R. Robin Mcdonald

June 06, 2017 | Daily Report Online

Judges in the Northern District of Georgia knew what to do with the biannual Civil Justice Reform Act Report's civil backlog case list. They cleared the decks.

By R. Robin McDonald

4 minute read

June 02, 2017 | Daily Report Online

Judge Richard Story, a Clinton appointee, has never previously handled multidistrict litigation but is experienced in complex class actions.

By R. Robin McDonald

3 minute read

June 01, 2017 | Daily Report Online

An Atlanta lawyer representing students subjected to invasive body searches during a mass—and warrantless—drug sweep at a South Georgia high school says the local sheriff who orchestrated the sweep conducted "900 illegal, suspicionless searches."

By R. Robin McDonald

8 minute read

May 31, 2017 | Daily Report Online

One day before DeKalb Sheriff Jeff Mann and his lawyer were scheduled to meet with a committee appointed by Georgia's governor to investigate Mann and his continued fitness to hold office, a Fulton County judge declined to call a halt to the committee's work.

By R. Robin McDonald

8 minute read

May 30, 2017 | Daily Report Online

Atlanta has given some of its artists until June 9 to seek city approval of murals displayed on private property that are visible to the public. Without such approval, the city has said, the works will be removed, and the artists could potentially face prosecution. But that threat by the city to remove artwork visible to the public, even if it's on private property, prompted several artists on Tuesday to sue the city to stop it from enforcing the ordinance.

By R. Robin McDonald

7 minute read

May 30, 2017 | Daily Report Online

When 14-year-old Sydney Sanders attempted suicide on Valentine's Day 2011, the Richmond Hill police officers who responded to the hospital to investigate took photos of multiple wounds created when the teen cut herself. One of those officers subsequently showed those police photos to his daughter, a classmate of Sanders, who then began showing them to other students, court papers said. Six weeks later, Sanders hanged herself. The day she died, Sanders had raged to her mother and her softball coach about the circulating photos and expressed fears about what other information about her local police might release. On Monday, more than three months after oral argument, the Supreme Court of Georgia effectively blocked one road to recovery by the teen's estate when it reversed rulings by the trial court and the Georgia Court of Appeals that would have allowed a wrongful death suit brought by Laurel Lane Maia, Sanders' mother, against Richmond Hill, city officials, and Officer Douglas Sahlberg to go to trial.

By R. Robin McDonald

9 minute read

May 26, 2017 | Daily Report Online

Lawrence Joseph Jefferson's 1985 death penalty sentence for years has troubled federal judges who have reviewed the case.

By R. Robin McDonald

12 minute read

May 25, 2017 | Daily Report Online

The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security seeking detailed information about hunger strikes by detainees incarcerated at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers.

By R. Robin McDonald

6 minute read

May 24, 2017 | Daily Report Online

When Georgia's attorney general weighed in this week with a "neutral" brief in the public records fight now before the Supreme Court of Georgia, he joined 11 organizations that have squared off with competing briefs warning of wide-reaching consequences regardless of which way the high court might rule.

By R. Robin McDonald

9 minute read

May 24, 2017 | Daily Report Online

In a case of first impression, Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the court to remand a case involving whether a private hospital conducted duties entrusted to it by a public agency.

By R. Robin McDonald

12 minute read