March 15, 2004 Regular News Briefs Stetson opens its Tampa Law Center and Campus The Stetson University Tampa Law Center and Campus recently opened for classes. A formal dedication of the campus was held in February for the law school located at 1700 N. Tampa St., just off Interstate 275. It is the first law school in Tampa and also houses the Tampa branch of the Second District Court of Appeal.Approximately 130 students will have classes in Tampa during the spring semester.“This is a milestone in the history of our law school,” said Dean Darby Dickerson. “It is only through the hard work and cooperation of the city of Tampa that we are able to achieve this significant goal.”The Stetson Law Center and Campus will be a major hub for legal activity in downtown Tampa and will house evening law classes, and continuing legal education programs.“The Second District is very excited to finally have the opportunity to work with Stetson in creating Florida’s first teaching courtroom,” said Second DCA Chief Judge Chris W. Altenbernd.“This law center will be an incredibly special venue as the Wm. Reece Smith, Jr., courtroom will be the third location in the country and the first in Florida where a law school and sitting court share space,” said Florida Bar President Miles McGrane. “The courtroom was dedicated to Reece Smith last month, a legal role model and a past president of The Florida Bar.”McGrane said Stetson continues to be a pioneer in the legal community by opening this campus.“Stetson has been educating lawyers for more than a century and has now honored Tampa with its first law and Florida with its first teaching courtroom,” McGrane said. “I look forward to seeing this campus and its students grow and prosper.”“The Tampa campus will create unprecedented opportunities for our students and faculty,” said Jan Majewski, associate dean of the Tampa campus.The three-story, 73,500-square-foot building reflects the same Spanish-Mediterranean architecture of Stetson’s Gulfport campus, including a tower that overlooks downtown Tampa.The first and second floors house classrooms, a state-of-the-art courtroom, a law library, and other law school space. The third floor contains chambers and offices for the Second D CA. IOLTA challege dismissed The plaintiffs in the Washington State IOLTA challenge, Brown v. Legal Foundation of Washington, recently stipulated to a dismissal with prejudice of their challenge to the constitutionality of the Washington IOLTA program, according to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.The U. S. Supreme Court had remanded the case for consideration of First Amendment claims to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington following its March 2003 decision finding no violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.District Court Judge John C. Coughenour signed the order of dismissal February 3 upon the stipulation of all involved parties. This action follows a similar dismissal with prejudice of the 10-year litigation aimed at dismantling the Texas Interest on Lawyers’ Trust Account program in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last November, according to NLADA.Although several state-level challenges are still ongoing, these two dismissals bring to an end the many years of federal litigation instigated by the Washington Legal Foundation in an attempt to bring down the nation’s IOLTA programs on constitutional grounds.“The future of this critical resource for ensuring equal justice in this country now rests firmly on solid ground,” said a statement on NLADA’s Web site. Unified family court bill moved Courts are one step closer to a unified family court following action by the Senate Committee on Judiciary. The bill “Relating to Family Court Efficiency” SB 586 — a modified version of HB 447 — was unanimously passed at the March 2 meeting. This bill would allow for the Supreme Court to set up a system that fuses together the identity and case history of individuals and families within the court system, so that judges can rule with all of information.Sen. Evelyn J. Lynn, R-Ormond Beach, sponsor of SB 586, said this bill is an attempt at making the courts more effective through a cooperative process where one or several judges could work together in resolving multiple matters that involve one family. “It authorizes clerk of the courts to collect and use a portion of the Social Security number, or other personal ID information. . . for the sole purpose of developing a unique identifier system to identify, coordinate, link, and track related cases.”Other provisions will clarify the precedence of orders under chapter 39, F.S., over similar orders that are concurrently or subsequently in other types of civil proceedings; provides that dependency orders and evidentiary matters entered in dependency proceedings may be admitted into evidence under limited circumstances in subsequent civil proceedings affecting child custody, visitation, support and responsibility; it also clarifies the precedence of temporary orders governing custody, visitation, and support entered in domestic violence injunction proceedings over other similar orders entered in other types of civil proceedings; and, imposes a 45-day time frame for parents to complete parent education courses in dissolution of marriage proceedings, according to the staff analysis of the bill. Florida Coastal sets forensics seminar for May in Jacksonville Florida Coastal School of Law will present “Forensic Investigation: The Pursuit of Truth” on May 7, at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in downtown Jacksonville.The day-long symposium will explore various applications of forensics and will be presented by the nation’s most renowned forensic experts and policymakers known for working on such infamous cases as O.J. Simpson, Jon Benet Ramsey, and Laci Peterson.U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa, is scheduled to join Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Henry Lee, Dr. Michael Baden, Professor Barry Scheck, and Dr. Ann Burgess and will present the luncheon keynote address. Sen. Specter is a leading voice on forensic science policy issues in education and law enforcement and is also widely known for being a leading proponent of the “single bullet” theory with respect to John F. Kennedy’s assassination.“The Florida Coastal School of Law is committed to developing a relationship between the law and natural, social, and applied sciences,” said Dennis J. Stone, interim dean at FCSL. “Interdisciplinary education is a key component in cultivating that relationship and we are proud to represent legal education and to lead the region’s law schools in this endeavor.”The faculty will share its collective professional experience and explain how the objective methodology of forensics, applied across a broad base of disciplines, facilitates the collective search for the truth. The conference will consider field, laboratory, and court applications of criminalistics, forensic pathology, and forensic nursing within the context of cases and issues of national interest. A discussion of innocence reforms, as part of effective law enforcement, will also be included in the program.For registration and pricing information, visit www.fcsl.edu/forensics or call (888) 246-4255. This is a medical and legal education program for professionals and has been approved for 10 CLE hours and 7.75 nonconference sponsored CJE credits. Practitioners whose work is impacted by forensics and law are encouraged to attend; however, the forensics conference is also open to the general public. Program aids school kids When Palm Beach lawyer Gary Lesser learned the fourth- and fifth-grade students who comprise the award-winning strings department at U.B. Kinsey/Palmview Elementary School would not be able to attend a national competition in Atlanta this year because of financial woes, he vowed not to let that happen.Lesser offered to pay for all of it, approximately $10,000, but he didn’t stop there. He helped a coalition of business owners create a program which supports public school students in need. “Challenging the Future” contains components which include classroom mentoring, tutoring, charitable giving, arranging field trips, hands-on classroom-based school projects for students, and academic achievement encouragement parties for families.U.B. Kinsey School of the Arts/Palmview Elementary School is the first recipient of the “Challenging the Future” p rogram. The partnership includes the firm of Lesser, Lesser, Landy & Greene, whose attorneys and staff will be tutoring and mentoring in the classroom and contributing financial support for special events and field trips. Cheney Brothers, Inc., will be providing food and other items to support the students at regularly scheduled FCAT parties.The fourth- and fifth-grade students, guided by NozNewz Communications, Target Media Group, and Ko-Mar Video Productions, will be producing their own public service announcements for radio and television, holding news conferences, and inviting the media to follow their progress throughout the year. Paralegals set seminar The Paralegal Association of Florida will hold its 2004 Annual Spring Seminar May 1 at the Holiday Inn Belltower in Ft. Myers.The seminar will consist of two tracks: the Real Estate/Land Use track includes sessions on condominium/HOA law, land use/zoning, and real estate fraud; and the Litigation track includes sessions on foreclosures/bankruptcy, elderly exploitation and abuse, and medical malpractice. General sessions include sessions on notary laws and ethics.For more information call PAF at (800) 433-4352 or visit www.pafinc.org. FAMU law school recalls Brown Nearly 400 people came out to reflect on past experiences and express hopes for the future during a program to commemorate the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka desegregation decision. Sponsored by the Florida A&M University College of Law, the program was held at New Covenant Baptist Church of Orlando.Participants were treated to recollections from individuals who integrated previously all-white schools, including a personal account from Dr. LaVon Wright Bracy, co-founder of New Covenant Baptist Church. Bracy, who was the first African American to graduate from all-white Gainesville High School in the 1960s, told the audience of her experiences being taunted, harassed, and assaulted while attending the school.The audience also viewed “The Road to Brown, ” a documentary that chronicled the legal maneuvers of Charles Hamilton Houston, the attorney who launched the movement that culminated in the Brown decision. FAMU College of Law professors and students then conducted a panel discussion on “What the Brown v. Board of Education Case Has Meant in My Life.” Moderated by Professor Frederick Dennis Greene, the panel featured Professor Lundy Langston, Professor Barbara Bernier, second-year law student Kajuel West, and first-year law student Joe Briggs.Event participants also were given an opportunity to ask the panel questions and share their recollections of desegregation activities. Hillsborough Bar salutes volunteers’ commitment The Hillsborough County Bar Association recently honored a number of attorneys at its 10th Annual Pro Bono Awards luncheon for their commitment to provide pro bono legal services.Lynwood Arnold, Jr., Phillip Baumann, Robert Cochran, Robert Fraser, Howard Garrett, Thomas Gill, Jr., Theodore Hamilton, Peter Kelly, Harvey Schonbrun, and Jessica Tien were among the honorees. Kathy McLeroy received special recognition as the recipient of the association’s Jimmy Kynes Pro Bono Award.Also recognized were a number of attorneys who, since 1998, collectively have donated hundreds of hours interviewing and advising indigent applicants seeking legal services from Bay Area Legal Services. The volunteers honored included Caroline Adams, John Bencivenga, Gary Coe, Jeffrey Dowd, John Lamoureux, and Anthony Lopez.Other attorneys were acknowledged for their participation in local pro bono projects. The award recipients included Loretta O’Keefe and F. Kemi Oguntebi for their volunteer work with the Domestic Violence Assistance Project and Charles Ditmar for his participation in the Ask a Lawyer Project.The association also acknowledged the pro bono efforts of Edward Waller, Jr., who in January received the 2004 Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award.In 2003, more than 10,000 indigent residents received legal information and services from Hillsborough County volunteer lawyers. In the same year, local practitioners collectively donated 6,000 hours of free legal services by handling cases and participating in pro bono projects. Program examines behavioral analysis National scholars in the fields of law and the behavioral sciences will participate in a March 26-27 symposium at the Florida State University College of Law titled “The Behavioral Analysis of Legal Institutions, Possibilities, Limitations and New Directions.”Discussions will center on judgments and decisions that occur within legally important institutional settings. Critical analyses of existing empirical research on the behavior of legal institutions and original empirical research that extends an understanding of how legal institutions affect behavior will be presented.The conference will provide an opportunity to take stock of where the behavioral study of legal institutions stands, to discuss why the legal system should pay greater—or less—attention to this research, and to consider future directions for this field of study.Separate panels will cover judicial decision-making, jury decision-making, administrative decision-making, and corporate and commercial decision-making. In addition to participants from the FSU College of Law, panelists will include experts in their fields from Cornell Law School, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington University School of Law, the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Policy and Boalt Hall School of Law, Vanderbilt University Law School, and Northwestern University School of Law, among others.Philip Tetlock, chair of the Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations Group at Haas School of Business, University of California-Berkeley, will be the keynote speaker. The registration fee is $25 and includes lunch on March 26. To register, contact Stephanie Williams, associate dean for administration, at (850) 644-3301, or e-mail, [email protected] For further information, visit the symposium Web site at www.law.fsu.edu or e-mail Professor Gregory Mitchell at [email protected] read more