Ga. City’s Expert Witness Resigns Case Days Before Its Evidentiary Hearing

U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg for Northern Georgia in Atlanta ordered Roswell, Georgia, to "proceed expeditiously" in its search for a replacement expert witness after its original expert resigned abruptly from the case days before he was to testify at this week’s evidentiary hearing, said Totenberg’s signed order Monday (docket 1:10-cv-01464). Ronald Graiff had been Roswell’s expert witness on the case against T-Mobile since 2017, but he told the city Friday that his role was causing him too much stress and taking a toll on his physical and mental health, said a declaration Monday from the city’s counsel. Searching for a replacement expert as soon as possible “in Georgia and elsewhere” was necessary to comply with the “relevant disclosure rules,” and to allow plaintiff T-Mobile “a sufficient opportunity to depose the replacement,” said the order. The judge ruled in March that the FCC’s September 2018 small-cells declaratory ruling preempting aspects of local and municipal cell tower permit reviews is a “substantive rule” that shouldn’t be applied retroactively to Roswell’s 2017 denial of T-Mobile’s application to build a tower in a residential neighborhood (see 2303210036).