Georgia Court Clerk with Alzheimer's Says She Was Tricked Into Resigning
Linda Carter, the former DeKalb, Ga., superior court clerk, claims that she has Alzheimer’s disease, and last month was tricked into resigning from her position by a woman who is Carter’s successor.
Carter’s attorney, Lee Parks, told the Fulton County Daily Report that Debra DeBerry, the county’s chief deputy clerk, “misled” Carter into signing a letter of resignation. The letter states that DeBerry would complete Carter’s term, which expires in 2012. DeBerry was sworn in as clerk on March 25.
According to Parks, his client is ill with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, but she is “still competent, and she can handle things.” He says Carter found out what happened a few days after she signed the document, when some of her friends from the clerk’s office contacted her husband. Parks also says that Carter did not write the resignation letter and forget about it, or become confused about what she wrote. He notes that his client is two years from a vested county pension.
Responding for DeBerry, Rick Setser, the chief deputy clerk and public information officer for DeKalb Superior Court, declined to comment on the advice of counsel.
Lee says that if his client sues, it will be to restore her position.
“Nobody’s come to me since I’ve been chief this year and said, ‘We’ve got problems with Linda Carter,’ ” DeKalb Superior Chief Judge Mark Anthony Scott told the paper. “I couldn’t point to anything outward that she’d done that would suggest to me that she was suffering from this.”
