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We enter our 45th year, welcoming Carlos M. Macias to our litigation team. In addition to his active membership in the Florida Bar, Cuban American Bar Association and Florida Justice Association, he is also admitted in the District of Columbia and Louisiana reinforcing our longtime strategic alliances throughout the country.

Leesfield Scolaro’s presence is now recognized in 31 jurisdictions throughout the United States. In conjunction with National co-counsel, we have become America’s most geographically diverse personal injury firm as we begin 2021. Working with lawyers from Alaska, Washington State, Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, California, and Texas, just to name a few, we have now aggregated over a billion dollars of recovery to out-of-state clients for unexpected events in Florida.

Similarly, of the 67 counties in Florida, we have had the opportunity to litigate, in 33 different courthouses with record-breaking results. Results are the engine of our geographic diversity,” says Senior Partner, Ira Leesfield, Past President of Florida Justice Association, The Melvin M. Belli Society, and a 25-year Board member of the American Association for Justice. Ira has been an invited guest speaker at almost every State Trial lawyer association in America and three countries outside of the United States. His goal is to complete all 50 states by the next decade.

Dear Colleagues:

Justin Shapiro joined our firm in February 2010, as a law clerk, and in 2011, after graduation with magna cum laude honors from the University of Miami School of Law, he became an associate. Of course, no one knew where that would lead, but he was ambitious, attentive and immediately welcomed into an established culture of achievement for over 40 years at Leesfield Scolaro. Then, as now, we emphasized the values of inclusion, communication, teamwork and a commitment to our clients and the Firm’s outstanding results.

A 40-year learning path is not insignificant, especially, when Justin and so many others here have adopted our value system directed towards professional growth and community involvement. So, Justin worked long, hard hours, he paid attention, he cared, he started a family (a wife and two beautiful children), he did not complain, he took care of our clients and treated our traditions with respect and concern. In short, he paid his dues.

When Ira Leesfield was attending school in Hollywood, Florida, where he grew up, the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills did not exist, but the building was part of Leesfield’s paper route and residence area. Leesfield, recipient of the South Broward Professional Women’s award, was shocked reading about the recent gross negligence which caused the tragic death of eight patients at the facility, in violation of Florida Statutes 400.022. Ira Leesfield’s law firm, Leesfield Scolaro, P.A. has handled hundreds of nursing home and institutional injury cases due to nursing home neglect. The most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves are the elderly.

Obviously, this facility was operated on a very thin margin with inadequate staff in number and training. It just took this incident as the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” There is no explanation and no justification for a senior citizen to lose their life while under the care of a nursing facility. “After all, says Leesfield, that’s the whole purpose of a family selecting a nursing facility.”

A long history of successful nursing home litigation by Leesfield Scolaro includes the following:

Just two days after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, a judge in Connecticut issued an order denying a motion to dismiss filed by the manufacturer of the AR-15 semiautomatic machine gun used by the Sandy Hook Elementary School murderer. Though the manufacturers and models differ, the Sig Sauer MCX used in Orlando is of similar aesthetics and lethality as the AR-15.

This ruling does not mean the Sandy Hook plaintiffs will prevail, however. Nor, unfortunately, does it afford much hope for potential Orlando plaintiffs hoping to hold Sig Sauer accountable.

The Sandy Hook plaintiffs are seeking to hold, among other defendants, Bushmaster, manufacturer of the AR-15 used in the Sandy Hook tragedy, liable for, among other things, the wrongful deaths of those slain at the elementary school. Among its 33 counts, the complaint alleges that the sale of the AR-15 to a civilian market posed an unreasonable risk of physical injury to others, as a mass casualty event was within the scope of the risk created by the defendant’s marketing and sales; that the AR-15’s ability to fire rounds quickly created an unreasonable risk that it would inflict great casualties before police intervention; and that the defendant “unethically, oppressively, immorally, and unscrupulously marketed and promoted the assaultive qualities and military uses of AR-15s to civilian purchasers…with the expectation and intent that possession and control of these weapons would be shared with and/or transferred to unscreened civilian users following purchase.” The defense countered that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”) affords gun manufacturers broad immunity for the shooting deaths administered by eventual purchasers of its firearms.