EPIC Celebrates Local Public Interest Attorneys
01/26/10
Three Atlanta attorneys whose careers exemplify a commitment to public service will be honored by the Emory Public Interest Committee (EPIC) at its 14th annual Inspiration Awards Ceremony and Reception at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 9, in Emory Law’s Tull Auditorium.
Terry Walsh 70L, retired partner at Alston & Bird; The Hon. Doris L. Downs, chief judge of the Fulton County Superior Court; and Rita A. Sheffey, partner at Hunton & Williams, are this year’s honorees.
Walsh, a 1970 graduate of Emory Law, is receiving the Lifetime Commitment to Public Service Award. He spent nearly 40 years practicing in Alston & Bird’s litigation and trial practice groups and was the firm’s first community liaison partner. He has served as president of the Atlanta Bar Association, the State Bar of Georgia’s Young Lawyers Division and the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. A member of the State Bar of Georgia Board of Governors, Walsh chaired its Committee on Children and the Courts. He also served on the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Committee on Civil Justice.
Walsh has led numerous community service programs in Atlanta. He is co-founder and chair of the Truancy Intervention Project, director of the Family Connection Partnership and Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, and was founding director of the Georgia Justice Project. He also is a founding advisory board member of EPIC and facilitated the inception of the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network. Additionally, Walsh has received many awards for his pro bono work, including the 2008 Fulton County Daily Report Pro Bono Lifetime Achievement Award, the 1995 Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change Community Service Award and several public service awards from the Atlanta Bar Association, the State Bar of Georgia and the American Bar Association.
Judge Downs is receiving the Outstanding Leadership in the Public Interest Award. Appointed as judge of the Fulton County Superior Court by Gov. Zell Miller in 1996, Downs presides over civil, domestic and felony criminal cases and trials. She was elected chief judge in 2004.
Downs oversees the Fulton County Drug Court Program, which provides drug-addicted criminal defendants with a highly structured treatment program. Under her leadership, the program has doubled in capacity, serving nearly 400 clients. She also launched the county’s Mental Health Court, which helps to stabilize, treat and find safe placement for mentally ill defendants in the criminal justice system. Downs is a member of the Judicial Council of Georgia and serves on the executive committee of the Council of Superior Court Judges. Prior to her role on the bench, Downs served as an assistant district attorney in Fulton County for 14 years.
Sheffey is receiving the Unsung Devotion to Those Most in Need Award. A partner in Hunton & Williams’ litigation and intellectual property practice, Sheffey directs the firm’s Southside Legal Center. She is an active member of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Committee on Civil Justice and is a past president of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society and the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation Inc. Sheffey also has been involved in numerous roles for the Atlanta Bar Association including serving on its executive committee and board of directors and chairing the Celebrating Service and Pro Bono committees. She currently serves as the organization’s secretary.
Sheffey is president and chair of Atlanta Victim Assistance Inc. and on the board of trustees of Boys Speak Out Inc. She received the Outstanding Woman in the Profession Achievement Award by the Atlanta Bar Association and the State Bar of Georgia’s H. Sol Clark Pro Bono Award.
EPIC, a student-run organization promoting public interest law at Emory, supports students pursuing public interest legal jobs and acknowledges the professional responsibility of lawyers and law students to make legal services more accessible.
The annual Inspiration Awards is EPIC’s primary fundraiser. In 2009, EPIC raised more than $110,000, providing 25 summer grants for students volunteering in public sector jobs. Grant recipients worked at a variety of local and national and international organizations, including the Georgia Innocence Project in Atlanta, the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project in New York and the Center for Medicare Advocacy in Washington, D.C.
Donations to EPIC are accepted at various levels with a minimum $35 donation to attend the Inspiration Awards. For more information about contributing to EPIC or attending this year’s event, contact Sue McAvoy at 404.727.5503 or smcavoy(at)law.emory.edu.
Court upholds life sentence in Buckhead slaying
Associated Press
9:56 a.m. Monday, January 25, 2010
Georgia's highest court has upheld a murder conviction and life prison sentence for a man accused of killing another man he says made unwanted homosexual advances.
In an opinion published Monday, the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Joseph Hall Jr.' sentence for the 2002 slaying of David Cook.
Hall was an 18-year-old college student when prosecutors say he and his co-defendant, Edward McCloud, took a bus from Montgomery, Ala. to Atlanta.
Prosecutors say they met Cook, a travel agent, in an area frequented by Atlanta's gay community and he offered to take them to his Buckhead condo to "party" and have sex.
At trial, Hall said he was high on cocaine when he stabbed Cook more than 20 times while in a trance triggered by childhood memories of seeing his father stab his mother to death.
$200,000 Awarded to Atlanta Pedestrian
A man struck by a MARTA bus as he crossed Commerce Street near the Decatur MARTA station was awarded $200,000 by a Fulton County jury.
The man was crossing between the DeKalb County Courthouse parking deck and the Manuel Maloof Administration Building on the morning of July 23, 2007, when a Mart bus left the MARTA station turnaround on Swanton Way and turned into Commerce, striking the man.
The complaint stated that the pedestrian was knocked down, lost consciousness and was taken by ambulance to Grady Memorial Hospital. He suffered a very minor head injury, as well as some soft-tissue injuries to his head and back. Medical expenses added to $13,000 and he suffered about $10,000 in lost wages.
After a two-and-a-half-day trial before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Henry M. Newkirk, the jury took about three hours to award $200,000 to the plaintiff.
Current Events
Bad Ol' Boys Club Desserts & Discussion Event
January 28th, 2010
A Future. Not A Past. is excited to annnounce our first literary event to raise awareness about the prostitution of children. Barbara Rose, a mystery novelist, has written a book, The Bad Ol' Boys Club, in which the plot revolves around this issue. If you have a book club, or know of any groups that would like to help us distribute this FREE book, please email info@AFutureNotaPast.org for more information and details. In order to receive these books, we ask that you submit email address for all those who receive the book so that we can send out more info closer the the date. This will be coupled with a "Dessert and Discussion" event to be held 7pm on January 28, 2010 at the Fulton County Juvenile Court.
website: http://sgadvocacy.org/lobby/SGLobbyDay
Location:
395 Pryor Street SW, Rooms 1132/33, Atlanta, GA 30312
Mandatory DNA Testing For Felonies Pushed in Georgia
By Susanna Capelouto
Mon., January 25, 2010 1:12pm (EST)
Atlanta — A group of parents whose daughters were killed in violent crimes is pushing for mandatory DNA sampling for those arrested on felony charges in Georgia. They say it would solve murders and keep people save.
21 states already have laws requiring DNA samples from anyone arrested for a felony. Joan Berry is with the Surviving Parents Coalition. Her Daughter Johnia was killed while a student at the University of Tennessee.
3 years ago Berry pushed the law in that state.
"The Johnia Berry Act was passed in Tennessee and that same year an arrest was made due to a DNA match, so Jonia's murderer was finally found," she says.
In Georgia, the law would have the same name in Georgia. It is sponsored by State Representative Rob Teihet, a democrat who is also running for Attonrey General. Teilhet says he has bi partisan support.
Teilhet says he knows that the state budget is lean and the GBI already has trouble keeping up with current DNA tests.
"There is a backlog now," he says. " One of the things we as a state have to do is simply decide that, consistent with our values, this is a priority."
Teilhet is also a candidate for Attoney General. At a news conference he presented Data showing that almost 130 crimes could have been prevented in 3 states if DNA had been collected.
Teilhet says he will introduce the legislation later this week and he says he's aware that privacy advocates may take issue with mandatory testing. He says law enforcement likes it as an additional crime fighting tool
Home / News / Local News / San Diego County
REGION: San Diego Superior Court adds Wi-Fi for jurors
By SARAH GORDON - sgordon@nctimes.com
Posted: January 27, 2010 5:50 pm
Jurors waiting to be called into a courtroom can now surf the Internet on laptops or other wireless devices, after all four San Diego Superior Court jury lounges activated Wi-Fi this week, a court spokeswoman said Wednesday.
The wireless Internet service can be accessed for free by any juror serving in Vista, San Diego, Chula Vista or El Cajon, Superior Court spokeswoman Karen Dalton said. It will be available in the jury lounge, and people will need a valid juror badge and a court-provided password to access it, Dalton said.
Jurors for years have been requesting wireless Internet access, and the court recently identified a funding source, Dalton said. A one-time hardware and software cost of about $95,000 to establish the service was funded with a state grant, she said.
The court will pay about $1,600 a month to maintain the service, she said.
Posted in Sdcounty on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 5:50 pm
These news articles were compiled by the Superior Court of Fulton County, Office of Public Information as a service to the Fulton Judicial System. The purpose of this service is to keep judges, court staff and other interested parties informed of the latest developments affecting the practice of law, the administration of justice and public perceptions of the judiciary. News stories are selected after the consideration of certain criteria, including if the article contains news about the Superior Court of Fulton County or the judicial system. News stories will not be included if they contain profanity or vulgarity or come from a publication that defines its circulation and audience in terms of a special interest. Exclusively political stories will not be included, except for stories about the announcement of a candidacy for judicial office, major editorial endorsements of candidates for judicial office, or the outcome of judicial elections.
For further information about this news service, contact: Don Plummer, Public Information Officer, Superior Court of Fulton County. Don.plummer@fultoncountyga.gov.
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Thursday, January 28, 2010
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
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The Daily Report
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
In The Trenches: Sutherland stalwart joins Duane Morris
By Meredith Hobbs, Staff Reporter
Litigator William D. Barwick joined Duane Morris as a partner last week, after 23 years at Sutherland.
Barwick, a former president of the State Bar of Georgia and the Atlanta Bar Association, said Duane Morris offered him the opportunity to build up its products liability and toxic tort practice locally.
“That was the lure,” said Barwick, who is 60. “They've got more of an institutionalized practice in those areas and some really remarkable lawyers. … I have enough years left that I thought I could enjoy the practice, contribute to this firm and really have some fun.”
Duane Morris, based in Philadelphia, opened its Atlanta office 10 years ago. “For a firm that continues to try to grow in this market, bringing in someone like Bill is a huge add for us,” said L. Norwood “Woody” Jameson, Duane Morris's local managing partner. “He's got everything you would want in an Atlanta lawyer—the bar work and he's a great trial lawyer, member of the legal community and the community at large.”
Jameson said Barwick is the first toxic tort and products liability lawyer to join Duane Morris' Atlanta office. “The practice is one of the firm's strengths nationwide, so he provides a launching point for that here,” he said.
Mark D. Wasserman, Sutherland's managing partner, said Barwick would be missed. “Bill is a wonderful person, an excellent lawyer and a great contributor to the bar, and we wish him the very best personally and professionally.”
Barwick has tried 40 cases in state and federal courts as first chair or sole counsel. He handles fiduciary litigation, insurance coverage and appellate matters in addition to toxic tort and products cases. He started his career at Smith, Cohen, Ringel, Kohler & Martin (which in 1984 became Smith, Gambrell & Russell), then worked at a small insurance defense firm and briefly ran a solo practice before joining Sutherland.
Barwick said he got involved in bar activities early in his career, as a way to meet other lawyers when he was working at a small firm. “It was a way to learn about the lawyers I was practicing with, to meet people to send cases to and refer me business and to meet the people who were going to become judges. That was the initial goal. I was not planning on running for a lot of offices,” he said.
“I realized that you can know the same five lawyers in your office, which kind of limits your world—or you can get involved in bar activities and get to know the legal community in general,” Barwick said.
During his tenure as State Bar president from 2003 to 2004, Barwick led the push for a specialized business court at Fulton County Superior Court.
Barwick said he brings clients but declined to name them, adding that he still is working on a handful of cases as co-counsel with Sutherland lawyers. “I left a lot of close friends at Sutherland,” he said.
Clients at Sutherland included SunTrust Bank and Security Life Insurance Co., according to published reports.
______________________
….
You may read the rest of this In the Trenches column at http://www.dailyreportonline.com/ (subscription required).
Copyright 2010 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.
John Marshall Law School
On November 19, 2009, 48 John Marshall Law School graduates who passed the July 2009 Georgia bar exam were sworn in to the Georgia Supreme Court by Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein and to the Fulton County Superior Court by Judge Melvin K. Westmoreland. Congratulations to the Class of 2009!
The Champion
FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2010 • PAGE 3A
Perdue appoints former DeKalb solicitor general to judgeship
Gov. Sonny Perdue recently announced three judicial appointments, including the appointment of former DeKalb County Solicitor General Shawn LaGrua, who was appointed to the Superior Court for the Atlanta Judicial Circuit. Stephen Kelley was appointed to the Superior Court for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit and W. Kendall Wynne Jr. was appointed to the Superior Court for the Alcovy Judicial Circuit. The judgeships were created by the General Assembly.
LaGrua has served as the inspector general for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office since January 2007. She served as the DeKalb solicitor general July 2004 - January 2007. LaGrua also has extensive experience as an assistant district attorney in DeKalb and Fulton counties. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Georgia State University School of Law.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Westmoreland Moves to Business Court
Jan. 26, 2010
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin K. Westmoreland has moved from the Fulton Justice Tower to the historic Lewis Slaton Fulton County Courthouse.
Westmoreland, a Superior Court Judge in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit since 1988, said he moved to Courtroom 9G in the 136 Pryor St. Courthouse for two reasons.
He recently became the only elected Superior Court Judge serving in the Fulton Business Court and now exclusively hears civil cases. Judge Westmoreland’s new chambers (Room C927) put him on the same floor with Business Court Senior Judges Alice Bonner and Elizabeth Long and Business Court manager Noelle Lagueux-Alvarez.
The move also makes room in the Fulton Justice Tower for newly appointed Superior Court Judge Shawn LaGrua. When LaGrua is sworn in as the circuit's 20th judge she may hear a mixed docket of criminal and civil cases. Criminal cases are restricted to the Tower which has secure holding cells and elevators used to transfer prisoners to and from the Fulton County Jail.
"With only civil cases I don't need holding cells and it helps to be close to the other business court operations," Judge Westmoreland said.
Judge Westmoreland's chambers telephone is 404-612-2570.
The Daily Report
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
In The Trenches: Sutherland stalwart joins Duane Morris
By Meredith Hobbs, Staff Reporter
Litigator William D. Barwick joined Duane Morris as a partner last week, after 23 years at Sutherland.
Barwick, a former president of the State Bar of Georgia and the Atlanta Bar Association, said Duane Morris offered him the opportunity to build up its products liability and toxic tort practice locally.
“That was the lure,” said Barwick, who is 60. “They've got more of an institutionalized practice in those areas and some really remarkable lawyers. … I have enough years left that I thought I could enjoy the practice, contribute to this firm and really have some fun.”
Duane Morris, based in Philadelphia, opened its Atlanta office 10 years ago. “For a firm that continues to try to grow in this market, bringing in someone like Bill is a huge add for us,” said L. Norwood “Woody” Jameson, Duane Morris's local managing partner. “He's got everything you would want in an Atlanta lawyer—the bar work and he's a great trial lawyer, member of the legal community and the community at large.”
Jameson said Barwick is the first toxic tort and products liability lawyer to join Duane Morris' Atlanta office. “The practice is one of the firm's strengths nationwide, so he provides a launching point for that here,” he said.
Mark D. Wasserman, Sutherland's managing partner, said Barwick would be missed. “Bill is a wonderful person, an excellent lawyer and a great contributor to the bar, and we wish him the very best personally and professionally.”
Barwick has tried 40 cases in state and federal courts as first chair or sole counsel. He handles fiduciary litigation, insurance coverage and appellate matters in addition to toxic tort and products cases. He started his career at Smith, Cohen, Ringel, Kohler & Martin (which in 1984 became Smith, Gambrell & Russell), then worked at a small insurance defense firm and briefly ran a solo practice before joining Sutherland.
Barwick said he got involved in bar activities early in his career, as a way to meet other lawyers when he was working at a small firm. “It was a way to learn about the lawyers I was practicing with, to meet people to send cases to and refer me business and to meet the people who were going to become judges. That was the initial goal. I was not planning on running for a lot of offices,” he said.
“I realized that you can know the same five lawyers in your office, which kind of limits your world—or you can get involved in bar activities and get to know the legal community in general,” Barwick said.
During his tenure as State Bar president from 2003 to 2004, Barwick led the push for a specialized business court at Fulton County Superior Court.
Barwick said he brings clients but declined to name them, adding that he still is working on a handful of cases as co-counsel with Sutherland lawyers. “I left a lot of close friends at Sutherland,” he said.
Clients at Sutherland included SunTrust Bank and Security Life Insurance Co., according to published reports.
______________________
….
You may read the rest of this In the Trenches column at http://www.dailyreportonline.com/ (subscription required).
Copyright 2010 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.
John Marshall Law School
On November 19, 2009, 48 John Marshall Law School graduates who passed the July 2009 Georgia bar exam were sworn in to the Georgia Supreme Court by Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein and to the Fulton County Superior Court by Judge Melvin K. Westmoreland. Congratulations to the Class of 2009!
The Champion
FRIDAY, JANUARY 15, 2010 • PAGE 3A
Perdue appoints former DeKalb solicitor general to judgeship
Gov. Sonny Perdue recently announced three judicial appointments, including the appointment of former DeKalb County Solicitor General Shawn LaGrua, who was appointed to the Superior Court for the Atlanta Judicial Circuit. Stephen Kelley was appointed to the Superior Court for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit and W. Kendall Wynne Jr. was appointed to the Superior Court for the Alcovy Judicial Circuit. The judgeships were created by the General Assembly.
LaGrua has served as the inspector general for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office since January 2007. She served as the DeKalb solicitor general July 2004 - January 2007. LaGrua also has extensive experience as an assistant district attorney in DeKalb and Fulton counties. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Georgia State University School of Law.
Fulton Superior Court Judge Westmoreland Moves to Business Court
Jan. 26, 2010
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melvin K. Westmoreland has moved from the Fulton Justice Tower to the historic Lewis Slaton Fulton County Courthouse.
Westmoreland, a Superior Court Judge in the Atlanta Judicial Circuit since 1988, said he moved to Courtroom 9G in the 136 Pryor St. Courthouse for two reasons.
He recently became the only elected Superior Court Judge serving in the Fulton Business Court and now exclusively hears civil cases. Judge Westmoreland’s new chambers (Room C927) put him on the same floor with Business Court Senior Judges Alice Bonner and Elizabeth Long and Business Court manager Noelle Lagueux-Alvarez.
The move also makes room in the Fulton Justice Tower for newly appointed Superior Court Judge Shawn LaGrua. When LaGrua is sworn in as the circuit's 20th judge she may hear a mixed docket of criminal and civil cases. Criminal cases are restricted to the Tower which has secure holding cells and elevators used to transfer prisoners to and from the Fulton County Jail.
"With only civil cases I don't need holding cells and it helps to be close to the other business court operations," Judge Westmoreland said.
Judge Westmoreland's chambers telephone is 404-612-2570.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Commission increases budget but disses justice system
By Steve Visser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
8:36 p.m. Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Adopting a $588.7 million budget on Wednesday, Fulton County commissioners increased spending for favored programs and ignored warnings that court- system cuts would mean costly jail overcrowding.
By the end of the give and take, the Fulton County Superior Court decided it could live with most of the reductions.
Commissioner Nancy Boxill was vocal in her opposition to restoring funding for the district attorney, solicitor, Fulton County state and superior court administrations and superior court clerk to 2009 levels while mental-health, recreation and literacy programs were cut.
"I cannot say what is most important to government is criminal justice," she said.,
The commission recommended a budget of $573 million, a drop from $602 million spent by the county in 2009, and then restored more than $15 million in proposed cuts. .
The money returned to the budget was broken down in this manner: $8 million to avoid a 4-percent cut in staff salaries, $900,000 for absentee-ballot system upgrades, $3.4 million for Grady Memorial Hospital, $400,000 for senior home repair, $750,000 in human service grants and $750,000 in other grants.
Commissioner Robb Pitts argued the commission should restore $4.2 million in court-system cuts after judges and administrators warned their ability to process cases expediently would be compromised. Chief superior court judge Dee Downs said jail backlog would increase substantially, undoing county progress made in reducing its criminal-case backlog by 44 percent in recent years.
County commissioners increased spending for a few justice programs. They added $426,000 to the county public defenders' $11 million budget and restored $150,000 to the county drug court. The drug court oversees defendants with long criminal histories through a treatment program rather than jail.
The commission also approved $800,000 for pre-trial supervision services in state and superior courts. The services monitor people awaiting trial who otherwise might be in jail at a cost of $72 a day The commission made the money contingent on the two courts working out ways to consolidate their pre-trial programs.
Superior court administrator Judy Cramer and Downs were in agreement that the commissioners had restored the vital parts of the system, according to court spokesman Don Plummer."We believe we are going to be able to do what we need to do now," Plummer said.
However, superior court clerk Tina Robinson warned that $952,000 cut from her budget meant layoffs for employees who helped expedite hearings at the county jail, which would lead to jail overcrowding, and those who currently record real-estate deeds and transactions, which could hamper upgrades to the county tax digest.
Robinson said she couldn't move personnel from other departments to pick up the slack. Some areas were untouchable. The 19 judges have at least two clerks each to keep up with caseloads. Robinson acknowledged the team system was unusual but defended it as helpful in handling the workload of the state's busiest courthouse.
Find this article at: http://www.ajc.com/news/north-fulton/commission-increases-budget-but-279415.html
Daily Report
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
Lawmakers stand firm on cuts to budget
Superior Court judges group gets no sympathy from joint committee on request for $2.2M to fund senior judges
By Andy Peters, Staff Reporter
If a half-hour hearing at the State Capitol late Tuesday is any indication, it won't be easy for the judicial branch to get lawmakers to restore funding for senior judges in Superior Courts.
The Superior Court judges have asked the state Legislature for about $2.2 million in the next fiscal year to fund senior judges, semi-retired members of the judiciary who can hear cases when there is a backlog or a recusal that leaves cases without a judge.
But Hall County Superior Court Judge Kathlene F. Gosselin, representing the council, found little sympathy for her cause at Tuesday's meeting of the joint House-Senate budget committee.
“We've got agencies coming in here and handing us budgets saying, 'Here is where we cut jobs, here is where we cut spending,'” said Sen. John J. Wiles, R-Marietta. “We've got rangers in state parks getting shot and not having a radio to call for help [because of budget cuts]. But the courts are coming in here asking for money.”
The plight of senior judges is one of many issues facing the judiciary as it plans its budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.
But before it can plan for 2011, the courts are trying to deal with at least $1 million in debt that was carried from the 2009 fiscal year into the current one.
The courts and prosecutors, in their budget proposals, have asked the Legislature for money to cover that debt. Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein said in October she believed it's unconstitutional for the court to carry debt from one fiscal year to the next, but the court was forced into the situation by Gov. Sonny Perdue's budget cuts.
Lawmakers this week are hearing budget presentations from numerous state agencies and components of the judicial branch as they deal with the state's 13 consecutive months of declining tax revenues. Virtually all state agencies have slashed spending through job cuts, employee furloughs and other measures.
Perdue on Tuesday warned lawmakers during a hearing at the Capitol that the state is facing an even worse budget gap after he leaves office at the end of this year, according to The Associated Press. Perdue projected a $2.6 billion shortfall for the fiscal year that will begin July 2011, largely because federal stimulus dollars will dry up. Also, the state is expecting increased demand for services, like Medicaid.
Later in the day, Gosselin told the joint budget committee that the Superior Courts have made deep spending cuts in response to the state's hard economic times. But she also said that, by providing $2,184,937 to restore funding for senior judges, the Legislature would make more efficient use of limited state funds.
“I realize times are tight,” she said, but eliminating funding for senior judges “has been a drastic problem for all of us.”
“We always have problems with recusal cases, contested elections, medical emergencies and always unpredictable events that cause us to be without a judge,” she said. “When that happens, we need to be able to keep up and senior judges help with that.”
Unlike agencies attached to the executive branch, the judicial branch submits its proposed budget directly to the Legislature, without first going through the governor's office.
The state eliminated most funding for senior judges in 2008 in order to meet a budget shortfall. A few circuits, including Fulton County, have maintained limited use of senior judges during that time, primarily through their county funding, Gosselin said.
The elimination of funding for senior judges has led to a backlog of cases. In July the Administrative Office of the Courts said the statewide backlog stood at 1.2 million open cases. As of press time, the AOC did not have updated figures on the status of the statewide backlog of open cases, according to AOC spokeswoman Billie Bolton.
The loss of senior-judge funding has been equivalent to losing the workload of 16 statewide, full-time Superior Court judges, according to the State Bar of Georgia. At the same time, Superior Courts' caseloads have increased, rising 20 percent over the past five years with a corresponding 8 percent increase in the number of Superior Court judges, according to the State Bar.
During questioning Tuesday, Wiles asked Gosselin if there is an official in the judicial branch who can direct a Superior Court judge to fill in for another judge who is conflicted out of a case, has a medical emergency or otherwise cannot serve on a specific case or handle an existing calendar.
Gosselin responded that there is no such official.
Wiles suggested that, instead of restoring funding for senior judges, it would be more fiscally sound to have a central office direct current Superior Court judges to fill in anywhere in the state if another judge cannot handle a case. Such a system would replace the old system of using senior judges in those instances, he said.
But Gosselin said that each Superior Court judge has his or her own calendars to manage and for that reason it would not be possible to have an incumbent Superior Court judge fill in for another judge who can't handle a case.
That doesn't meant Superior Court judges aren't wiling to pitch in with help when the need arises, Gosselin said. Superior Court judges have readily volunteered to fill in when another judge has faced a medical emergency. Last year, when Judges T. David Motes and Joseph H. Booth of the Piedmont Judicial Circuit had medical emergencies arise simultaneously, their calendars were covered by a combination of senior judges, as some circuits still have county funds for senior judges, and other Superior Court judges who volunteered their time, she said.
Also, a majority of Superior Court judges volunteered to take furlough days last year, even though they're not legally required to do so, she said. In the recently completed fiscal year, 145 superior court judges, or about 72 percent of the 202 total Superior Court judges statewide, participated in voluntary furlough days, Gosselin said. Non-judicial staff members of the Superior Courts were mandated to participate in the furloughs, she said.
On the issue of the debt that was carried over from fiscal year 2009 to the current fiscal year, the courts have asked for money to cover that gap. Chief Justice Hunstein said in October that the arrearage was produced when Gov. Perdue in June instructed all parts of the state government to withhold 25 percent of their budgets because of a $274 million revenue shortfall.
In its budget proposal under review by legislators, the Superior Courts asked the Legislature to provide $827,338 to cover the debt that emerged after Perdue's instructions for a 25 percent cut. The Supreme Court asked the Legislature for $38,785 to cover its debt. The Prosecuting Attorneys' Council asked for $613,910 for the same reason.
Those amounts differ from what the state Department of Audits and Accounts said in a December report were the amounts of debt they had carried over. The audits department said the Superior Courts had $373,915 in debt, the Supreme Court's debt was $182,675 and the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council's debt was $681,448.
John Thornton, director the department's state government division, said he did not know a reason for the discrepancy in the amounts asked for by the courts and prosecutors' council and the amount the Department of Audits reported as their debt levels.
The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council carried over $385,921 in debt from the previous fiscal year, according to audit department. The council did not ask the Legislature for funding to cover the debt. The PD council submits its budget proposal to Perdue, who then sends his version to the Legislature.
State Auditor Russell Hinton last year asked Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker what to do about the courts and legal offices carrying the debt because it violates the state constitution. In addition to those parts of the judicial branch, the state departments of Revenue and Veterans Service also carried over debt from the previous fiscal year.
Baker's spokesman, Russ Willard, did not return a call or respond to an e-mail asking what Baker's response was. Thornton declined to comment on the nature of talks between his department and the AG's office.
The audits department continues to examine the courts' carry-over debt and expects to issue a report on the matter sometime in the next two weeks, Thornton said. The debt appeared to be caused by the courts and departments “overspending their 2009 appropriations allotments,” he said.
Thornton declined to say how the matter may be resolved.
“Our job is really to audit and report,” Thornton said. “Beyond that, it's really not the State Auditor's office's role to make a decision on how to fix the problem.”
Copyright 2010 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.
WXIA TV 11 Alive
Fulton County Tempers Court Budget Cuts
Updated 1/21/2010 2:47:02 AM
By Gary Franklin
ATLANTA (AP) -- The state's biggest court system will soon grapple with budget cuts that could top $2 million.
But Fulton County judicial leaders said Wednesday they are grateful that the county commission didn't cut the system deeper. They worried cuts that could have exceeded $4 million would have forced major reductions in pretrial programs that focused on defendants with problems with drugs and mental health.
The county's judicial leaders have launched an unusually aggressive effort to sway lawmakers, including posting fliers around the courthouse with signs announcing the courts are closed below a caption that reads "Think It Can't Happen Here?".
Associated Press
Note: the order by Judge Glanville dismissing the case in the following article is posted on our website at Grady Hemodialysis Case.
Grady dialysis patients emotionally exhausted
By Craig Schneider and Shelia M. Poole spoole@ajc.com
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:49 a.m. Thursday, January 21, 2010
Adejumoke Olaleye-Abner remembers receiving her visa and heading to America. It was only for a vacation, but the Nigerian woman was filled with hopes of seeing friends and the sights in metro Atlanta.
The joy of that 2001 trip collapsed when Olaleye-Abner passed out at a friend’s house in Gwinnett County. She was diagnosed with kidney failure. After that, the outpatient dialysis clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital became her medical safety net. She can’t afford to pay for her own care and does not qualify for government assistance.
In October of last year, her safety net gave way. The financially strapped hospital, struggling to cut costs, closed the outpatient dialysis clinic.
Grady’s decision to close the clinic has sent about 50 of its patients into a medical care limbo. Most were illegal immigrants with little money and no government aid. Olaleye-Abner actually has a green card and is married to an American, but not long enough to qualify for citizenship or Medicaid.
Emotionally exhausted
The patients of Grady’s outpatient dialysis clinic have been through emotional extreme after emotional extreme. After the October closing of the clinic, Grady offered to pay for three months of dialysis treatments at a private clinic called Fresenius. That reprieve was to expire Jan. 3. Grady extended the deadline to Feb. 3. That’s less than two weeks away.
Again and again, the patients have had the end of their treatment in sight, and each time that deadline has been extended. Their drama has played out in newspapers and news shows. The New York Times has cast them in the center of the nation’s debate on the role that safety net hospitals should play in the care of illegal immigrants.
But the patients are just a group of frightened people. They know their lives could change drastically soon, but they don’t know when. Many say they are emotionally exhausted. They don’t know what to do, they have nowhere to go, and they don’t want to die.
“It’s so much emotion, it’s so much stress,” said Olaleye-Abner, sitting in her College Park apartment with her husband, Duncan Abner. “Every day I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Grady officials say they are doing all they can to help the patients. The hospital has offered to relocate patients to their home country, or to another state where they have a better chance of government aid.
Olaleye-Abner, 43, said she can’t go back to Nigeria because medical care there is decades behind the United States.
“People there with this problem die within a short time,” she said.
Moving to another state, she said, is too difficult. She is sick, often weak. She can hardly make a fist. Her husband, a diabetic who also receives dialysis, had most of his right leg amputated about a year ago.
Olaleye-Abner works part time as a home health care nurse. She pays taxes, said her husband, defending his wife’s right to care.
The couple met at the Grady dialysis clinic. He receives Medicaid.
“She’s such a giving person. So respectful and so honest,” Duncan Abner said.
Making choices
The dialysis patients see their options running out. They have appealed to Grady to reopen its dialysis clinic, to no avail. They sued the hospital in Fulton County Superior Court, asserting patient abandonment. That case was thrown out, but they are appealing. They recently reached out to an international human rights group to take their side.
Mostly they are hoping that the Feb. 3 deadline does not hold, that Grady extends it again. They know that Grady has contracted with Fresenius to provide for patients as long as September. But the patients signed their own contracts with Grady that said the hospital would stop paying the bill on Jan. 3.
After Feb. 3, the hospital will consider the continuation of treatments for patients on a case-by-case basis, Grady spokesman Matt Gove said. He said the hospital may take into consideration whether a patient is trying to find their own long-term care elsewhere, and whether they live in Fulton or DeKalb counties, which provide financial assistance to the hospital.
The patients are very aware that since most are illegal immigrants, they don’t generate a lot of public sympathy.
Bineet Kaur, a 26-year-old patient who lives in Alpharetta, said she never wanted to burden anyone. When she was first diagnosed with kidney failure in 2003, about three years after coming to this country on a visa, she did not seek dialysis. She said she had no insurance and no means to pay for treatment, and she did not want to burden her relatives.
As her kidneys became weaker and less efficient, pain tightened its grip on her body. She started to walk with a limp. Her skin turned a pale yellow. Eventually, even lying in a bed hurt.
Grady, she said, helped restore her life. She was able to go there three times a week. But being an illegal immigrant from India, she could not qualify for government assistance in Georgia.
She received the notice of the October closing while she was on dialysis.
“I started to cry,” she said. “I was seeing my life change.”
If Grady stops paying for care, Kaur believes she would be left to seek care through an emergency room. But those treatments would not be three times a week, as she would have to be near crisis to receive a treatment.
A few of the patients have accepted Grady’s offer of relocating back to their home country, but some have run into troubles.
Monica Chavarria returned to Mexico to live with her mother. She took her 8-year-old son. Her husband remained in Atlanta with their 14-year-old son.
For many of her treatments, Chavarria had to travel two hours to get to a clinic. Recently she was able to receive the treatments at a place about 40 minutes away. She has run out of the three months of treatments funded by Grady, but she has not been able to receive government health care coverage, said her husband Roberto Barajas.
Chavarria, 35, is exploring the possibility of receiving a kidney transplant from a sibling. The family had held fund-raisers for that here in Atlanta, but now she is spending the money for treatments that cost $120 apiece.
The separation has been hard on the family, Barajas said. The couple has been married for 15 years, and hadn’t been apart in years.
Dependence mourned
Three patients have died since the clinic closed in October. Grady spokesman Gove said none died due to a lack of access to care.
Without her dialysis treatments, Anabel Quintanilla said she could die within two weeks. She was diagnosed with a severe form of lupus, an autoimmune disease that attacked her kidneys, nine years after she arrived in this country from her home in Hidalgo, Mexico.
Back there, she was a woman proud of her independence. She was raising a young son.
“With this illness I depend on people like my family to help me with my son, morally and economically,” she said. “I get very sad to see what I am now as opposed to what I was in my country.”
Being an illegal immigrant with little money, she also has depended on Grady. She doesn’t appreciate the way the hospital handled the closing. She believes Grady feels it can push the patients around because most are in this country illegally.
“I believe that even dogs and pets have better privileges in this country than we [illegal immigrants] do,” she said.
Grady officials say they have been considerate in handling the closure, helping people to relocate and extending the deadlines on care again and again.
Quintanilla is uncertain where her future will lead her.
Wherever it is, she said she will strive to remain strong, a fighter.
“I never cry,” she said.
Staff writer Rachel Tobin Ramos contributed to this article.
Find this article at: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/grady-dialysis-patients-emotionally-279664.html
WCTV TV
Updated: 1:07 AM Jan 21, 2010
Mental Health Summit Focuses On Solutions
At a time when governments are trying to save money... mental health professionals say more money should be spent on mental illness treatment, and in the long run, governments will save more.
You may not notice how mental illness affects your community... but it is a daily concern for many public services... and comes with a hefty price tag.
"If we can help someone who is mentally ill and is having a crisis before they commit a crime, it's far less expensive. You don't have police involved, you don't have the jail involved, you don't have the court system involved," says Greg Frost of the Tallahassee Police Department.
Public service professionals supported that notion at Wednesday's Mental Health Summit in Tallahassee. They also say mental illness often goes hand in hand with substance abuse and homelessness.
"In order to kind of address homelessness in general, what we need to address is the underlying causes - the mental health, the substance abuse, the employment issues," explains Susan Pourciau, the director of the Big Bend Homeless Coalition.
Mental health stakeholders say those underlying causes can be remedied with sufficient funding for treatment and prevention.
"We found that one of the largest untapped voting blocks in this country are the folks with mental health issues and their families," says Clint Rayner with the Florida Department of Children and Families.
"What we're hoping to do in Leon County is create a system where individuals can get the appropriate care in the community to begin with so that they don't end up in the jails or they don't end up in a state facility," says Kendra Brown, the court coordinator for the Leon County Mental Health Court and facilitator of the summit.
Mental health professionals say if mental illness is treated on the front end... it could add up safety and savings in the long run.
A townhall meeting to address mental illness and its effects on the community is scheduled for February 3rd at 6 in the evening in the Leon County Commission chambers.
These news articles were compiled by the Superior Court of Fulton County, Office of Public Information as a service to the Fulton Judicial System. The purpose of this service is to keep judges, court staff and other interested parties informed of the latest developments affecting the practice of law, the administration of justice and public perceptions of the judiciary. News stories are selected after the consideration of certain criteria, including if the article contains news about the Superior Court of Fulton County or the judicial system. News stories will not be included if they contain profanity or vulgarity or come from a publication that defines its circulation and audience in terms of a special interest. Exclusively political stories will not be included, except for stories about the announcement of a candidacy for judicial office, major editorial endorsements of candidates for judicial office, or the outcome of judicial elections.
For further information about this news service, contact: Don Plummer, Public Information Officer, Superior Court of Fulton County. Don.plummer@fultoncountyga.gov
By Steve Visser
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
8:36 p.m. Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Adopting a $588.7 million budget on Wednesday, Fulton County commissioners increased spending for favored programs and ignored warnings that court- system cuts would mean costly jail overcrowding.
By the end of the give and take, the Fulton County Superior Court decided it could live with most of the reductions.
Commissioner Nancy Boxill was vocal in her opposition to restoring funding for the district attorney, solicitor, Fulton County state and superior court administrations and superior court clerk to 2009 levels while mental-health, recreation and literacy programs were cut.
"I cannot say what is most important to government is criminal justice," she said.,
The commission recommended a budget of $573 million, a drop from $602 million spent by the county in 2009, and then restored more than $15 million in proposed cuts. .
The money returned to the budget was broken down in this manner: $8 million to avoid a 4-percent cut in staff salaries, $900,000 for absentee-ballot system upgrades, $3.4 million for Grady Memorial Hospital, $400,000 for senior home repair, $750,000 in human service grants and $750,000 in other grants.
Commissioner Robb Pitts argued the commission should restore $4.2 million in court-system cuts after judges and administrators warned their ability to process cases expediently would be compromised. Chief superior court judge Dee Downs said jail backlog would increase substantially, undoing county progress made in reducing its criminal-case backlog by 44 percent in recent years.
County commissioners increased spending for a few justice programs. They added $426,000 to the county public defenders' $11 million budget and restored $150,000 to the county drug court. The drug court oversees defendants with long criminal histories through a treatment program rather than jail.
The commission also approved $800,000 for pre-trial supervision services in state and superior courts. The services monitor people awaiting trial who otherwise might be in jail at a cost of $72 a day The commission made the money contingent on the two courts working out ways to consolidate their pre-trial programs.
Superior court administrator Judy Cramer and Downs were in agreement that the commissioners had restored the vital parts of the system, according to court spokesman Don Plummer."We believe we are going to be able to do what we need to do now," Plummer said.
However, superior court clerk Tina Robinson warned that $952,000 cut from her budget meant layoffs for employees who helped expedite hearings at the county jail, which would lead to jail overcrowding, and those who currently record real-estate deeds and transactions, which could hamper upgrades to the county tax digest.
Robinson said she couldn't move personnel from other departments to pick up the slack. Some areas were untouchable. The 19 judges have at least two clerks each to keep up with caseloads. Robinson acknowledged the team system was unusual but defended it as helpful in handling the workload of the state's busiest courthouse.
Find this article at: http://www.ajc.com/news/north-fulton/commission-increases-budget-but-279415.html
Daily Report
________________________________________
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Lawmakers stand firm on cuts to budget
Superior Court judges group gets no sympathy from joint committee on request for $2.2M to fund senior judges
By Andy Peters, Staff Reporter
If a half-hour hearing at the State Capitol late Tuesday is any indication, it won't be easy for the judicial branch to get lawmakers to restore funding for senior judges in Superior Courts.
The Superior Court judges have asked the state Legislature for about $2.2 million in the next fiscal year to fund senior judges, semi-retired members of the judiciary who can hear cases when there is a backlog or a recusal that leaves cases without a judge.
But Hall County Superior Court Judge Kathlene F. Gosselin, representing the council, found little sympathy for her cause at Tuesday's meeting of the joint House-Senate budget committee.
“We've got agencies coming in here and handing us budgets saying, 'Here is where we cut jobs, here is where we cut spending,'” said Sen. John J. Wiles, R-Marietta. “We've got rangers in state parks getting shot and not having a radio to call for help [because of budget cuts]. But the courts are coming in here asking for money.”
The plight of senior judges is one of many issues facing the judiciary as it plans its budget for the fiscal year that starts in July.
But before it can plan for 2011, the courts are trying to deal with at least $1 million in debt that was carried from the 2009 fiscal year into the current one.
The courts and prosecutors, in their budget proposals, have asked the Legislature for money to cover that debt. Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol W. Hunstein said in October she believed it's unconstitutional for the court to carry debt from one fiscal year to the next, but the court was forced into the situation by Gov. Sonny Perdue's budget cuts.
Lawmakers this week are hearing budget presentations from numerous state agencies and components of the judicial branch as they deal with the state's 13 consecutive months of declining tax revenues. Virtually all state agencies have slashed spending through job cuts, employee furloughs and other measures.
Perdue on Tuesday warned lawmakers during a hearing at the Capitol that the state is facing an even worse budget gap after he leaves office at the end of this year, according to The Associated Press. Perdue projected a $2.6 billion shortfall for the fiscal year that will begin July 2011, largely because federal stimulus dollars will dry up. Also, the state is expecting increased demand for services, like Medicaid.
Later in the day, Gosselin told the joint budget committee that the Superior Courts have made deep spending cuts in response to the state's hard economic times. But she also said that, by providing $2,184,937 to restore funding for senior judges, the Legislature would make more efficient use of limited state funds.
“I realize times are tight,” she said, but eliminating funding for senior judges “has been a drastic problem for all of us.”
“We always have problems with recusal cases, contested elections, medical emergencies and always unpredictable events that cause us to be without a judge,” she said. “When that happens, we need to be able to keep up and senior judges help with that.”
Unlike agencies attached to the executive branch, the judicial branch submits its proposed budget directly to the Legislature, without first going through the governor's office.
The state eliminated most funding for senior judges in 2008 in order to meet a budget shortfall. A few circuits, including Fulton County, have maintained limited use of senior judges during that time, primarily through their county funding, Gosselin said.
The elimination of funding for senior judges has led to a backlog of cases. In July the Administrative Office of the Courts said the statewide backlog stood at 1.2 million open cases. As of press time, the AOC did not have updated figures on the status of the statewide backlog of open cases, according to AOC spokeswoman Billie Bolton.
The loss of senior-judge funding has been equivalent to losing the workload of 16 statewide, full-time Superior Court judges, according to the State Bar of Georgia. At the same time, Superior Courts' caseloads have increased, rising 20 percent over the past five years with a corresponding 8 percent increase in the number of Superior Court judges, according to the State Bar.
During questioning Tuesday, Wiles asked Gosselin if there is an official in the judicial branch who can direct a Superior Court judge to fill in for another judge who is conflicted out of a case, has a medical emergency or otherwise cannot serve on a specific case or handle an existing calendar.
Gosselin responded that there is no such official.
Wiles suggested that, instead of restoring funding for senior judges, it would be more fiscally sound to have a central office direct current Superior Court judges to fill in anywhere in the state if another judge cannot handle a case. Such a system would replace the old system of using senior judges in those instances, he said.
But Gosselin said that each Superior Court judge has his or her own calendars to manage and for that reason it would not be possible to have an incumbent Superior Court judge fill in for another judge who can't handle a case.
That doesn't meant Superior Court judges aren't wiling to pitch in with help when the need arises, Gosselin said. Superior Court judges have readily volunteered to fill in when another judge has faced a medical emergency. Last year, when Judges T. David Motes and Joseph H. Booth of the Piedmont Judicial Circuit had medical emergencies arise simultaneously, their calendars were covered by a combination of senior judges, as some circuits still have county funds for senior judges, and other Superior Court judges who volunteered their time, she said.
Also, a majority of Superior Court judges volunteered to take furlough days last year, even though they're not legally required to do so, she said. In the recently completed fiscal year, 145 superior court judges, or about 72 percent of the 202 total Superior Court judges statewide, participated in voluntary furlough days, Gosselin said. Non-judicial staff members of the Superior Courts were mandated to participate in the furloughs, she said.
On the issue of the debt that was carried over from fiscal year 2009 to the current fiscal year, the courts have asked for money to cover that gap. Chief Justice Hunstein said in October that the arrearage was produced when Gov. Perdue in June instructed all parts of the state government to withhold 25 percent of their budgets because of a $274 million revenue shortfall.
In its budget proposal under review by legislators, the Superior Courts asked the Legislature to provide $827,338 to cover the debt that emerged after Perdue's instructions for a 25 percent cut. The Supreme Court asked the Legislature for $38,785 to cover its debt. The Prosecuting Attorneys' Council asked for $613,910 for the same reason.
Those amounts differ from what the state Department of Audits and Accounts said in a December report were the amounts of debt they had carried over. The audits department said the Superior Courts had $373,915 in debt, the Supreme Court's debt was $182,675 and the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council's debt was $681,448.
John Thornton, director the department's state government division, said he did not know a reason for the discrepancy in the amounts asked for by the courts and prosecutors' council and the amount the Department of Audits reported as their debt levels.
The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council carried over $385,921 in debt from the previous fiscal year, according to audit department. The council did not ask the Legislature for funding to cover the debt. The PD council submits its budget proposal to Perdue, who then sends his version to the Legislature.
State Auditor Russell Hinton last year asked Attorney General Thurbert E. Baker what to do about the courts and legal offices carrying the debt because it violates the state constitution. In addition to those parts of the judicial branch, the state departments of Revenue and Veterans Service also carried over debt from the previous fiscal year.
Baker's spokesman, Russ Willard, did not return a call or respond to an e-mail asking what Baker's response was. Thornton declined to comment on the nature of talks between his department and the AG's office.
The audits department continues to examine the courts' carry-over debt and expects to issue a report on the matter sometime in the next two weeks, Thornton said. The debt appeared to be caused by the courts and departments “overspending their 2009 appropriations allotments,” he said.
Thornton declined to say how the matter may be resolved.
“Our job is really to audit and report,” Thornton said. “Beyond that, it's really not the State Auditor's office's role to make a decision on how to fix the problem.”
Copyright 2010 ALM Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved.
WXIA TV 11 Alive
Fulton County Tempers Court Budget Cuts
Updated 1/21/2010 2:47:02 AM
By Gary Franklin
ATLANTA (AP) -- The state's biggest court system will soon grapple with budget cuts that could top $2 million.
But Fulton County judicial leaders said Wednesday they are grateful that the county commission didn't cut the system deeper. They worried cuts that could have exceeded $4 million would have forced major reductions in pretrial programs that focused on defendants with problems with drugs and mental health.
The county's judicial leaders have launched an unusually aggressive effort to sway lawmakers, including posting fliers around the courthouse with signs announcing the courts are closed below a caption that reads "Think It Can't Happen Here?".
Associated Press
Note: the order by Judge Glanville dismissing the case in the following article is posted on our website at Grady Hemodialysis Case.
Grady dialysis patients emotionally exhausted
By Craig Schneider and Shelia M. Poole spoole@ajc.com
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7:49 a.m. Thursday, January 21, 2010
Adejumoke Olaleye-Abner remembers receiving her visa and heading to America. It was only for a vacation, but the Nigerian woman was filled with hopes of seeing friends and the sights in metro Atlanta.
The joy of that 2001 trip collapsed when Olaleye-Abner passed out at a friend’s house in Gwinnett County. She was diagnosed with kidney failure. After that, the outpatient dialysis clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital became her medical safety net. She can’t afford to pay for her own care and does not qualify for government assistance.
In October of last year, her safety net gave way. The financially strapped hospital, struggling to cut costs, closed the outpatient dialysis clinic.
Grady’s decision to close the clinic has sent about 50 of its patients into a medical care limbo. Most were illegal immigrants with little money and no government aid. Olaleye-Abner actually has a green card and is married to an American, but not long enough to qualify for citizenship or Medicaid.
Emotionally exhausted
The patients of Grady’s outpatient dialysis clinic have been through emotional extreme after emotional extreme. After the October closing of the clinic, Grady offered to pay for three months of dialysis treatments at a private clinic called Fresenius. That reprieve was to expire Jan. 3. Grady extended the deadline to Feb. 3. That’s less than two weeks away.
Again and again, the patients have had the end of their treatment in sight, and each time that deadline has been extended. Their drama has played out in newspapers and news shows. The New York Times has cast them in the center of the nation’s debate on the role that safety net hospitals should play in the care of illegal immigrants.
But the patients are just a group of frightened people. They know their lives could change drastically soon, but they don’t know when. Many say they are emotionally exhausted. They don’t know what to do, they have nowhere to go, and they don’t want to die.
“It’s so much emotion, it’s so much stress,” said Olaleye-Abner, sitting in her College Park apartment with her husband, Duncan Abner. “Every day I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Grady officials say they are doing all they can to help the patients. The hospital has offered to relocate patients to their home country, or to another state where they have a better chance of government aid.
Olaleye-Abner, 43, said she can’t go back to Nigeria because medical care there is decades behind the United States.
“People there with this problem die within a short time,” she said.
Moving to another state, she said, is too difficult. She is sick, often weak. She can hardly make a fist. Her husband, a diabetic who also receives dialysis, had most of his right leg amputated about a year ago.
Olaleye-Abner works part time as a home health care nurse. She pays taxes, said her husband, defending his wife’s right to care.
The couple met at the Grady dialysis clinic. He receives Medicaid.
“She’s such a giving person. So respectful and so honest,” Duncan Abner said.
Making choices
The dialysis patients see their options running out. They have appealed to Grady to reopen its dialysis clinic, to no avail. They sued the hospital in Fulton County Superior Court, asserting patient abandonment. That case was thrown out, but they are appealing. They recently reached out to an international human rights group to take their side.
Mostly they are hoping that the Feb. 3 deadline does not hold, that Grady extends it again. They know that Grady has contracted with Fresenius to provide for patients as long as September. But the patients signed their own contracts with Grady that said the hospital would stop paying the bill on Jan. 3.
After Feb. 3, the hospital will consider the continuation of treatments for patients on a case-by-case basis, Grady spokesman Matt Gove said. He said the hospital may take into consideration whether a patient is trying to find their own long-term care elsewhere, and whether they live in Fulton or DeKalb counties, which provide financial assistance to the hospital.
The patients are very aware that since most are illegal immigrants, they don’t generate a lot of public sympathy.
Bineet Kaur, a 26-year-old patient who lives in Alpharetta, said she never wanted to burden anyone. When she was first diagnosed with kidney failure in 2003, about three years after coming to this country on a visa, she did not seek dialysis. She said she had no insurance and no means to pay for treatment, and she did not want to burden her relatives.
As her kidneys became weaker and less efficient, pain tightened its grip on her body. She started to walk with a limp. Her skin turned a pale yellow. Eventually, even lying in a bed hurt.
Grady, she said, helped restore her life. She was able to go there three times a week. But being an illegal immigrant from India, she could not qualify for government assistance in Georgia.
She received the notice of the October closing while she was on dialysis.
“I started to cry,” she said. “I was seeing my life change.”
If Grady stops paying for care, Kaur believes she would be left to seek care through an emergency room. But those treatments would not be three times a week, as she would have to be near crisis to receive a treatment.
A few of the patients have accepted Grady’s offer of relocating back to their home country, but some have run into troubles.
Monica Chavarria returned to Mexico to live with her mother. She took her 8-year-old son. Her husband remained in Atlanta with their 14-year-old son.
For many of her treatments, Chavarria had to travel two hours to get to a clinic. Recently she was able to receive the treatments at a place about 40 minutes away. She has run out of the three months of treatments funded by Grady, but she has not been able to receive government health care coverage, said her husband Roberto Barajas.
Chavarria, 35, is exploring the possibility of receiving a kidney transplant from a sibling. The family had held fund-raisers for that here in Atlanta, but now she is spending the money for treatments that cost $120 apiece.
The separation has been hard on the family, Barajas said. The couple has been married for 15 years, and hadn’t been apart in years.
Dependence mourned
Three patients have died since the clinic closed in October. Grady spokesman Gove said none died due to a lack of access to care.
Without her dialysis treatments, Anabel Quintanilla said she could die within two weeks. She was diagnosed with a severe form of lupus, an autoimmune disease that attacked her kidneys, nine years after she arrived in this country from her home in Hidalgo, Mexico.
Back there, she was a woman proud of her independence. She was raising a young son.
“With this illness I depend on people like my family to help me with my son, morally and economically,” she said. “I get very sad to see what I am now as opposed to what I was in my country.”
Being an illegal immigrant with little money, she also has depended on Grady. She doesn’t appreciate the way the hospital handled the closing. She believes Grady feels it can push the patients around because most are in this country illegally.
“I believe that even dogs and pets have better privileges in this country than we [illegal immigrants] do,” she said.
Grady officials say they have been considerate in handling the closure, helping people to relocate and extending the deadlines on care again and again.
Quintanilla is uncertain where her future will lead her.
Wherever it is, she said she will strive to remain strong, a fighter.
“I never cry,” she said.
Staff writer Rachel Tobin Ramos contributed to this article.
Find this article at: http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/grady-dialysis-patients-emotionally-279664.html
WCTV TV
Updated: 1:07 AM Jan 21, 2010
Mental Health Summit Focuses On Solutions
At a time when governments are trying to save money... mental health professionals say more money should be spent on mental illness treatment, and in the long run, governments will save more.
You may not notice how mental illness affects your community... but it is a daily concern for many public services... and comes with a hefty price tag.
"If we can help someone who is mentally ill and is having a crisis before they commit a crime, it's far less expensive. You don't have police involved, you don't have the jail involved, you don't have the court system involved," says Greg Frost of the Tallahassee Police Department.
Public service professionals supported that notion at Wednesday's Mental Health Summit in Tallahassee. They also say mental illness often goes hand in hand with substance abuse and homelessness.
"In order to kind of address homelessness in general, what we need to address is the underlying causes - the mental health, the substance abuse, the employment issues," explains Susan Pourciau, the director of the Big Bend Homeless Coalition.
Mental health stakeholders say those underlying causes can be remedied with sufficient funding for treatment and prevention.
"We found that one of the largest untapped voting blocks in this country are the folks with mental health issues and their families," says Clint Rayner with the Florida Department of Children and Families.
"What we're hoping to do in Leon County is create a system where individuals can get the appropriate care in the community to begin with so that they don't end up in the jails or they don't end up in a state facility," says Kendra Brown, the court coordinator for the Leon County Mental Health Court and facilitator of the summit.
Mental health professionals say if mental illness is treated on the front end... it could add up safety and savings in the long run.
A townhall meeting to address mental illness and its effects on the community is scheduled for February 3rd at 6 in the evening in the Leon County Commission chambers.
These news articles were compiled by the Superior Court of Fulton County, Office of Public Information as a service to the Fulton Judicial System. The purpose of this service is to keep judges, court staff and other interested parties informed of the latest developments affecting the practice of law, the administration of justice and public perceptions of the judiciary. News stories are selected after the consideration of certain criteria, including if the article contains news about the Superior Court of Fulton County or the judicial system. News stories will not be included if they contain profanity or vulgarity or come from a publication that defines its circulation and audience in terms of a special interest. Exclusively political stories will not be included, except for stories about the announcement of a candidacy for judicial office, major editorial endorsements of candidates for judicial office, or the outcome of judicial elections.
For further information about this news service, contact: Don Plummer, Public Information Officer, Superior Court of Fulton County. Don.plummer@fultoncountyga.gov
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