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.”

A scene in the movie “Crazy, Stupid Love” prompted this tangential question: how realistic is it that a young lawyer studying for the bar exam (Emma Stone) would date her law firm mentor (in the movie, a particularly geeky Josh Groban)?  To be sure, the movie is a romantic comedy and not a documentary about life in a law firm, but I walked away from the theater thinking litigation-averse firms would frown on inter-office romance.  Apparently, I’m not the only one.  This 2004 story from Chicago Magazine tells how, once upon a time, an associate at Sidley Austin named Michelle Robinson was assigned to mentor a summer associate named Barack Obama.  A month later, he asked her out, but she demurred at first, the story said, because “she worried that it would be inappropriate.”

Scott Bonder, a civil litigator from Fried & Bonder, formally announced his candidacy for the state Supreme Court last week with an e-mail highlighting dozens of endorsements from members of the bar. The release, which lists his endorsements on the second page, can be found here.

Jeffrey Toobin suggests in this week’s New Yorker that Georgia-born Justice Clarence Thomas will have far more historical impact on the court than his critics recognize. The exhaustive, 9,000-word profile supports the idea that while Thomas has staked out positions, particularly on originalism and stare decisis,  that even the court’s conservatives have trouble embracing, the majority is moving his way.  

Akhil Reed Amar, a professor at Yale Law School interviewed by Toobin, compares Thomas to Hugo Black, the Alabama lawyer who served on the high court from 1937 to 1971. “Both were Southerners who came to the Court young and with very little judicial experience,” Amar said. “Early in their careers, they were often in dissent, sometimes by themselves, but they were content to go their own way. But once Earl Warren became Chief Justice the Court started to come to Black. It’s the same with Thomas and the Roberts Court. Thomas’s views are now being followed by a majority of the Court in case after case.”

The irony of a Yale professor acknowledging Thomas’ influence no doubt was intentional by Toobin. Thomas has long expressed disdain for Yale, where he obtained his law degree in 1974, saying that affirmative action devalued his degree.

Thomas’ supporters will read this profile with satisfaction, particularly Toobin’s conclusion that Thomas is pulling other justices to his views.  The justice’s critics will read those conclusions with dread.

Read the full story here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/29/110829fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1W9tfEK95

The state ethics commission voted today to hire Georgia Public Defender Standards Council government relations director and lobbyist Holly LaBerge as its new executive secretary.

LaBerge’s start date is yet to be determined . Her predecessor, Stacey Kalberman, will stay on through an also undefined transition period.

The vote was 4-0.

The board lacked a fifth member. Former Vice Chairman Joshua Belinfante resigned two weeks ago, and his governor-appointed replacement C. Chan Caudell has not been sworn in.