The primary runoff election yesterday produced a muddled outcome and likely runoff for Governor, but one unambiguously clear and positive winner. Sam Olens, who until recently was chair of the Cobb County Commission and the Atlanta Regional Council, won his party’s nomination for Attorney General in a landslide.

I have known Sam as a professional colleague, laboring in the trenches representing ordinary people, since long before he entered politics through his neighborhood association in East Cobb. He is a serious, soft-spoken, unpretentious guy who  is knowledgeable about a broad range of public policy concerns such as water and transportation, and does not come across like the typical politician.

Ironically, Sam is a Jewish Republican trial lawyer, endorsed by the Christian Coalition, and he beat former State Senator Preston Smith, who was the prime author and sponsor of SB3, the draconian tort reform bill passed in 2005, much of which has been held unconstitutional.

 

 

 

  

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers. He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.