Vicki Lawrence, an ensemble comedian on the famed Carol Burnett Show, recorded “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” in 1972. The Southern Gothic murder ballad told the story of a man railroaded and hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. The chart-topping track was a searing indictment of backwoods frontier justice, and anyone of age when it hit the airwaves likely still remembers the haunting lyrics about the “backwoods Southern lawyer,” the “big-bellied sheriff,” and the judge with “bloodstains on his hands.”
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Marc T. Treadwell of the federal court in Macon, Georgia, turned some harsh lights on two lawyers, effectively calling them liars and forcing their law firms to cough up $2 million for “promoting instruction on the subjects of ethics and professionalism” in Georgia’s accredited law schools. Underscoring the severity of Treadwell’s order, he said the law firms agreed to come up with the money within 10 business days.
The $2 million penalty came on top of more than $1.5 million in legal fees and expenses Treadwell had already forced their client to pay the plaintiffs just to unearth the concealed evidence. That pushed the total sanctions tab to at least $3.5 million—on top of whatever confidential sum was paid to settle the underlying healthcare fraud lawsuit midtrial in late July.
The underlying target was eClinicalWorks LLC (eCW), a Massachusetts-based company that licenses electronic health record software to medical providers nationwide. In a June order attached for context to Wednesday’s sanction, Treadwell was unsparing, according to reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“The Court finds that clear and convincing evidence shows that eCW’s misconduct — its own and misconduct imputed from its lawyers — constitutes subjective bad faith,” Treadwell wrote. “eCW repeatedly lied to the [plaintiffs] and the Court for strategic gain.”
In that June order, Treadwell described what happened as “a widespread, long-running cover-up.” More damningly, Treadwell acknowledged that some of his own earlier factual findings had been based on “false representations, primarily by eCW’s lawyers Richard Bernardo of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Geoffrey Wyatt of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.”
“The only conclusion the Court can reach is that Bernardo and Wyatt, consistent with their calculus throughout this matter, figured the cause would be better served by a false representation rather than the truth,” Treadwell wrote.
The disgraced lawyers Treadwell professionally humiliated weren’t from the backwoods of the rural South. Rather, they were big city slickers who are partners in what are supposedly two of the most prestigious firms in the U.S.: Richard Bernardo of the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Geoffrey Wyatt of the Washington office of Kirkland & Ellis.
Kirkland & Ellis is the highest-grossing law firm in the U.S., according to Am Law 100’s 2026 rankings, the AJC reported. Skadden ranked No. 5.
Bernardo and Wyatt, the two lead lawyers Treadwell called out, share more than a sanctioned defense table: Wyatt spent years as an attorney and partner at Skadden before moving to Kirkland last year. He was part of a high-profile, five-partner mass torts and trial team—led by star litigator Allison Brown—that Kirkland poached from Skadden in January 2025 to expand its national litigation practice.
eClinicalWorks, Skadden, Kirkland & Ellis, Bernardo and Wyatt did not respond Thursday to inquiries about the sanction, the AJC reported.
Three Macon-based IT specialists sued eClinicalWorks under the federal False Claims Act, alleging the software giant fraudulently obtained federal certification for its electronic health records software by hiding critical security vulnerabilities and software defects. Federal rules require healthcare providers to use certified software to qualify for government incentive payments. The suit claimed eCW caused medical practices to submit tens of millions of dollars in false claims to Medicare and Medicaid.
While the Justice Department opted not to take over the whistleblower case, the private IT whistleblowers pushed it all the way to trial in Macon.
Rob Snyder, a founder of the Decatur, GA, law firm Cannella Snyder that specializes in wrongful death and serious injury cases, served as lead counsel for the plaintiffs. He was judicious in his comment to the AJC.
“It’s reasonably rare that a court will sanction a lawyer and this is the first time, at least in my career, that I’ve ever seen the judge instruct a defense law firm to pay a monetary sanction to fund legal ethics education,” he said Thursday. “Essentially we spent two years fighting to get information that should have been given to us.”
Reasonably rare? I defy Snyder or anyone else to name another instance where a judge ordered a defense law firm to pay a monetary sanction to fund legal ethics education.
Treadwell was the wrong judge for big-city litigators to try a three-card monte on. Before Barack Obama appointed him to the federal bench in 2010, the 71-year-old jurist spent nearly three decades in the litigation trenches of Georgia, trying complex personal injury and wrongful death cases. He isn’t an academic or a political creature who has never picked a jury; he is an inductee of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers who knows every discovery trick, delay tactic, and evidentiary dodge in the book because he spent 29 years confronting them.
For roughly two decades, Treadwell authored the annual comprehensive Survey on Evidence for the Mercer Law Review, analyzing major evidentiary rulings handed down by state and federal courts. A 1981 graduate of Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law, he also served as an adjunct professor there from 1998 to 2010.
Treadwell years ago demonstrated his intolerance for litigants who thought they could stonewall him. In 2024, he issued a blistering 100-page contempt order finding Georgia Department of Corrections officials had for years violated every requirement he imposed to improve deplorable conditions at a high-security prison. According to the AJC, Treadwell concluded officials were simply stalling, hoping the case would end before they had to comply.
Treadwell’s mastery of discovery procedure was on full display in the eClinicalWorks case when he probed how evidence had remained hidden. At a March hearing, after Bernardo acknowledged that responsive documents existed in the lawyers’ own files, Treadwell asked: “Why didn’t you look at your own records?”
After finally getting to the bottom of what happened, Treadwell concluded that the supposedly “reasonable search” for evidence and even a key witness’s deposition “was a sham, indeed, a fraud on the Court.”
When Kirkland and Skadden stonewalled discovery and their lawyers made what Treadwell found were repeated false representations to protect eClinicalWorks, they weren’t just gaming a local court—they were violating the exact professional standards Treadwell spent decades practicing and teaching. Funneling the $2 million penalty directly into ethics and professionalism instruction across Georgia law schools wasn’t just a routine sanction; it was a slap in the face of Big Law arrogance.
Bernardo’s official Skadden bio says he is a litigator who has defended companies in a variety of complex mass tort cases around the country. He has advised clients on all aspects of litigation, including pre-trial discovery, factual investigation, fact and expert witness preparation and trial strategy. A graduate of Boston University’s School of Law, Bernardo’s bio says he has repeatedly been recognized by The Best Lawyers in America.
Wyatt’s Kirkland bio says he publishes frequently on issues relating to multidistrict litigation and class action procedure and has been named a leading lawyer in Chambers USA since 2021. A graduate of Harvard Law and Michigan State University, Wyatt in 2013 received the Burton Award for Legal Achievement, which recognizes excellence in legal scholarship.
You can’t make this stuff up: Treadwell—a proud 1981 graduate of Mercer Law in Macon—just ordered a Harvard-minted partner at the country’s highest-grossing law firm to help fund ethics classes at Georgia law schools.
Vicki Lawrence is 77 and still performing across the country. Given how she shaped perceptions of Georgia justice more than a half century ago, perhaps she or another artist might record an update titled “Ode to Georgia Judge Mark Treadwell.”