10/07/2025
đ¨ If City Attorney Clifton Fay and Attorney Chuck Boring are going to incorrectly cite state law and the case law surrounding it in order to erroneously declare that CCG Human Resource Director Reather Hollowellâs voluntarily-contracted and outrageous attorney fees are required to be funded by the taxpayer, then the City Attorney ought to first read the fine print of the state law and case law they cite â namely, that of OCGA § 45-9-21(e)(2) and the case of Haralson County v. Kimball (2000).
The law, OCGA § 45-9-21(e)(2), does provide the following, though the terms within it and the grander context of what they mean do not create the conclusion Boring and Fay think they do. In the excerpt below, note how the opening condition of the statute requires that a civil suit be initiated for the conditions of the law to be applicable. Hollowell nor her Attorney Chuck Boring have initiated such suit, nor was the billed work in relation to such a suit; the MCSO investigation was of a criminal nature, not a civil one, which on its face renders this statute inapplicable to the issue at hand:
âIn any civil case in which the county attorney has a conflict of interest which would ethically prevent the county attorney from representing both the county, the governing authority of the county, or another county officer or employee and the county officer, upon a determination by the chief judge of the superior court of the circuit in which the county is located that an ethical conflict exists, the county officer shall be authorized to employ individual legal counsel to represent such county officer in such matter. The governing authority of the county shall pay the reasonable fees of such individual counsel and all applicable court costs, deposition costs, witness fees and compensation, and all other like reasonable costs, expenses, and fees.... Such fees and costs shall be authorized by the chief judge of the superior court of the circuit in which the county is located. This subsection shall not apply unless the governing authority of the county has first denied a written request by a county officer for counsel.â
Note how the statute FIRST states that the county officer âshall be authorizedâ to employ legal counsel under specific criteria, not to recieve issued payment for whatever consult they please; they are merely permitted to do so for taking legitimate bona fide legal action.
However, given the nature of the circumstances, the conditions required for the county to be authorized to do so do not even exist.
First and of the most importance, no such civil case has been filed rendering the entirety of the lawâs applicability null.
Second, Ms. Hollowell was not required to hire an attorney throughout any part of the MCSOâs investigation; she chose to. Ms. Hollowell has yet to be charged with a crime and was not thus required to offer a defense.
Third, âassertingâ a legal position does not mean writing a letter to your employer nor writing a tweet nor telling your friends how you whimsically feel about something. âAssertingâ a legal position means to take legitimate action through the courts. Ms. Hollowell has not even had the opportunity to legally assert anything; she has never even been inside of a courtroom in which to assert it.
Fourth, as a public official, Ms. Hollowell is not even legally capable of claiming defamation under Georgia law and thus cannot have been required to âdefend her reputationâ; she is legally subject to scrutiny as a public official. Her claims of being ârequiredâ to âdefend her reputationâ are not even legally feasible, let alone ârequired.â
Finally, thereâs the grander context of the very specific circumstances on which the ruling of Haralson County v. Kimball (2000) is based. Within the ruling itself, the Court describes how its ruling is based on precedent from the prior case of Gwinnett County v. Yates (1995), whereby Yates had âretained outside counsel and filed a declaratory judgment action.â No such action has been taken by Ms. Hollowell of any kind; she merely chose to hire an attorney who then took no action to assert anything at all. As discussed above, writing a letter is not âasserting a legal position,â nor is a news interview, nor a tweet, nor an angry conversation with friends. Asserting a legal position means to take legitimate action through the courts in order to adjudicate a position legally under the law. No such invoiced legal work even exists, as no such action had even been filed.
Given that Ms. Hollowell: has not been charged with a crime; was not required to hire an attorney; took no legitimate legal action through that attorney whatsoever; and did not assert anything at all â no such circumstances exist surrounding her Attorneyâs invoices, as is ironically dictated by the very case law Boring and Fay have erroneously based their entire position upon.
As usual, Chuck Williams and WRBL have yet again published a one-sided interview for political purposes without bothering to cite nor read the law they are basing their one-sided reporting on.
Ask the hard questions. Fix the hard answers.
Rake the muck. đ´ââ ď¸
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ctlyrr
