Former Georgia legislator and appeals court judge Christian Coomer had his law license suspended Tuesday, 15 months after he was kicked off the bench for taking advantage of an elderly client and misusing campaign funds.
Coomer cannot practice as an attorney until Aug. 16, 2025. He thanked the Georgia Supreme Court for the opportunity to practice law beyond the suspension, as well as the “many people who have supported me, prayed for me, and encouraged me.”
“I have made mistakes, but I am trying to be better and do better,” Coomer said Tuesday. “I am working to make my community a better place through volunteer work and will dedicate myself to service when I return to the practice of law.”
The ruling comes after Coomer, a Cartersville attorney, admitted violating the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct. Coomer sought the suspension as discipline in a case brought by the State Bar of Georgia.
A special master recommended that the state Supreme Court accept Coomer’s voluntary two-year suspension, retroactively applied to begin Aug. 16, 2023, the day the court ended his judgeship.
“Because the record supports the admitted violations, and the proposed two-year suspension falls within the broad range of discipline we have imposed for previous violations of the same rules at issue here, we accept the petition,” the court stated in its opinion Tuesday.
Coomer, an attorney in Georgia since 1999, served in the Georgia House of Representatives for eight years before filling a vacancy on the Georgia Court of Appeals in 2018.
He was found to have misused campaign funds while a state lawmaker and a judge.
In December 2021, while suspended from the Court of Appeals, Coomer agreed to pay a $25,000 fine to settle accusations by the state ethics commission that he violated campaign finance laws by, among other things, using contributions to prop up his private law practice and pay for trips to Hawaii and Israel.
Coomer’s subsequent removal as a judge was based on his misuse of campaign funds as well as his work as an attorney for a wealthy elderly client.
He took advantage of the client in part by making himself and his wife beneficiaries of the client’s will, the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission found.
Coomer admitted while on trial before the JQC in October 2022 that his actions in regard to the client’s will violated state professional conduct rules.
Coomer acknowledged that it was improper for him to make himself a beneficiary of a will he drafted for James Filhart in 2018, shortly before his appointment to the bench. Filhart, who was 80 at the time of the trial, hired Coomer as an attorney in 2015. Days after being appointed to the bench, Coomer drafted another will for Filhart in which he remained a beneficiary but transferred his role as executor, trustee and power of attorney to his wife, Heidi Coomer.
Coomer said during the trial that he drafted the will according to Filhart’s wishes. He acknowledged that he remained a beneficiary of Filhart’s will until April 2020, just after he was sued by Filhart for legal malpractice and breach of fiduciary duty. That case settled within a couple of months for $50,000.
The JQC said Coomer had taken control of Filhart’s various accounts after learning that Filhart’s estate was worth more than $1 million. He also borrowed $369,000 from Filhart under dubious terms, the JQC found. Coomer repaid the loans, case records show.
“Coomer testified that he takes full responsibility for his bad judgment; he expressed remorse for his actions; and he apologized to everyone who was affected by those actions, including his client,” the state Supreme Court said Tuesday.
Coomer also testified that he stopped practicing law when ousted as a judge, the court added.
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