The purpose of this summary provided by the Communications Department of The Florida Bar is to present media coverage that may be of interest to members. Opinions expressed in the articles are attributable solely to the authors. The Florida Bar does not adopt or endorse any opinions expressed below. For information on previous articles, please contact the publishing newspaper directly.
July 31, 2024
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The Florida Bar
FLORIDA BAR OFFERS FREE ACCESS TO ‘ESSENTIAL’ TRUST ACCOUNTING SEMINAR AND NOTA PLATFORM
The Florida Bar | Article | July 31, 2024
LegalFuel: The Practice Resource Center of The Florida Bar has released a newly recorded seminar focused on the essentials of IOTA trust accounting. The session, titled, “IOTA Management for Lawyers,” is now available under LegalFuel’s free CLE offerings and provides an in-depth exploration of trust accounting fundamentals. IOTA Management for Lawyers is approved for 1 hour of General CLE Credit, including 1 hour of Ethics Credit. The presentation was one of the most well-attended sessions at the recent Annual Florida Bar Convention in June. It covers topics such as the rules and regulations governing trust accounts, common mistakes attorneys make, and best practices for managing trust accounts. The seminar features Tim Jakubowski, an attorney banking consultant and assistant vice president at Nota by M&T Bank. Florida lawyers now have free access to Nota, the financial platform designed to streamline trust account management and compliance. To access Nota’s platform, visit www.trustnota.com/TheFloridaBar.
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Civil Justice
TALLAHASSEE COMPANIES REVISE THEIR LAWSUIT RELATED TO THE FIU BRIDGE COLLAPSE
News Service of Florida | Article | July 30, 2024
After U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor’s July 10 dismissal of an initial version, a group of Tallahassee-based companies and their owner have filed a revised lawsuit over the possibility that they could be prevented from working on federally funded projects after being affiliated with an engineering firm that designed a collapsed Florida International University pedestrian bridge. The revised lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Tallahassee, alleges that the Federal Highway Administration has violated a law known as the Administrative Procedure Act by not making a timely decision about whether the companies would be prevented from working on federally funded projects.
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Criminal Justice
JUDGE SENTENCES FORMER JEA CEO AARON ZAHN TO PRISON. HOW LONG WILL HE SERVE?
Florida Times-Union | Article | July 30, 2024
Aaron Zahn’s fall from fast-rising JEA CEO to convicted felon will put him in federal prison for four years after U.S. District Judge Brian Davis handed down that punishment Tuesday [July 30]. Judge Davis rejected Zahn’s argument that justice would be served if he were put on probation without any prison time. The judge sided with prosecutors who said the “largest fraud in the history of Jacksonville” demanded a multi-year prison sentence for Zahn. “When deceit and greed intersect, crimes like yours occur,” Davis told Zahn in a packed courtroom at the federal courthouse in downtown Jacksonville. Zahn led JEA when the utility’s board put JEA up for sale in 2019 and also approved an employee incentive plan that prosecutors say would have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars of sales proceeds from taxpayers and given it to JEA employees. Prosecutors said Zahn conspired to create the plan and then hid the high cost of it from the board.
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Legal Profession
CONTROVERSIAL FORMER MIAMI CITY ATTORNEY NAMED STATE’S MUNICIPAL ‘ATTORNEY OF THE YEAR’
Miami Herald | Article | July 30, 2024
The Florida Municipal Attorneys Association (FMAA) honored former Miami City Attorney Victoria Méndez as the state’s best municipal lawyer of 2024 — a year in which the City Commission effectively fired Méndez from her job at City Hall, The Florida Bar continued an investigation into allegations against her and an appeals court denied Méndez’s effort to be dismissed from a lawsuit accusing her of conspiring with her husband to defraud a Little Havana homeowner. FMAA named Méndez the 2024 Attorney of the Year, an award given to the state’s “most outstanding municipal attorney.” FMAA Executive Secretary Rebecca O’Hara said that since 2017, Méndez has served on the executive committee of the organization, where Méndez has “provided invaluable guidance to the organization in helping to develop the topics and speakers for our annual continuing legal education seminar, including this year’s Seminar, which was held last week.”
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Judiciary
JUDGE STEVEN LEIFMAN: WILL LEAVE BENCH TO FOCUS ON MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES, FACILITY
Miami Today | Article | July 30, 2024
For the past 24 years, Judge Steven Leifman has been at the forefront of the mental health and criminal justice reform movement in the United States. Judge Leifman, who is the associate administrative judge of the Miami-Dade County Court Criminal Division, is set to open the Miami-Dade Behavioral Health Center once it’s approved by the county. The new 181,000-square-foot, seven-story building will include a receiving center, integrated crisis stabilization unit, residential treatment, outpatient behavioral health and primary health care, and dental and optometric services. The facility will also include a short-term psychiatric wing, podiatry and eye-care services, said Judge Leifman, who plans to retire at the end of this year to focus on the behavioral health center and other mental healthcare initiatives.
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Legal Profession
SETTLEMENT DILEMMA IN DATA BREACH ACTIONS: RISK, STRATEGY, AND LEGAL INSIGHTS
Daily Business Review | Article | July 30, 2024
Companies are constantly under attack from hackers, as data breaches have become not a matter of if, but when a company will face them. “We’re seeing more and more class actions involving data breaches all the time,” said Ella Shenhav, partner at Shutts & Bowen and certified information privacy professional. “Most of them eventually settle. The issue is that there is no standard law or regulation about cybersecurity and privacy, so there is no standard as to what any company must do.” When a complaint like this is filed in court, it involves a very open-ended and fact-intensive question about what the company did to protect the data and whether that amounts to negligent handling of the data. This is a big reason why so many cases involving data breaches settle.