DeKalb lawyer disbarred over case running as court mulls wider problem

A Decatur lawyer charged with illegally soliciting clients using accident information stolen from DeKalb County police has been disbarred by the Georgia Supreme Court as it separately grapples with the wider problem of so-called case running.

William T. Payne, who has a personal injury and criminal defense practice, was disbarred Wednesday in relation to the case against him in DeKalb County. In that case, he entered a “no-contest” guilty plea last September to a felony charge of violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, court records show.

Payne, who faced up to 20 years in custody, was sentenced last year by DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Yolanda Parker-Smith to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service. He was also ordered to pay $85,000 in restitution. He did not respond Wednesday to questions about his prosecution and disbarment.

According to the state Supreme Court’s disciplinary opinion published Wednesday and other court filings, Payne was accused of conspiring in 2015 with an employee of the DeKalb County Police Department and several others to illegally access information in the Georgia Electronic Accident Reporting System.

That system was illegally accessed by Payne and his co-defendants more than 30,000 times between January and August of 2015, per the indictment, filed in 2020. It says Payne and at least one other Georgia lawyer, along with a few alleged co-conspirators, used the stolen information to illegally solicit personal injury clients and obtain settlements in lawsuits stemming from accidents.

A spokesperson for the DeKalb County Police Department said Wednesday that the employee resigned in lieu of termination in September 2015, having worked there since April 2006.

Payne, a member of the State Bar of Georgia since 1977, is one of 14 attorneys disbarred this year by the state Supreme Court, according to disciplinary opinions published on its website. He is the only one in that group punished in relation to illegal client solicitation, a statewide problem that the court is considering in a separate case.

Lawyers are rarely disciplined for illegally soliciting clients because the practice is generally unpoliced, Darl Champion, a Marietta personal injury attorney, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday. Champion resigned as the chairman of the State Bar of Georgia’s committee on attorney-client solicitation last October, claiming the organization was unwilling to investigate complaints of improper solicitation, let alone discipline members for it. The agency denied the claim.

Many personal injury lawyers in Georgia are separately urging the state Supreme Court to allow litigation that they say could help to punish and stop the bad actors among them who use illegal means to sign up clients.

The court is expected to decide in coming months whether to revive a previously dismissed lawsuit filed by Gainesville personal injury attorney Shane Lazenby against rivals he accuses of illegally soliciting clients in a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise.

In Payne’s case, court records show he was indicted in DeKalb County in 2020 alongside his administrative assistant, Ruby Price, her daughter, Durdrick Mitchell, and another disbarred Georgia lawyer, Melvin Johnson, who is still fighting the charges.

Prosecutors said Mitchell worked in 2015 as a records clerk in the county’s police department, where she had access to the Georgia Electronic Accident Reporting System. They said Mitchell used a colleague’s login credentials to illegally access information in the system and gave those credentials to the co-defendants and others so they could do the same.

Payne, Price, Mitchell and Johnson were each charged with felony violation of Georgia’s RICO Act, accused of stealing the information and using it to illegally solicit personal injury clients.