Sheriff seeks millions

Fulton County Sheriff Jacquelyn Barrett and two employees have filed a $3 million libel and defamation lawsuit against an attorney who tried to sue the sheriff on behalf of a former deputy.

Barrett’s complaint, filed in Fulton County Superior Court in early August, caps almost a year of back-and-forth litigation that at times comes off more like a Jerry Springer episode than a series of court filings.

The bickering started when part-time deputy Joseph DiCorpo got a DUI in 1999 and eventually was fired for it. DiCorpo was planning to file suit against the sheriff, a judge and an assistant district attorney — unless the sheriff hired him back, according to court documents.

In September 2000, DiCorpo showed the sheriff a draft of his lawsuit prior to it being filed, according to documents later filed in Fulton Superior Court. Rumors of the draft spread — allegedly because Barrett showed it to others and thereby breached a confidentiality agreement, according to DiCorpo’s suit.

When Barrett refused to rehire DiCorpo, his attorney John A. Roberts went ahead and filed in September 2000 a revised copy of the lawsuit he had drafted. The revised lawsuit alleges that DiCorpo was unfairly fired and that sheriff’s employees spread false information about his arrest.

DiCorpo eventually dropped the case.

Barrett now alleges in her suit that the original draft of DiCorpo’s suit (not the filed one) was filled with lies — so she’s suing the attorney who wrote it.??






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