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Nowell D. Berreth

Partner


Nowell Berreth focuses his practice on representing agribusinesses in litigation and general counseling, working frequently on matters concerning the Packers & Stockyards Act, the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act and other agricultural statutes. He also handles fiduciary litigation of all types, working closely with attorneys in Alston & Bird's Wealth Planning Group to give executors, trustees, and other fiduciaries the benefit of a team approach to the complex litigation issues they face. He works with Senator Bob Dole of Alston & Bird in support of the Agricultural Carbon Market Working Group, an organization that focuses on the possible impacts to agriculture of any upcoming climate change legislation. Before joining the firm, he served two years as a federal court law clerk to The Honorable Willis B. Hunt, Jr., United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

He chairs the State Bar of Georgia’s Agriculture Law Section and serves on the Advisory Board of the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas Law School. He is a member of the State Bar of Georgia’s Fiduciary Law Section and is active in the American Agricultural Law Association. He also served as a chapter editor of the Georgia Appellate Practice Handbook (5th Edition, 2003).

Representative Experience

  • Counsel to the Agricultural Carbon Market Working Group.
  • Lead trial counsel for a worldwide transportation and logistics company in two arbitrations seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars for shipments of computers that had been lost or damaged by trucking firms. Both arbitration panels awarded the company all the damages it sought.
  • Counsel for a large integrated poultry company in the successful defense of claims arising out of a delayed freight train. The arbitration panel found for the company on all claims and awarded the plaintiff nothing.
  • Trial counsel for large integrated poultry company in a week-long jury trial in the Superior Court of Walton County, Georgia. The jury awarded the company more than $630,000 in damages on its breach of contract claims and awarded the defendant nothing on its counterclaim.
  • Counsel for one of the largest integrated poultry companies in the United States in the successful defense of claims brought under the Packers & Stockyards Act and the Agricultural Fair Practices Act.
  • Counsel for a charitable foundation’s trustees in a successful appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court in a case involving the disposition of a multi-million dollar estate.
  • Counsel for a Fortune 25 company in the successful defense of the constitutionality of the North Carolina punitive damages cap in a case involving a jury verdict of $20,000 in compensatory damages but $23 million in punitive damages.


Publications
Spring 2008
June 2006
"Defining Actionable Unfairness Under the Packers & Stockyards Act," The Agriculturalist Lawyer, June 2006.

Nowell D. Berreth

One Atlantic Center
1201 West Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309-3424
Phone: 404-881-4481
Fax: 404-253-8489

Education

  • Georgia State University
    (J.D., 1998)
  • University of Georgia
    (B.A., 1991)

Admitted to Practice

  • Georgia