You will note when you go to vote in Georgia that there's a contested Court of Appeals seat with a lot of available choices. Sadly, the first person on the list regularly wins in such circumstances because people rarely take the time to educate themselves about judicial candidates, and in this case the person on the top of the list may not be the best choice.
I recommend Chris McFadden who has considerable appellate experience (unlike the first person on the list) and who is also comparatively liberal.
Reasons to support Chris McFadden (originally posted to the Georgia Trial Lawyer's Website by Charles M. Cork III):1. Chris is ideally qualified by scholarship and temperament and experience to sit on the Court of Appeals. He is the main author of the West volume, Georgia Appellate Practice (2d ed.), one of the few Georgia practice books I've found worth buying. He co-founded the appellate practice section of the state bar.
2. He is exclusively an appellate lawyer. He represents clients, often other lawyers, who have legal issues that require an appellate determination. He has handled many appeals for GTLA members, probably more than for opponents of GTLA members, but he represents anyone who need his services, including a lot of domestic appeals and others that don't address GTLA's core interests. You can get a sense of the cases he has handled by
http://www.gasupreme.us/docket_search/results_attorney.php?searchterm=McFadden&submit=Searchor by doing a Westlaw/Lexis search of cases that he has handled. You'll find a broad mix of cases. The generality of his appellate practice is a plus. The number of his appellate representations is a plus. The judges who have handled many appeals as a lawyer tend to be more understanding and lawyer-friendly.
3. Therefore, I did not find it particularly troubling that he would represent an uninsured doctor on a single occasion, even if that single occasion were as my opponent. Like the rest of us, Chris is not under a blood oath to represent only plaintiffs in PI cases. Nor would I find that single representation something that would disqualify him as a judge to decide our cases - far from it.
4. The law in this area has been developing lately. Although I think that Chris's position should be rejected, it was certainly not a frivolous position - as the Supreme Court's grant of cert attests. Nor does it manifest any sort of anti-plaintiff bias that will carry forth into decisions on our cases.
5. Instead, from having worked with Chris in the leadership of the appellate practice section of the state bar, I am convinced that Chris as a judge would give our arguments on appeal his serious and unbiased consideration. We will not always win, but we will be heard and taken seriously, which is all that we should expect from an impartial judge. I know this about his character and temperament from personal interactions that are hard to summarize without going into great detail, but I'll mention two things in particular that illustrate his concern for the little guy.
a. Chris pushed vigorously for legislative changes that would make the appellate courts more user-friendly, that is, to make appeals less likely to be dismissed because the appellant's lawyer failed to use the right procedural vehicle. Shockingly many appeals are dismissed because appellants file a notice of appeal when they should file an application for leave to appeal, or take some similar incorrect route to the appellate courts. Chris could have effectively told them to buy his book or - better - hire him to navigate their appeals, but instead, he worked hard against some opposition to make the appellate system more forgiving of such errors. Some fruit of his work appears now in ocga 5-6-35(j), which says that a mistaken filing of an application for discretionary appeal will be deemed to be a timely filing of a notice of appeal.
b. Chris pushed vigorously for other legislative changes that would streamline and simplify the process of appeals from various small courts to superior courts. Many individuals and lawyers have had great difficulty in figuring out whether such cases could be appealed, or whether certiorari had to be sought, and if so, how it was done. Many such appeals were dismissed. Chris tried hard to get legislation passed through the bar that would unify the process and simplify it, to the end that the appeals were heard on their merits rather than dismissed on procedural grounds. Significant opposition from interests that benefit from the dismissing ultimately carried the day, but Chris spent a lot of time and energy on it.
A .pdf file outlining McFadden's experience can be found here:
http://www.mindspring.com/~cmcork3/CandidatesExperience.pdf:dem:
-Laelth
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