Plaintiff’s attorney Michael L. Neff said he was taken aback by a DeKalb County jury’s response to his client. She had sued her home security monitoring company for failing to warn her that her alarm had been going off all day before she came home and was attacked, raped and kidnapping by an intruder who had been waiting there.

As Neff’s 64-year-old client walked toward the aisle to thank the jurors, each of the 12 embraced her.

What the jurors did not do was talk to the lawyers, both plaintiff’s and defense counsel said.

“There’s normally not a lot of love for the lawyer. I got a lot out of the respect they gave her, though,” Neff said. “It was a wonderful moment.”

The full story on the case will be online late this afternoon and in tomorrow’s Daily Report.

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

Drama, passion, intrigue, death. Business as usual in the city that inspired the murder mystery “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” Last week in Chatham County Superior Court, a three-week murder trial wrapped up with the convictions of two men for shooting a Savannah College of Art and Design student following a robbery.  One was represented by Atlanta lawyer Steve Sadow, who had to delay a local case to be in Savannah. Also playing out this week was the shooting death of a grill cook in the kitchen of a local restaurant, MaRandy’s, by one of the owners.

In its daily accounts of the murder trials, the Savannah Morning News spares no detail. Today, for example, the local daily gives the defendant Michael Grant’s story of why he shot the cook, John Cornish. The owner said the cook “came from behind the counter” with “something” in his hand. Something shiny, chrome.

“I just lost control. I wasn’t trying to kill him,” Grant said.

That’s the defense side. The prosecution tells a different story, one that includes a long battle between the two men that boiled over. The owner said the cook blew up that night at the restaurant, attacked his girlfriend and cussed and slapped his mother – one of the co-owners. The owner left after arguing with the cook, then returned to the kitchen through the back door with a gun. The newspaper said police evidence shows Grant repeatedly shot and pistol whipped Cornish. Then Grant drove away in his gold Jaguar.

Read all about it in the Savannah Morning News, or Savannahnow.com.

The Rev. Markel Hutchins has sued the family of Kathryn Johnston for $490,000, one-tenth of the $4.9 million settlement the city of Atlanta paid to the kin of the 92-year-old woman slain by Atlanta police during a botched drug raid in 2006.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in Fulton County Superior Court, Hutchins says he had a verbal agreement with Sarah Dozier, Johnston’s niece and the administrator of her estate, that he “would be compensated by the Johnston Estate in the amount of ten percent (10%) of the gross recovery of any lawsuit against the City of Atlanta, et. al.”

The suit, filed by Taylor English Duma attorney Lacrecia G. Cade, says that Hutchins “served as the Estate/Family Spokesman; principal strategist and issue manager; public relations expert; crisis intervention and crisis management expert; investigator; project manager; government relations expert; and other duties as requested by the Defendants and those acting in concert with them.”

  Read more »

The City of Atlanta has reached a settlement with would-be city contractor Corey Airport Services over Corey’s claims that city officials in prior administrations engaged in political favoritism that for decades kept the city from bidding out a lucrative  billboard advertising contract at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Last year, a federal jury in Atlanta awarded Corey Airport Services $17.5 million, finding that the city conspired with airport advertising vendor Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. and its minority partner, Barbara Fouch, to strip Corey Airport of its right to a fair and impartial bidding process. The city’s portion of that award was $8.5 million. The city, Clear Channel and Fouch appealed the verdict. Read more »

Under a deal worked out between Red Oak Sanitation and the Governor’s Office of Consumer Protection, residents of some portions of unincorporated Gwinnett County whose trash was collected by the company, may be due refunds. The county commission canceled Red Oak’s contract in July 2010.

According to a press release, residents who had been served by Red Oak were supposed to receive a refund on their $25 or $50 trash bin deposits after the contract was revoked, but an investigation by the agency determined that company “failed to refund those deposits in a timely manner and that it had made no effort to develop a plan for the timely collection of trash bins or the return of the refundable deposits.” Read more »

The State Ethics Commission has agreed to pay a former staff member $280,000 to settle a suit charging that she was fired in retaliation for reporting her concerns about two former commission lawyers who used state time and resources to set up their own law practice on the side.

Jennifer Ward, the agency’s former human resources and budget director, sued the commission in June, alleging that she was forced out last year shortly after she reported to her boss, former Ethics Commission Executive Director Rick Thompson, that staff attorneys Thomas Plank and Yasha Heidari were misusing government resources. Read more »

A federal judge has approved the settlement over a botched raid of an Atlanta gay bar last year, in which plaintiffs will collect $1 million and the Atlanta mayor has apologized and promised changes in police procedures.

Here are the press releases from the parties–first from Mayor Kasim Reed, then from the plaintiffs.

Statement of Mayor Kasim Reed on Calhoun Settlement

ATLANTA – On behalf of the City of Atlanta, the Atlanta City Council, and the Atlanta Police Department, I am pleased to announce that our settlement with the Plaintiffs in the Atlanta Eagle lawsuit has been approved by the Federal Court.

The allegations made by the Plaintiffs, that certain Atlanta Police officers engaged in inappropriate conduct at the Atlanta Eagle on September 10, 2009, have been a matter of serious concern to me for some time.  

I believe that what occurred that evening should not have happened and should not happen again.  As Mayor of Atlanta, I feel pain for anyone mistreated in our city and apologize to each Plaintiff in the Calhoun case.  

This week’s settlement agreement is a step forward, and I hope, the beginning of a healing process, part of a number of steps I’ve taken since becoming Mayor of the City of Atlanta. The Plaintiffs and the City of Atlanta, as part of the settlement agreement, have agreed upon clear steps which will strengthen and improve our law enforcement capabilities and help ensure that an incident such as this will not happen again in our city.  These reforms include training, education, and revising applicable policies and procedures.

I believe that the lessons learned here, and the resulting reforms, will have a positive impact on future relations between the Atlanta Police Department, the LGBT community and the residents of the City of Atlanta, and that the rights of all of our citizens will be better safeguarded as a result.

I would like to acknowledge the members of the Blue Ribbon Commission who counseled me and volunteered their time to assist with the mediation process: Lawrie Demorest, Burt Tillman, Jeremy Burnette, Lee Schreter and Lawrence Ashe.  Thank you for your service and commitment to the City of Atlanta.

I also want to express my personal appreciation to our City Attorney, Cathy Hampton, whose leadership was instrumental in settling this case.

Our diversity is our strength.  As Mayor, I look forward to working with our entire community to ensure we are a more caring and compassionate city.

Read more »

The parents of Joshua Brown, the 17-year-old driver killed in 2003 when he lost control of his car on a stretch of wet highway north of Cartersville, reached a $750,000 settlement with the Georgia Department of Transportation just before the case was to go to a jury Friday.

Attorney Robin Frazer Clark, who represents Alan and LuGina Brown, hammered out the deal with lawyers from the office of Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker in the closing hours of a week-long trial described by Fulton County State Court Judge Susan Forsling as a “difficult case on a number of levels” because of the emotional tenor of the testimony and the technical details related to the highway’s engineering. Read more »

In what a government press release called the largest settlement in the history of the Northern District of Georgia, pharmaceutical manufacturer Allergan Inc. has agreed to plead guilty and pay $600 million to resolve its criminal and civil liability arising from the company’s unlawful promotion of its biological product, Botox, for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration.

The resolution, announced by Atlanta U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates, includes a criminal fine and forfeiture totaling $375 million and a civil settlement with the federal government and the states of $225 million.

“This global resolution marks the end of an investigation that exemplifies what can be accomplished when there is cooperation between law enforcement agencies sharing information and working together,” said Yates in the press release. Read more »