Longtime Hall Booth Smith Partner and dedicated civic leader Terrell W. Benton, Jr. has passed away. In a legal career that spanned half a century, Terrell represented numerous public school districts in Georgia. He served as General Counsel to the Clarke, Oconee and Walton County School Districts for several decades. He was deeply involved in educational and professional associations, and served on the Executive Committee of the Counsel of

ATLANTA – November 6, 2020 – Hall Booth Smith, P.C. (HBS) has named six new partners as the firm elevates leaders and recognizes their outstanding service to clients. Joining the firm's partnership ranks are Abe Varner, J. Felicia LeRay, and Paul Trainor in Atlanta; Hank Pittman and J.D. Dean in Tifton; and Spencer Craig Gill in Charleston. Abe Varner's practice focuses on the defense of large hospital systems and healthcare

Written by: Eric Hoffman, Esq. In September 2014, Lanier Career Academy (Gainesville, Ga.) student Devon Major was arrested and charged with threatening to commit a crime of violence after school officials were alerted to a Facebook post by Major. In the post Major wrote: Bruh, LCA [Lanier Career Academy] ain’t a school. Stop coming here. All y’all ain’t going to graduate early. Why? Because there are too many of y’all f**kers

Written by: Eric A. Hoffman, Esq. On May 4, 2017, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed the current campus carry bill into law after previously vetoing a similar bill in 2016. The law will allow people with valid gun permits to carry concealed weapons on Georgia’s public colleges in certain areas. Governor Deal vetoed a similar bill in 2016 after Georgia lawmakers refused Deal’s request to limit the right to carry

Written by: Andrea L. Jolliffe, Esq. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided an important special education case on March 22, 2017. In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District, SCOTUS ruled on how much benefit Individualized Education Programs (IEP) must provide to students.   Many are wondering whether the decision is a game changer for special education.  Andrea L Jolliffe, a partner in the HBS Education Practice Group, has prepared a

Written by: Eric A. Hoffman, Esq. In a January 9, 2017 opinion, the Georgia Court of Appeals held that an Atlanta Public School teacher was entitled to official immunity in a wrongful death suit filed by a student’s parents. The case, Barnett v. Atlanta Indep. School System, stemmed from an incident that occurred when the teacher left her classroom unattended for a brief period of time to use the restroom.

Written by: Eric Hoffman, Esq. On Monday October 31, 2016, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously held that firearms cannot be carried onto public K-12 school property unless the licensed gun owner is picking up or dropping off a student. In GeorgiaCarry.org v. Code Revision Commission, the Court, in an opinion by Chief Justice Hugh Thompson, upheld a Fulton County Judge’s dismissal of a suit filed by GeorgiaCarry to challenge a decision

Dominating a fair segment of the legal world at the moment, transgender issues extend deeply into the worlds of both the public and private sectors.  Employment discrimination, accommodations, equal treatment in business dealings – the list goes on. Probably no one sector is more affected by the emergence of these modern issues than the world of education.  Here, we see all the issues being addressed by everyone else plus