JUDGMENT ENTERED FOR WILSON CLIENT IN COMMERCIAL LITIGATION AS SANCTION AGAINST OPPOSING PARTY

Full judgment, including for interest and attorneys’ fees, was obtained recently for a Roger C. Wilson client in a commercial litigation in Cobb County Superior Court, by court order, before trial, as a sanction for violation of discovery rules by the opposing party.

The Wilson client was the plaintiff in the case, Willson v. Tselios, et al. (no relation between client and attorney), case no. 10-1-3929-49.  The client had contracted to sell restaurant equipment to a commercial buyer under an installment purchase arrangement as a part of the disposition of a Sandy Springs restaurant of the Wilson client.  The defendant-opponent, the buyer, failed or refused to make full payments under the contract even after taking possession of all the equipment.  Only after the initiation of the litigation did the buyer raise allegations of lien-type encumbrances of the equipment, which allegations Wilson and his client rebutted.

The defendant-opponent repeatedly failed to properly respond to discovery requests (formal demands for information and documents about the case and defenses) submitted by Wilson on behalf of his client.  After first obtaining orders from the Court requiring the defendant to fully respond to those discovery requests, Wilson ultimately moved the Court to enter judgment in favor of his client as a sanction when the defendant continually failed to provide such responses.

After the presentation of written briefs and oral arguments, the Court granted Wilson’s motion and entered judgment in favor of the Wilson client for the full amount demanded by the client in the case.  In addition the Court granted Wilson’s request to add pre-judgment interest to the award, running from the time of the initial breach of the underlying contract.  Post-judgment interest generally is available as a matter of right, but pre-judgment interest is not and is more difficult to obtain.  Additionally, the Court awarded attorneys’ fees to the Wilson client in connection with the efforts to obtain the requested discovery.

Although courts have considerable leeway in fashioning remedies for violations of discovery rules, it is unusual to obtain an entry of final judgment against a litigant on this basis.  That remedy generally is reserved for cases of very substantial violations by a litigant.  Such was the case here, where the defendant repeatedly failed to respond to orders obtained from the Court specifically regarding discovery and related matters.

Defendants sometimes adopt such delaying tactics in order to increase the time and costs to a plaintiff of obtaining any judgment, hoping to dilute the plaintiff's resources and heart for the litigation before a trial is reached.  A great advantage of obtaining judgment on the basis and at the stage of litigation obtained by the Wilson client in this case is that this mitigates such delays and costs.  Occasionally, as in this case, the client is thereby able to obtain the full benefits sought in the litigation even without the expenses normally entailed by a trial of the case.



Roger C. Wilson represents companies and individuals in litigation in all state and federal courts in Georgia.  He has represented many clients in commercial and other civil litigation, both as plaintiffs and as defendants.

WILSON OBTAINS DISMISSAL OF CIVIL LAWSUIT AGAINST TWO CLIENTS

The Roger C. Wilson Law Firm, PC  has obtained the dismissal of a civil action filed against two of its clients in Cobb County, Georgia Superior Court involving a dispute over the sales of several area office buildings.  In the case, Grund v. Crescent Holdings, et al., the former owner of the buildings sued to obtain the restoration of his ownership of the buildings.  The office buildings had been sold by the Cobb Sheriff's Department in enforcement of judgments for many hundreds of thousands of dollars that had been obtained against the plaintiff by another party in separate litigation.  In the Crescent Holdings case, the former owner of the buildings sued various defendants, including Cobb Sheriff's Department officials, seeking a court ruling that the Sheriff's sales were invalid as having been made at unreasonably low prices and allegedly otherwise contrary to law, and seeking a court order returning ownership of the buildings to the plaintiff.

The purchasers of the buildings also were sued in the case, including the two clients of Roger C. Wilson.  After substantial pretrial proceedings, Wilson obtained a dismissal of all claims against both of his clients.  A motion for an award of attorneys' fees to the Wilson clients remains pending.

Roger C. Wilson represents companies and individuals in litigation in all state and federal courts in Georgia.  He has represented many clients in commercial and other civil litigation, both as plaintiffs and as defendants, including in the enforcement of judgments from assets located outside Georgia.

WILSON WINS SUPREME COURT VICTORY FOR CLIENTS IN CASE OF FIRST IMPRESSION

The Roger C. Wilson Law Firm, PC  has won a substantial victory for several of its clients before the Georgia Supreme Court in a complex case involving federal and state banking, financial, and estate laws, Tuvim, et al. v. United Jewish Communities, et al., no. S09A0006,decided June 15, 2009. In the case, handled on appeal by Roger C. Wilson, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Firm clients on all claims presented there and reversed a lower court’s decisions to the contrary.
 

The principle issue in the case was the propriety of a corporation being a “pay-on-death” beneficiary on certain financial instruments (trust and deposit bank accounts and federal government bonds) so that the corporation would receive the assets from those instruments after the death of the person who created them. Roger C. Wilson argued to the Court that under both state and federal law, corporations are forbidden from being such a beneficiary on those kinds of
instruments. Consequently, he argued, upon the death of the person who created those instruments, the assets underlying them should pass not to such corporation but instead to the
individual heirs of the deceased person.

The Supreme Court agreed and ruled in favor of the Firm’s clients, the individual heirs in this case.

The case also involved additional issues under Georgia law applicable to administration of estates. The lower court had ruled at trial that even if corporations were disqualified as pay-on-death beneficiaries on the financial instruments at issue in this case, the underlying assets should nevertheless pass to the corporation involved, and not to the individual heirs, based on other doctrines of Georgia law known as cy pres and unjust enrichment. On appeal Roger C. Wilson challenged those rulings too, arguing that those doctrines are inapplicable in this case.
 
The Supreme Court agreed and ruled in favor of his clients on these issues as well. Thus, on all substantive claims and issues involved in the case on appeal, the Supreme Court agreed with
Roger Wilson’s arguments, ruled in favor of his clients, and reversed the rulings and judgments of the lower trial court to the contrary.