Capron v. City of Atlanta (Ga. Sup.)
City council approves $1.25M settlement for homeowners following flooding

2009 WL 3842374 Verdict Summary

2007 WL 6864686 Plaintiff’s Complaint

Note: The links above are intended for Westlaw users. You will be asked to sign on to Westlaw before being taken directly to the document.

Publish Your Cases

Do you have questions about using KeyCite on WestlawNext? How about mining your research history, or organizing those nifty new folders?

WestlawNext Research Expert Webinars are your chance to get answers to your questions. Each 30-minute live webinar includes 20 minutes of instruction followed by 10 minutes of live Q&A with the audience.

The first two series of webinars, held in June and July, had hundreds of participants and resulted in dozens of great audience questions (which you can see our WestlawNext Q&A page.) So don’t miss out -  register for one of the new sessions below.

Learn about:

• KeyCite tabs
• Sorting, filtering, and searching within citing references
• A new graphical view of a case’s history
• Most Negative Treatment Citation, and more

Monday, August 30, 2 pm – 2:30 pm CDT
Tuesday, August 31, 1 pm – 1:30 pm CDT
Thursday, September 2, 11 am – 11:30 am CDT

Learn about:

• Filtering and searching research history
• Dragging and dropping documents and text snippets into folders
• Organizing, filtering, and searching within folders, and more

Tuesday, September 14, Noon – 12:30 pm CDT
Wednesday, September 15, 2 pm – 2:30 pm CDT
Thursday, September 16, 11 am – 11:30 am CDT

This question came from Twitter. We felt it necessary to provide a response from our Reference Attorneys.

Q: Does anyone know where to find state session laws on WestlawNext? I’m really missing the directory feature right now!

A: Old session laws are currently NOT yet on WestlawNext. Current session laws are available at Proposed and Pending Legislation.

At the ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco earlier this month, WestlawNext sponsored a free CLE seminar called “Legal Issues from the Social Media Explosion,” which explored legal issues associated with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social media forms.

The audience got an entertaining view of the client’s perspective from one of the world’s most famous professional bloggers, Heather Armstrong (dooce.com), who was famously fired (or “dooced”) after anonymously blogging about her boss.

“I felt like I had ended my life,” Armstrong told the 270 people in attendance. “I was valedictorian at my school, I graduated with honors from college, and here I was getting fired for doing something really, really dumb.” Her advice to bloggers now? “Be ye not so stupid.”

The session inspired a number of insightful blog posts and articles. Here are a few that caught our eye:

• Slander or Satire? When Does Social Media Cross Legal Lines? (ABA Journal)
• Growing Social Media Use Among Employees Necessitates Employer Response (ABA Now)
• Another Example of Why Your Company Now Needs a Social Media Policy (Connecticut Employment Law Blog)

Attendees also got some expert legal perspective from Marylee Abrams and Kenneth Kunkle, two attorneys who deal with social media in the workplace. Abrams talked about the need for employers to develop social media policies, and Kunkle discussed copyright and trademark concerns stemming from the explosion in social media use.

Oh, and here’s a scary thought: While there are thousands of potential Heather Armstrongs out there, an ABA survey concluded that only about 30 percent of American workplaces have social media policies.

Have you ever searched for a form in Westlaw only to find that the results weren’t exactly what you had in mind? If so, you’re not alone.

“A lot of Westlaw users go to the FORMS-ALL database to look for forms,” says Andy O’Meara, a West Reference Attorney. “And what they find is often in the wrong format for what they need – for example, they’re looking for a form and they find a checklist.”

In these situations, Westlaw’s FormFinder tool can be a huge help.  “With FormFinder, you can choose whether you want to find a clause or a checklist or one of the various types of forms that are out there,” Andy says.  “And unlike FORMS-ALL, FormFinder also gives you official PDF forms from the states.”

In his four years as a reference attorney, Andy has helped hundreds of Westlaw users locate the forms they need. “Typically, form calls come from solo practitioners or newer attorneys looking for forms because they haven’t dealt with a particular situation before,” he says.

For example, Andy recently received a call from an attorney looking for forms to set up a new church in Georgia. He pointed her to FormFinder and then suggested that she expand her search to include all nonprofits, not just churches. “Sometimes it’s helpful to pull back a little bit,” he says.

While many forms are jurisdiction-specific, the bulk of their content is often universal. “That’s where Easy-Edit comes in handy,” Andy says, referring to the FormFinder feature that allows users to download forms in rich-text format for easy editing and tweaking to suit the need. “There’s an additional charge for Easy-Edit, but it can really be worth it to cut down on the time takes to modify a form.”

Andy recently narrated a two-minute video that provides a quick overview of FormFinder’s most useful features and enhancements. “I think we’ve addressed every pain point in the workflow of the practitioner – searching for the form, finding the form they want, and modifying the form to fit their situation,” he says.

FormFinder gives you access to more than 500,000 forms, with clauses and checklists for just about any legal filing. In addition to Easy-Edit text forms, FormFinder now features a revamped search template, global search functionality, more intuitive browsing and filtering tools, links to related resources, and new content from Miller’s Standard Insurance Policies Annotated and Oden. For more on FormFinder, visit west.thomson.com/formfinder.

Q: As part of my background research on a party, I quickly found a voter registration record for her. Unfortunately, this particular registration record tells me little about her. Is there any other way to get a sense of her political leanings or perspective?

A: Search the Political Donor Information database (POLITICAL-DONORS). Even if the individual never declared a party affiliation, her POLITICAL-DONORS record may include information such as the party, committee, or PAC to whom she has donated; the dates and amounts of her contributions; her employer; and her occupation. In addition, the Links tab may contain links to her other political donations, a variety of public records, and her Westlaw PeopleMap report.

In this two-minute video, West Reference Attorney Andy O’Meara demonstrates how easy it is to find the form you need using FormFinder on Westlaw.

FormFinder gives you access to more than 500,000 forms, with clauses and checklists for just about any legal filing. For more information, visit west.thomson.com/formfinder.