UGA law students tackle DeKalb pay raise lawsuit

Georgia Supreme Court lets them represent man appealing case dismissal.

Ed Williams’ attempt to overturn the DeKalb County Commission’s pay raise is no longer a oneman show.

The DeKalb resident and community activist represented himself when he sued commissioners in August, accusing them of illegally giving themselves a 60% pay raise six months earlier.

That case was dismissed earlier this year by a state Superior Court judge, who cited various technical and legal issues with Williams’ argument.

Still, he filed an appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, which quickly agreed to hear his case. And now Williams has some help.

The Supreme Court granted special permission for University of Georgia School of Law students to represent Williams during oral arguments Tuesday morning. The students are members of UGA’s Appellate Litigation Clinic, set up for people who find themselves with cases in the court system’s upper levels but who don’t have the money to hire an attorney.

Williams said he looks forward to sitting in the audience like everyone else while two students and their professor handle his case from here.

“The courtroom experience is not something that I have any knowledge about,” he said. “And you can’t get that from reading a book. So that relieved a lot of pressure and stress from me.”

A spokeswoman for University of Georgia’s Law School said Professor Thomas Burch and his third-year law students, Addison Smith and John Lex Kenerly, were too busy preparing for oral arguments to speak to a reporter.

In requesting the court to allow Kenerly and Smith to present oral arguments, Burch boasted of their talents and said he would step in to back them up if needed. The hearing will be held in the court’s chambers at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

The case centers on constitutional and Open Meeting Act issues that Williams raised about the pay raise vote Feb. 27, 2018. Although commissioners purchased legal ads in a community newspaper advertising that the compensation issue could come up, it was not printed on the agenda the day of the meeting.

It was added later as a “walk-on item” and approved 6-1 without any debate or explanation. As a result, commissioners’ annual pay jumped from $40,530 to $65,000 on Jan. 1 of this year.

Both Attorney General Christopher Carr and DeKalb Solicitor-General Donna Coleman-Stribling criticized the vote, although neither took any formal action. Williams said he filed suit as a last resort, but the timing worked against him.

His case came before Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Adams in January, and he stood alone during a hearing while assistant county attorneys represented the commissioners.

Adams ruled later that Williams waited too long to file a lawsuit. He also said that Williams had failed to submit key documents as evidence, failed to clearly state why he felt the commissioners’ vote was illegal and upheld the county’s argument that legal protections for sitting public officials shielded them from being held liable in court for decisions made while in office.