The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that a jury should decide whether there was a conspiracy among several Atlanta business groups and individuals to drive the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless out of business and wrongfully foreclose on the shelter it runs at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets.

“We're delighted,” said Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz partner Steven Hall, noting that the opinion arrived on a particularly cold day. “This means 600 people who might have been out on the street tonight will have someplace to stay.”

The unanimous ruling authored by Justice Robert Benham means that the shelter will continue to occupy the building, where it has been paying no rent for more than five years by order of a Fulton County judge, until the multipronged litigation is concluded.