PBA Recoups Attorney Fees after Successful Litigation against City of Atlanta

By Valerie M. Ponder

PBA Legal Services

The PBA’s long legal battle with the City of Atlanta over who controls city employees’ pension funds has finally ended.  As you may recall from a previous article about this lawsuit, the PBA became involved with the lawsuit because its members were concerned about corruption and inefficiency in the way the City handled the police pension fund.  The City refused to allow the Pension Board to hire third party administration to administer the Pension Fund.  The PBA wanted to protect the interests of the many Atlanta police officers whose retirement pensions are directly affected by the daily operations of the Police Pension Fund.  The PBA, with the assistance of the Atlanta Retired Employees Association, filed this lawsuit through local attorneys Norman Slawsky and Mary Carole Cooney, who have expertise in pension law; they were assisted by PBA Staff Attorney Grady K. Dukes. 

Despite PBA’s success in the trial court and Court of Appeals, the City of Atlanta made application for a discretionary appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia.   On May 8, 2006, the Supreme Court of Georgia declined to hear the City of Atlanta’s appeal, which rendered PBA’s efforts on behalf of the many Atlanta police officers undefeated.  As a direct result of this litigation, the pension funds were turned over to be administered by a private party instead of the City of Atlanta.  The next battle was over the awarding of attorney’s fees.  In April, the City finally paid the fees as directed by the court, and PBA recouped approximately 65% of the roughly $85,000 it spent on the case.