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Once again, the team at Leesfield Scolaro has achieved important success for passengers who become ill or otherwise require evacuation from cruise ships for medical needs.

In the matter of the Estate of Jeffrey Eisenman v. Carnival Cruise Lines, former Chief Judge James Lawrence King has denied the defendant’s Motion to Dismiss and further denied defendant’s  Motion for Summary Judgment against plaintiffs’ claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.  Jeffrey Eisenman was seriously ill while ship was docked at port.   The family purchased evacuation insurance and pleaded with the Captain and medical crew to  transport Mr. Eisenman to a location with adequate medical facilities.  The cruise line refused to evacuate and set sail for Puerto Rico, 21 hours away.   Mr. Eisenman died 14 hours later during the voyage.   His family was grief stricken.  To make matters worse, the cruise line refused to have Mr. Eiseman’s body removed from the ship, forcing family members to stay onboard with their deceased father for the entire cruise.  The Eiseman case joins five other seven figure recent results obtained by the firm for failures to provide adequate medical care or otherwise make proper arrangements to obtain appropriate medical attention.   These failures resulted in passenger deaths, and life altering conditions, which were avoidable and unnecessary.

Additional cases include:

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After settling a claim on behalf of their client whose son was fatally injured in a furniture tip-over incident at home, attorneys Thomas Scolaro and Adam Rose filed a lawsuit against the entities behind the safety standards that the furniture industry lives by. American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) represents approximately 230 furniture manufacturers and distributors, and over 120 suppliers to the furniture industry worldwide. American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) has 30,000 members worldwide overseeing more than 12,500 product safety and technical standards. The Furniture Safety Subcommittee within ASTM oversees the furniture stability standard, F2057-19.

In 2017, Meghan DeLong retained Leesfield Scolaro to file a wrongful death lawsuit following the death of her 2-year old son, Conner, in a furniture tip-over incident. In their testing, our experts discovered that the dresser in question would tip-over 100% of the time they replicated a young child climbing atop the very piece of furniture. Inversely, the defendant manufacturer argued that the dresser’s design satisfied ASTM’s voluntary standards, including tip-over prevention standards, and that their experts’ testing results showed 0% occurrence of the dresser tipping over. How could these two findings be true?

The answer is found in the ASTM standards themselves. The voluntary standard ASTM F2057-14, Standard Safety Specification Clothing Storage Units, establishes requirements for free-standing clothing storage units, (CSU) such as dressers, chests, and armoires, in the United States, and is intended to minimize the hazards associated with tipover. In practice however, the testing methods implemented by the furniture industry and approved by ASTM F2057-14, do not take into account dozens of crucial human factors that, if taken into account, render most pieces of furniture dangerous, thus defective.

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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.

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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.

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This week, Partner Justin Shapiro won a $36.6 million verdict on behalf of the parents of a skateboarder struck and killed by a distracted driver. That skateboard verdict follows a very recent jet ski settlement in Key West by Thomas Scolaro and Justin Shapiro in the amount of $2.88 million. “In the last decade, recreational injuries from all sources have skyrocketed, in spite of our law firm’s attempts urging remedial and protective legislation” says, Ira Leesfield, founding partner.

Leesfield Scolaro’s long-term interest in protecting the public from dangerous and unregulated recreational activities began over 25 years ago when Ira Leesfield took on the motorcycle and ATV industries, rounding up over $100 million in settlements and verdicts including a $19.8 million verdict against American Honda in Erie, Pennsylvania. The motorcycle sidestand defect has long been remedied. “3-wheeler ATV’s” have been totally replaced by the more stable 4-wheeler.

However, new activities and enticements have sprung up, including exotic water sports such as jet ski, parasailing, zip-lining, scuba diving, boating collisions, and an entire resort industry promoting “fun” while disregarding safety.

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Nursing-Home-AbuseWhen 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:

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Ira Leesfield, founder and managing partner of Leesfield Scolaro, P.A., was recently reappointed by Florida Senators Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio to serve on the Federal Judicial Nominating Commission (JNC) representing the Southern District Conference for the duration of the 115thCongressional term.

The JNC performs a critical public service in helping to identify the most qualified candidates to serve as U.S. District Court Judges in Florida. The JNC’s recommendations guide which prospective nominees will be forwarded to the White House for the President’s consideration.

As a member of the JNC, Mr. Leesfield will play an active role in this thorough review process.

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Steady growth and continued client satisfaction marks the 40th anniversary of Leesfield Scolaro, P.A., as our statewide practice expands.  This year, trial lawyers Mason Kerns and Adam T. Rose joined the Leesfield Scolaro team.

2-panel-Texas-mailer_Final-1_resize-236x300 2-panel-Texas-mailer_Final-2_resize-236x300The firm continues to serve the State of Florida as our offices from Key West and Central Florida attract local and out-of-state business.    A recent influx of clients and cases from the great state of Texas has allowed our firm to serve longtime co-counsel and friends with high value recent results.   See “Texas Cases from Texas Places” (right).  Texas visitors combined with clients and referrals from 26 other U.S. states, Canada, United Kingdom and around the world, have reinforced the firm’s cases from other places.

We have been fortunate to bring about outstanding results for clients nationwide and around the world, including:

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The Supreme Court of the United States will answer this question in its upcoming term.ATM Fees

ATM fees are as ubiquitous as the machines themselves. Unless you go to your own bank, you’re going to pay a fee. The fees vary by location. At an ATM in a convenience store that is close to many other stores and ATMs, you’ll pay a little. At an amusement park, casino, or strip club—places with clientele who are captive, captive and desperate, and desperate, respectively—you’ll pay a lot more. However, the rate different customers pay at the same ATM will almost always be the same—whether your ATM card is a Visa or MasterCard or a Diner’s Club Card or a Texaco Gasoline Card or a Walden Books Card or Black AMEX.

The reason, according to a lawsuit that has worked its way up to the nation’s high court, is that Visa and MasterCard—proprietors of the two cards that account for a majority of U.S. ATM withdrawals—are fixing their prices. The U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia Circuit held earlier this year that the plaintiffs in an ATM fee-fixing lawsuit had made a showing of an agreement to fix prices that was robust enough to at least survive a motion to dismiss. This decision differed from the stances of the Third, Fourth, and Ninth Circuits. Enter: The Supremes, who will decide which circuit is correct.

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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.

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