Almost Time to Pay the Piper…err…I Mean the Lawyers
More than a month after the legal case filed by the “volunteer grandmothers” of the Catoosa County Republican Party hit a dead end at the Georgia Supreme Court, the attorneys for the candidates denied the ability to qualify for office have asked for a hearing to finally consider attorney fees in the case.
In their motion filed on October 29 in the Superior Court of Catoosa County, attorneys Archibald Farrar, Bryan Tyson, Alan Norton, and Larry Stagg begin the process of that will likely result in the recovery of fees and legal expenses from a case that has dragged on for eight months.
Requests for attorney fees and expenses are not unusual and serves an important function as a deterrent against parties who would want to utilize the courts for harassment or other frivolous purposes. O.C.G.A. § 9-15-14(a) states, “In any civil action in any court of record of this state, reasonable and necessary attorney’s fees and expenses of litigation shall be awarded to any party against whom another party has asserted a claim, defense, or other position with respect to which there existed such a complete absence of any justiciable issue of law or fact that it could not be reasonably believed that a court would accept the asserted claim, defense, or other position. Attorney’s fees and expenses so awarded shall be assessed against the party asserting such claim, defense, or other position, or against that party’s attorney, or against both in such manner as is just” <emphasis added>.
While the expense of the litigation could very well bankrupt the Catoosa County Republican Party (“CCRP”) and the Party’s officers, including county committee members as the CCRP is not incorporated and, therefore, does not provide a corporate shield to protect the officers of the organization, the statute does allow for the fees to be assessed against the attorneys as well. It’s worth remembering that Judge Don Thompson told CCRP Chair Joanna Hildreth and the other officers that he was not incarcerating them for contempt of court because they were relying on bad legal advice. That could certainly open the door for the attorneys, especially J. Alex Johnson, Esq. who has aggressively pushed his cockamamy legal theory throughout the Georgia Republican Party and his own Georgia Republican Assembly until he found a county party gullible enough accept and implement his little experiment in authoritarianism.
Even if the fees are not assessed against the CCRP’s attorneys, there are substantial grounds where the CCRP and its officers could recover some of the litigation expenses through a separate action of legal malpractice against their attorneys.
In dismissing the case, the Georgia Supreme Court outlined numerous procedural failures that doomed the case, including a failure to expedite the appeal. According to one Georgia legal malpractice attorney’s website, the elements seem to be easily met in this case:
“Under Georgia law, a party bringing a legal malpractice claim must prove the following: (1) the party employed the defendant’s attorney; (2) the attorney failed to exercise ordinary care, skill, and diligence; and (3) that failure proximately caused damages to the client. OTS, Inc. et al v. Weinstock & Scavo P.C. et al., 339 Ga.App 511, 516 (2016).”
In addition to the costs of litigation, Judge Thompson has also yet to make a determination on the contempt issues involving the CCRP’s failure to follow his order to qualify the candidates for office. At the time, he assessed each defendant in the case $1,000 per hour for contempt.
