Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

It is with great sadness that I report that we have lost an amazing jurist on the Georgia Appellate Bench, Judge Debra Bernes. Judge Debra Bernes was truly an incredible woman and wonderful judge. Gone too soon. I will miss her and the citizens of the State of Georgia will miss her, because we have lost a compassionate heart and voice on the Georgia Court of Appeals with her passing. My heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to her husband and family. God Bless You.

Appeals court judge Debra Bernes dies of cancer
ShareThisPrint E-mail By Bill Rankin and Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Debra Bernes, a former Cobb County prosecutor who won one of the most unusual elections in state history, died Tuesday after a long bout with cancer.

Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Debra Bernes has died after a battle with cancer.

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Bernes, 54, was first elected to the appellate bench in 2004 and was running unopposed for re-election this fall. Her funeral will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Atlanta, with her internment to follow at Arlington Memorial Park in Sandy Springs.

Two years ago, Bernes was diagnosed with renal cancer that metastasized throughout her body, family member Bill Hendrick said. She had been hospitalized and given only hours to live over the weekend.

Nancy Ingram Jordan, who worked with Bernes in the Cobb County District Attorney's Office and later as a law partner, called Bernes a remarkable woman.

"She loved her family, loved the rule of law and she is going to be missed terribly," Jordan said.

Bernes had a sharp legal mind and was compassionate about the less fortunate, said Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham, who first met Bernes almost three decades ago when she was a Cobb prosecutor.

"She was really the kind of citizen we all hope to be; she had strong principles and strong values," Benham said. "She was completely fair-minded."

Bernes won election to the appeals court in a race that generated startling amounts of campaign cash and looked like it would never end.

She ultimately won the crowded race after a recount and then another ordered election because a candidate's name, Howard Mead, had been incorrectly listed as "Thomas Mead" on 481 ballots in Laurens County. She won a runoff against Mead, who raised a record $3.3 million for his unsuccessful campaign, most of it through personal loans.

Bernes, a past president of Cobb's bar association, once chaired the Cobb Chamber of Commerce public safety committee and was a board member for the Jewish Educational Fund and the William Brennen Jewish Home.

Bernes served as a trial prosecutor in the Cobb County District Attorney’s office and later specialized in appeals. She left the DA's office in 2000 and became a private attorney.

Bernes, who earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Florida, was from Atlanta, a 1973 graduate of Grady High School.

She is survived by husband, Gary Lee Bernes, and two adult children, Lane and Matt.

There is a very interesting article in today's Marietta Daily Journal Online that has many Georgia citizens calling the Georgia Department of Transportation's lack of road maintenance, including the right of ways next to state roads, a disgrace. Many may not even realize the impact on driver safety the DOT's failure to meet their duty of road maintenance may have.

Budget crunch forces GDOT to cut back on road maintenance
by Kathryn Dobies
kdobies@mdjonline.com
July 19, 2010 12:00 AM | 956 views | 6 | 5 | |

Weeds stand tall beside Macland Road in West Cobb on Sunday. The budget crunch has forced the Georgia Department of Transportation to cut back on their highway cleanup efforts.
slideshow COBB - Budget cuts have reduced the fight against what one Cobb resident calls an epidemic of debris - trash and weeds along many state routes and highways throughout Cobb.

D.F. Lane, 73, has lived in Powder Springs for six years and thinks the abundance of litter and overgrown grass along the highways in Cobb has become an embarrassment to the county. He is leading a charge in his retirement community of MacLand Square to get the Georgia Department of Transportation to address the problem.

"We need to get some immediate action on a very embarrassing problem," Lane said. "We're talking about weeds on the middle of some major highways ... I think it's a prelude to a larger issue."

In a letter to the Journal dated July 9, Lane explained further: "Viewing these scenes, would you invest in a new business in this setting of weeds and littered highways? ... I still believe a vast majority of the citizens are willing to pay a half-penny or more for highway maintenance."

Lane took pictures of weeds at the intersection of State Routes 360 at 176 in Powder Springs, SR 360 at Highway 120 in Marietta, and along SR 5 near Barrett Parkway, and sent them to Georgia DOT in mid-June.

Georgia DOT spokesman Mark McKinnon said Friday that crews used to clean up the state highways four times a year, but with budget cuts beginning last year the DOT has lost both manpower and money, and now mows the highways once a fiscal year, which begins July 1. Most of Cobb's highways, McKinnon explained, haven't been mowed or cleaned since last spring.

Lane said GDOT engineer Thomas Mims told him funds and equipment to clean up the roads are limited and that the highways in Cobb are on a list to be cleaned up this summer.

McKinnon said crews have already started working on Cobb's highways, an effort that takes about three to four months to complete. He said the highways should be finished by the end of August, although he could not provide a specific date, because he said crews are given a list of roads to clean and simply work their way down the list.

Lane acknowledged Friday that a lot of weeds had been cut at select intersections, but he believes that a quick cleanup effort is not enough to turn around the streets of Cobb. Instead, Lane thinks more citizens need to take action and contact GDOT to urge them to take better care of the streets. He said the state transportation department has training for residents interested in helping to clean up the highways, something he has also done.

"We need someone to say that problem is petty, it's embarrassing and it shouldn't exist," Lane said.

McKinnon said weeds are a never-ending problem, but littering is preventable. He said litter pickup costs the state DOT $14 million each year. The department uses its own manpower to clean up the litter, but generally contracts out for mowing.

"That's really money that shouldn't have to be spent," he said. "If people wouldn't throw things out of their vehicles and just find a trash can for them, then we wouldn't have to spend that money, because it is taxpayer money. That's an expense that's preventable."

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal - Budget crunch forces GDOT to cut back on road maintenance

Just when I thought it was safe to go into the water, it is reported this morning that a young woman has died in a boating incident on Lake Lanier and police authorities have charged the man who was driving the boat at the time with BUI, Boating Under the Influence. This comes right on the heels of my last blog entry in which I reported the good news that the Georgia Department of Resources had indicated the Fourth of July Holiday was safer than expected in Georgia, with BUI's on Georgia waters as being down this year from last year. My heart goes out to the family who has lost a loved one in this preventable incident.

Looks like Georgia highways this Fourth of July Holiday weekend were actually safer than the Georgia State Patrol had predicted, which is great news. Ten people died in car wrecks over the holiday weekend and the Georgia State Patrol had predicted, in one of the most morbid official acts it, apparently, must do, eighteen people would die. There were 2,648 car crashes with 699 injuries.

While we are all enjoying our time this holiday weekend with our families, we must remember that there are ten Georgia families grieving over the loss of a loved one today. As a personal injury attorney here in Atlanta, I often have to talk with people at one of the darkest times in their lives, after they have lost a loved one in a car wreck. My heart goes out to them.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources also reported yesterday that boating accidents and BUI's, or Boating Under the Influence, arrests were also down. There were eight boating accidents on Georgia waters this weekend, compared to 18 last year. Department of Natural Resources officers arrested 16 people for boating under the influence, compared to 31 last year.

This is good news to know that fewer Georgia lives were lost this year on the road and on the water than last year, but there are still Georgia families grieving today.