Mary Johnson, M.D., sued Steven K. Leibel and his law firm, Steven K. Leibel & Associates, P.C. collectively “Leibel”, alleging that he committed legal malpractice when he represented her in a lawsuit against Scottish Rite Hospital “SRH”. After a Fulton County jury awarded Johnson $2 million,1 Leibel filed a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict “JNOV” and a motion for new trial based on juror misconduct. The trial court granted Leibel’s motion for new trial and denied his motion for JNOV. We granted Johnson’s application for interlocutory appeal challenging the grant of Leibel’s motion for new trial in Case No. A10A1047, and Leibel cross-appealed the denial of his motion for JNOV in Case No. A10A1048. For reasons that follow, we reverse the grant of the motion for new trial in Case No. A10A1047 and affirm the denial of the motion for JNOV in Case No. A10A1048. Construed in favor of the verdict,2 the record shows that Johnson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, sued SRH in the Northern District of Georgia in 1996, seeking damages for age and gender discrimination.3 Johnson was represented by Leibel. The magistrate judge dismissed Johnson’s state law claims and granted summary judgment to SRH on the remaining claims, concluding that Johnson failed to establish that SRH’s “actions were discriminatorily motivated or that the proffered justifications were pretextual.” The district court adopted the magistrate judge’s findings and granted summary judgment to SRH. Leibel filed a motion for reconsideration on Johnson’s behalf, which the district court denied.4 Leibel then filed a notice of appeal, and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal as untimely.5
Johnson filed the instant legal malpractice action against Leibel, alleging that he failed to introduce available evidence in opposition to SRH’s summary judgment motion, which would have created issues of fact, and that he failed to file a timely notice of appeal of the judgment. After the jury returned a verdict in favor of Johnson, Leibel filed a motion for JNOV, and he also filed a motion for new trial based on one juror’s failure to disclose during voir dire that he had been sued by Leibel in 1992. The trial court granted Leibel’s motion for new trial and denied his motion for JNOV, and these appeals followed.
