APPELLATE PRACTICE
Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, LLP has extensive experience and success representing clients in state and federal appellate courts.
This tradition began in 1964, when Emmet Bondurant successfully argued Wesberry v. Sanders in front of the United States Supreme Court, affirming the one-person, one-vote principle. 376 U.S. 1 (1964). Since that time, the firm has continued to enjoy great success in its appellate work, including:
- Successfully representing a female attorney who was denied partnership in a major Atlanta law firm in an appeal to the United States Supreme Court (Hishon v. King & Spalding, 467 U.S. 69 (1984));
- Successfully defending a $454 million judgment the firm obtained against Time Warner in appeals to both the Georgia Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court;
- Obtaining the reversal of an intermediate appellate decision certifying a class action seeking a $110 million recovery under the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act in Hammond v. Carnett’s, Inc., 279 Ga. 125, 610 S.E.2d 529 (2005);
- Successfully defending certification of a class of insureds in action against a credit life insurer in J.M.I.C. Life Insurance Co. v. Toole, --- S.E.2d ---, 2006 WL 1882362 (Ga. App. July 10, 2006);
- Won three appeals in the Georgia Supreme Court regarding the interpretation and application of the Georgia RICO statute - Dorsey v. State, 279 Ga. 534, 615 S.E.2d 512 (2005) (John E. Floyd arguing as Special Assistant District Attorney); Williams General Corp. v. Stone, 279 Ga. 428, 614 S.E.2d 758 (2005); and Williams General Corp. v. Stone, 280 Ga. 631, 632 S.E.2d 376 (2006);
- Successfully defending dismissal of putative class action claims against not-for-profit hospitals in Cox v. Athens Reg'l Med. Ctr., Inc., 2006 Ga. App. LEXIS 647 (2006);
- Overturning a summary judgment in a medical malpractice/breast cancer case and making new law as to accrual of the statute of limitations in such cases in Ward v. Bergen, 277 Ga. App. 256 (2006);
- Successfully defending an award of $16.6 million to seven employment discrimination plaintiffs before the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Bogle v. McClure, 332 F.3d 1347 (11th Cir. 2003);
- Obtaining the reversal of class certification before the United States Court of Appeals in Andrews v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 95 F.3d 1014 (11th Cir.1996), resulting in the decertification of a consumer class of tens of thousands of individuals;
- Successfully representing our client in Grace Brothers, Ltd. v. Farley Industries, Inc., 264 Ga. 817, 450 S.E.2d 814 (1994), which has become one of the seminal shareholder dissenters’ rights cases in Georgia; and
- Obtaining a new trial on behalf of a major peanut processor following a $20 million jury verdict, Golden Peanut v. Bass, 249 Ga. App. 224 (2001), aff’d, 275 Ga. 145 (2002).
Our appellate practice is in part an extension of our trial practice, devoted to representing clients that the firm also represented at the trial level. A significant portion of our appellate practice, however, consists of handling appeals where we were not counsel of record in the trial court. In those cases, we typically work closely with trial counsel to ensure the effective representation of our clients in the appellate court.
The firm's appellate practice is bolstered by the clerkship experience of our lawyers. Virtually all of the firm's partners and associates served as judicial law clerks for a year or more prior to joining the firm. This includes a number of clerkships at the Fourth, Fifth, Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals and in the highest appellate courts of several states. Further, several of the firm's lawyers served as contributing authors for the Lawyers Cooperative Federal Practice Guide, Federal Appellate Procedure, 11th Circuit (Lawyers Cooperative Publishing Co. 1996).
