By Joe Earle
A Dunwoody lawyer running for a DeKalb County judgeship has been accused in a federal court lawsuit of fraud.
“I vehemently deny everything in there,” Michael Rothenberg said Nov. 24 of the allegations in a lawsuit against him.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court Nov. 12 by a Colorado investment company called Winterhawk Energy and Development Co., accuses Rothenberg of defrauding the company through an investment scheme. The suit seeks actual and punitive damages and a return of the investor’s money.
Rothenberg called the lawsuit “nothing more than a political hit job on me.”
He said the lawsuit’s allegations were “absolutely outrageous, slanderous and completely untrue, completely untrue.”
He could not discuss the lawsuit’s claims directly because the original dispute had been resolved and he and the other parties had signed a non-disclosure agreement.
Rothenberg faces Courtney Johnson in a runoff election on Nov. 30. The two collected the most votes in a four-way race during the Nov. 2 general election. Georgia law requires a runoff when no candidate receives more than half the vote.