A Marietta, Ga., law firm that is the object of more than 200 complaints to the state of Georgia about its consumer debt collection tactics doesn’t have to comply with a state agency’s investigative requests because only the state Supreme Court can regulate the practice of law, according to a Cobb County judge.
Frederick J. Hanna & Associates doesn’t have to comply with a request for its records by the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs because its day-to-day operation “directly involves the practice of law,” Cobb County Superior Court Judge S. Lark Ingram wrote in an her eight-page order issued Sept. 4. The requests constituted “an impermissible interference by the executive branch into the exclusive jurisdiction of the judicial branch of government,” Ingram ruled.
