Appellate Practice
Our firm has a successful
track record arguing cases before the Georgia Supreme Court and
Court of Appeals. We recently represented a group of citizens
who were arrested and prosecuted for engaging in a peaceful protest
at a city council meeting and were able to have the statute under
which they were charged declared unconstitutional by the Georgia
Supreme Court.
In the spring of
2007 our firm was successful in upholding a superior court trial
judge’s decision to overturn
the decision of the Professional Standards Commission (PSC), which
had sanctioned two teachers for hosting a party at their home for
their teenage daughter, in which public high school students had
consumed alcoholic beverages. The PSC sanctioned these two teachers
for ethical violations for hosting such a party, without providing
the supervision to prevent the consumption of alcoholic beverages.
The firm represented the teachers throughout the litigation and
successfully argued the case to the superior court judge, who overturned
the decision of the PSC. The case was later appealed to the
Georgia Court of Appeals, which also upheld the trial court’s
decision, finding that the actions of the teachers were not unethical
and that the sanction against the teachers was properly reversed
by the trial court. This particular decision was a landmark
decision for teachers across the State of Georgia. It offers
further protection for teachers who are unlawfully and unfairly
sanctioned by the PSC for not preventing conduct of others, namely
the unlawful underage drinking by teenagers in this particular
case. It is anticipated that this decision will be cited frequently
by many other attorneys who represent teachers across the state
and the nation.
In
2006, our litigation team was successful in upholding the grant
of summary judgment to Wild Adventures, Inc., one of the nation’s
top fifty theme parks, in two premises liability cases pending
before the Georgia Court of Appeals. The first case resulted
from a female patron who allegedly injured her back after falling
off a chair, when one of the chair legs broke. The Georgia
Court of Appeals found that there was no evidence of any negligence
on behalf of Wild Adventures, Inc. and found that the premises
owner could not be held liable simply because the chair leg broke
under the weight of the patron. Similarly, our litigation
team was successful in upholding summary judgment on a wrongful
arrest/malicious prosecution case against Wild Adventures, Inc.,
holding that Wild Adventures was not liable for turning over an
alleged crime, reported by a visitor, to the sheriff’s department.
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