This year’s Jane Elizabeth Curran Distinguished Service Award goes to Roderick N. Petrey
Roderick N. Petrey will receive FFLA’s 2024 Jane Elizabeth Curran Distinguished Service Award “for his decades-long service to the legal aid community, specifically through his founding of and work for the Florida Justice Institute.”
Petrey is founder and principal of New Equity Partners and vice president and secretary of the P.L. Dodge Foundation.
The Jane Elizabeth Curren Distinguished Service Award recognizes an individual who, over his or her career, has achieved “meaningful, effective and lasting increases in access to civil justice for the poor in the State of Florida.”
Petrey earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale. A Vietnam combat veteran, Petrey was a captain in the U.S. Army Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, and a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division. He then went on to earn his law degree from Harvard University.
Petrey worked in consulting and served as the executive vice president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York City until he became a partner at Holland and Knight in 1977.
In 1978, Petrey founded the Florida Justice Institute (FJI) with the goals of improving the administration of justice for all Floridians, encouraging better representation of citizens’ interests, and increasing the ability of citizens to resolve disputes quickly and inexpensively.
“Rod founded FJI 45 years ago when, as a lawyer and foundation executive, he recognized a critical need for an organization dedicated to bringing civil rights litigation on behalf of society’s most vulnerable populations,” said FJI Litigation Director Dante P. Trevisani in a letter of support for Petrey’s nomination. “This included incarcerated people, those confined to state hospital and nursing homes, homeless people, and others. While there were organizations that provided direct services helping individuals in specific cases, no one was looking at the bigger picture and trying to stop these daily injustices from happening in the first place.”
Petrey hired Randall C. “Randy” Berg, Jr., to be FJI’s first executive director. In Berg’s 41 years of leadership, FJI won multiple class action challenges. Arias v. Wainwright resulted in improved living conditions for thousands of people in crowded and unsanitary jails in Florida. In Osterback v. Moore, FJI fought for reform of FDOC’s solitary confinement system, resulting in a reduction in the number of people held in solitary, greater mental health treatment, and a required step-down method for eventual return to the general population.
FJI has also won housing cases in which elderly and Black residents were being discriminated against, and panhandling ordinance cases in which free speech was restricted. Petrey has continued to serve on FJI’s board of directors since its inception.
In 1991, Petrey was asked by former Gov. LeRoy Collins, whom he had met as a teenager, to take over running The Collins Center for Public Policy, a statewide nonprofit that researched and implemented nonpartisan solutions to Florida issues. Under Petrey’s leadership, the center focused on foreclosure mediation in the wake of the 2007 real estate crisis.
According to a report submitted by Petrey to the Florida Supreme Court in 2009, The Collins Center successfully applied its Managed Mediation systems to help the Office of Insurance Regulation manage the mediation of more than 20,000 life insurance disputes and the Department of Financial Services manage more than 30,000 hurricane insurance disputes. The report stated that “The Collins Center’s overall historical Managed Mediation success rate exceeds 80%, meaning that only 20% of the cases continue past the Managed Mediation process and proceed to litigation.”
In 2009, The Florida Supreme Court Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases recommended the Collins Center’s foreclosure mediation program be adopted and used as a model in all circuits to resolve foreclosure filings.
Petrey also served as legal counsel for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation from 1980 to 2012. He was the president of The Florida Bar Foundation from 1987-88.
He was awarded the Tobias Simon Pro Bono Service Award in 1986, the highest award for pro bono service bestowed by the Florida Supreme Court. He has also received the “Spirit of Excellence” award from the Miami Herald, the Cal Kovens Distinguished Community Service Award from Florida International University, and the Juvenile Justice Award from the Florida Conference of Circuit Courts. In 2011, Petrey was named the Floridian of the Year by Florida Trend.
FFLA will present the Curran Distinguished Service Award and other awards at its award ceremony and breakfast at the Signia by Hilton Bonnet Creek during The Florida Bar Annual Convention. Tickets are available on the FFLA website.