A retirement, a return and a promotion have prompted plaintiffs firm Butler Wooten & Fryhofer to change its name to Butler Wooten Cheeley & Peak.

When name partner George Fryhofer III decided to retire a couple of months ago, it kicked off a flurry of changes at the 12-lawyer firm.

Last week Bob Cheeley rejoined the firm he helped to found in 1988 as a name partner, and on Tuesday the firm promoted Brandon Peak to name partner, forming Butler Wooten Cheeley & Peak.

Peak has been at Butler Wooten since 2006 and has racked up several big wins, including a $2.6 million verdict in Troup County last year for a vehicle wreck case.

Meanwhile, another partner, Leigh Martin May, is close to confirmation as a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee approved her nomination, so she now awaits a vote by the full Senate.

And Jeb Butler, son of name partner Jim Butler, left last month to start his own plaintiffs firm, Butler Tobin, with Darren Tobin.

The impending departures prompted the firm to add some lawyers, Jim Butler said.

He said he was talking to Cheeley a few weeks ago about a shared business venture and told him that Fryhofer was retiring. "Leigh was up for a federal judgeship, and Jeb was opening his own firm. I told Bob that we needed to recruit some partners and asked if he knew of any good prospects," Butler said.

Cheeley suggested himself.

He retired from Butler Wooten 17 years ago, after a string of big victories in product liability suits against General Motors and other carmakers.

"At age 39, I know people must have looked at me and thought I was crazy to be walking away from a thriving plaintiffs' practice," Cheeley said of his early retirement.

He wanted to focus on raising his children, he said, and they are now grown.

"I always knew I'd return to practicing law some day because I love helping people so much," he said.

He was lured back to law in 2012 by two former Butler Wooten associates, Cale Conley and Richard Griggs, after his youngest child started college. Cheeley, now 56, said he joined the plaintiffs' firm they'd started, Conley Griggs Partin, as of counsel, because he wanted to practice part-time at that point.

"I decided [joining Butler Wooten] was a good way to scratch my itch and get back into it full-time," Cheeley said. "When George decided to do what I did 18 years ago—stop practicing—it seemed providential."

Fryhofer is a year younger than Cheeley and was a partner at Butler Wooten for 20 years. He could not be reached.

"I count it a blessing to have worked with Cale, Richard and Ranse [Partin] and now I get to work with Jim and Joel [Wooten]," Cheeley said. "We're putting the band back together."

More business cases

Butler said the firm is taking more plaintiffs cases for businesses, so it needs more lawyers in that area.

"George Fryhofer has been a tremendous asset for that kind of case—he grew up doing white-collar cases—and we wanted to expand that capability even before he retired," Butler said.

"Someone who can take on GM in 35 auto product liability cases and beat them every time," said Butler, referring to the firm's decades of suits against the carmaker, "can easily take on a business tort case because they're simpler, frankly, than a products liability case."

Butler Wooten hired a business litigator, Mike Sexton, last month as counsel.

Sexton had been a partner at defense litigation firm Weinberg Wheeler Hudgins Gunn & Dial, handling business disputes, class actions, and False Claims Act and RICO cases.

And on Tuesday it promoted John "Buddy" Morrison to partner. Butler, Fryhofer and Morrison worked on two big business cases that have settled confidentially this year.

In Cohan v. KPMG, they represented a business owner, Chris Cohan, who sought nearly $500 million in damages from accounting giant KPMG after losing money in fraudulent tax shelters that the firm sold him. Bondurant Mixson & Elmore was cocounsel on the case, which settled in January, a week before it was to be tried in Fulton County State Court.

The same team of Butler, Fryhofer and Morrison, plus Tedra Hobson, handled a suit, Miller v. Langdale, for heirs to a trust established by a wealthy Valdosta judge and businessman, Harley Langdale Sr. He founded The Langdale Co., which owns timberland and real estate and has interests in a variety of banks, car dealerships and other enterprises.

Descendants of Langdale's daughter, Virginia Langdale Miller, sued the trustees, alleging breach of fiduciary duty and breach of trust. They claimed damages of between $150 million and $221 million from the trustees' mismanagement of their interests.

The settlement was approved last week by Lowndes County Superior Court after five years of litigation. Butler Wooten's cocounsel were the Valdosta firm Moore & Voyles and the Albany firm Brimberry Kaplan & Brimberry.

Butler said at least seven firms and 18 lawyers represented the defendants. Cheeley said one of the reasons he rejoined Butler Wooten was to take on more financial tort and Federal Claims Act, or whistleblower, cases.

During his hiatus from law, Cheeley has pursued various business endeavors.

He's backing a start-up, ViveBio, that has developed a way to dehydrate blood plasma, making samples easier to transport than as liquid plasma on dry ice. He's also invested in real estate and two community banks, Peachtree Bank, which was later acquired by RBC Bank, and The Piedmont Bank in Norcross.

Asked if he plans to sue any banks, Cheeley replied, "I hope so." "I know the inner workings of banks, and the firm is currently handling some cases against some major banks," he said.

"I'm on the lookout for some on behalf of shareholders who've lost their investments."

Meanwhile, Cheeley is working on several plaintiffs cases that he said he hopes to take to trial later this year.

He's filed a premises liability case against a security company over the shooting of a Walmart truck driver outside a Walmart in Macon.

In a separate case, he's suing Walmart for false arrest and malicious prosecution on behalf of an African-American man in his 20s.

Cheeley said his client was arrested at a Clayton County Walmart when he tried to cash money orders he'd received in payment for a car that were purchased from Walmart.

"He didn't look like the person who should be bringing in $2,500 in money orders to cash," Cheeley said, adding that a young African-American woman in Houston with a similar experience won a $9 million verdict at trial.

Cheeley said he's also representing a woman left a paraplegic after routine spinal surgery in a medical malpractice case filed in Cobb County.

"I've really enjoyed ferretting out the truth in all those cases. I'm not the smartest attorney, bookwise, but I'm pretty relentless on digging up the facts," Cheeley said.