearly Gottlieb in New York, was trapped in the subway when the towers collapsed; Read more »

“I think it’s a bad move. Period.”

That was former Georgia Attorney General Michael J. Bowers’ reaction Tuesday when asked by the Daily Report for his thoughts about a provision in the proposed legislative rewrite of the state’s open government laws that would prohibit litigants from using the Open Records Act to obtain records for use in civil or administrative litigation. (The legislation is House Bill 397, which was drafted and backed by current Attorney General Sam Olens and his staff. The bill came up for a public hearing at the Capitol on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee.)

Bowers, now a partner at Balch & Bingham, had success using the Open Records Act in his reverse discrimination suit on behalf of fired librarians against the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library in 2002, in which his clients won millions.

“The government has every advantage imaginable and to preclude the use of the Open Records law in litigation is bad business,” Bowers said. “And these are public documents. They belong to the people to begin with. It’s not rocket science.”