Today’s issue of the Daily Business Review takes an in-depth look at the recent $10.1 million settlement result in a negligent security case litigated by our Pedro Echarte.
Here is the full text of the article authored by Celia Ampel:
Bryan Perez was just 22 when he was shot and paralyzed while trying to protect his sister, mother and pregnant girlfriend from home invaders.
The 2014 shooting left him in a wheelchair, making it difficult for him to work and to go out alone with his baby.
The Haggard Law Firm’s Managing Partner Michael Haggard has been selected as a Lifetime Achievement honoree among America’s Top 100 Attorneys®.
Selection to America’s Top 100 Attorneys® is by invitation only and is comprised of the nation’s most exceptional attorneys whose accomplishments merit a lifetime achievement recognition. Lifetime Achievement recognition among America’s Top 100 Attorneys® is meant to identify and promote the most outstanding and impactful legal talent currently serving throughout the nation. Only 100 attorneys in each state* will receive this honor and be selected for Lifetime Achievement Membership among America’s Top 100 Attorneys®. Selection is not achieved based on a single accomplishment or a single great year of success, but rather on a lifetime of hard work, ethical standards, and community enriching accomplishments that are inspiring among the legal profession. This honor is not given every year, or every 10 years; it is given but once-in-a-lifetime. To help ensure that all attorneys selected for membership meet the very high standards expected for selection, candidates for lifetime membership are carefully screened through third-party research and statistical analysis based on a broad array of criteria, including the candidate’s professional experience, lifetime achievements, significant case results, peer reputation, and community impact . While selection for any award, honor, or exclusive membership organization is always subjective in nature, we developed our comprehensive multi-phase selection process in an effort to help ensure that only the attorneys whose lifetime achievements extol the legal profession are chosen. With these extremely high standards for selection to America’s Top 100 Attorneys®, less than one-half percent (0.5%) of active attorneys in the United States will receive this honor — truly the most exclusive and elite level of attorneys in the community.
On Thursday, October 20th The Haggard Law Firm’s Todd Michaels will present a webinar on litigating negligent security cases. Haggard Law specializes in prosecuting wrongful death and catastrophic injury negligent security cases. During the webinar titled Trying A Negligent Security Case: A Plaintiff Lawyers Guide To Destroying The Premises And Staying Out Of The Weeds, Michaels will provide a guide for other Plaintiff’s attorneys in how to successfully prosecute these important cases. Continue reading “Register for Negligent Security Litigation Webinar”
The Daily Business Review has just published an article featuring the recent $1.8 million negligent security case settlement delivered by the Haggard Law Firm.
In the article, Haggard Law attorney Douglas McCarron describes how the inaction by the property owners of a Tampa apartment complex who refused to invest in proper security measures despite pleas from property management, directly contributed to the shooting death of a 23-year-old father of three.
To read the full article click the images below or this link
Later today, The Haggard Law Firm’s Douglas McCarron will lead a presentation during The 2016 National Crime Victim Bar Association’s National Conference in Philadelphia. The Conference is currently underway in conjunction with the National Center for Victims of Crime’s 2016 National Training Institute.
McCarron’s presentation, Negligent SecurityCase Gameplan: “Blocking & Tackling Fundamentals Mixed with Razzle Dazzle”, his highly demonstrative , interactive and will highlight what every Victim’s lawyers must know presenting their Negligent Security case.
Del Rio Apartment Complex Owners Ignored Multiple Requests from Staff to Increase Security
Tampa – The companies that once owned the Avesta Del Rio Apartment Complex have agreed to pay the family of 23-year-old murder victim Damian Bowie $1.8 million to settle a negligent security lawsuit. The lawsuit filed by Douglas McCarron of The Haggard Law Firm (www.haggardlawfirm.com) alleged that the deadly 2014 shooting that claimed Bowie’s life could have been prevented if complex ownership took action after multiple requests by staff members to better secure the property.
On March 2, 2014, Bowie visited the Del Rio apartments (5013 E. Sligh Avenue, Tampa) to spend time with friends before going to pick up his son Damian Jr. But, shortly before 4 p.m. that day, the father of three was assaulted, shot and killed on the property.
“Through the course of our investigation, which included testimony by the defendant’s property manager, it was clear that the employees at the property were pleading for more security and consistently telling upper management how people’s lives were are risk. Instead of acting responsibly, the defendant simply turned a blind eye” said McCarron.
The lawsuit against 5013 Sligh LLC and Avesta Homes on behalf of the victim’s mother and his three children Damian Jr. (5), Damion (3) and Sincere (2 – born two months after his father was killed), alleged the property’s owners knew the area and property were considered high crime areas. McCarron adds, “unfortunately their inaction allowed this tragedy to occur and now three young boys will never see their father again.”
The lawsuit highlights:
Testimony from a property manager and documented crime statistics that confirm the complex and area that surrounds is a high crime area.
An email sent by Kerrie Richardson, property manager of the complex at the time of the shooting, to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department requesting an off duty police officer (sent six months before the murder) because of the amount of crime
An email from Richardson to corporate for directions on what to do with a tenant that asked for termination of their lease after they were robbed at gunpoint and had their car broken into in just three months.
A request by Richardson to property owners asking for expanded security for daytime hours. Bowie was murdered at 4 p.m.
The victim’s family members hope new attention on this case will help police. No one has been charged in the crime.
It should be noted that the defendants in this case currently do NOT own the Avesta Del Rio Complex.
Authorities say a 10-year-old girl who was taken to the hospital following a near-drowning at a Jacksonville hotel has died.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office reports the Pensacola girl was swimming at the Hilton Garden Inn pool late Saturday night with three young family members. At some point she went underwater. Two of the children tried to pull her out of the pool, while the third child ran to an employee of the property for help.
When deputies arrived at the hotel, CPR was being performed on the girl. Patrol deputies took over CPR efforts until St. Johns County Fire Rescue paramedics arrived and took the girl to Beaches Baptist. She was then air lifted to Wolfson Children’s Hospital, where she later died.
Authorities said they believe there were no adults present with the children at the time, and the pool was apparently closed to swimming before the incident.
The Association for Safe International Travel reports that 37,000 people die in car accidents per year in the United States while another 2.35 million are injured or disabled. An estimated 180,000 people are driving for Uber. That number continues to grow. So with this kind of volume and activity it is inevitable that the number of accidents involving this driving service will rise.
So if a personal injury attorney’s client was injured in a crash involving Uber, what should the lawyer consider when litigating that case?
That is the topic of discussion that will be lead by Haggard Law attorneys Jason Brenner and Todd Michaels during this month’s Florida Justice Association Masters of Justice CLE program.
Uber Duber Do…Your Client Was in an Accident with Uber, Now What Do You Do? is one of the sessions that will be offered to attendees of the program as part of the Auto Negligence Seminar to be conducted on Wednesday, September 28th. There are a few more spots available for this seminar. To learn more about it and register click here. The FJA Masters of Justice Program will be held in Orlando from September 28th through the 30th.
Attending this year’s FJA Masters of Justice program is a great way to renew the excitement and focus on your mission as a personal injury attorney. Make plans NOW to register to attend to ensure you have the strategies and techniques in your toolbox that have proven to work for other attorneys in civil litigation cases. You’ll be sure to take away valuable information and innovative ideas that can immediately aid you in your efforts to assist your clients in their cases.
Haggard Law Attorney Christopher Marlowe was interviewed and quoted in a just-released Bloomberg Businessweek article highlighting how Walmart’s cost-cutting measures may be directly related to an increased rate of crime at its stores nationwide. From rape to shoplifting, to kidnapping and murder, the article lays out how police are trying to corral the rampant crime in many of the nation’s number one retailer’s locations. A recent example in the last few weeks, police in Buffalo found a meth lab operating underground of a local Walmart store.
Marlowe fought Walmart for several years in a lawsuit he filed in 2010 on behalf of a woman who was abducted outside a store in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, and repeatedly raped. Marlowe discussed how Walmart made every legal maneuver to avoid releasing its in-house crime statistics.
From the article, Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy By Shannon Pettypiece and David Voreacos:
Walmart’s lawyers typically argue that the company couldn’t have foreseen the crime in question and that it took reasonable steps to keep customers safe. It tries at every opportunity to keep its crime database secret. Even in litigation, when it must produce company records under court seal, its lawyers have wrangled for months or even years to limit access to its records, arguing the information is proprietary. “Nothing compares to the way Walmart litigates cases,” says attorney Christopher Marlowe. He fought Walmart for several years over a lawsuit he filed in 2010 on behalf of a woman who was abducted outside a store in DeFuniak Springs, Fla., and repeatedly raped. Marlowe said in a court filing that he learned only in 2013 of the database, which documented “precisely the sort of incidents” he sought for more than two years. Walmart’s lawyer, he said, “led everyone to believe that crime data retrieval was a great mystery—a query of inconceivable proportions.” Walmart denied liability in the case. The company eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.
Haggard Law Firm Attorney Todd Michaels was recently a guest on WEAA-FM 88.9 in Baltimore. Michaels was brought on the “Voice of the Community” to discuss his op-ed My Son’s Skin which was published in the Miami Herald. In the article Michaels discusses his concern as the father of a black child of what his child will face as he ages. The article was written following the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in November 2014.
To listen to Michaels interview click here. The interview begins at 29:07.
Here is the original article published in the Miami Herald in December 2015.
My Son’s Skin
Op-ed by Todd Michaels
I’ve spent 38 years as a white boy and man in America. Actually, a Jewish man, but I’m not usually identified as a Jew, live in a place full of Jews, and I have never faced a minute of anti-Semitism. I can tell you that being a white man in America is good. It’s great. It’s all that it’s cracked up to be. The opportunity is limitless. The fear is minimal.
I’ve never spent one day as a Black boy or man.
I’ve spent 5 years and 4 months as the father of a Black boy. An amazing boy. A smart, funny, talented, cute, sweet boy who has significant opportunity and privilege and doesn’t know any bounds on what he can achieve. A boy that I’ve been able to protect thus far from the realities that a child like Tamir Rice has had to face. But I know I can’t protect him forever, and I know that at some point, and maybe at many points, he will face a different experience as a boy or man in America.
And I’ve spent a lot of those five years worrying. I never think about race. It’s never a conscious thought that the world sees me as white and my son as Black, or mixed, or whatever. I’m just his dad, and he’s just my son. But I think about it when things like Tamir Rice happen. And it makes me worry.
It makes me worry because I know that as Ashton grows, when he walks down the street, people won’t say, “There goes Todd Michaels’s son.” A lot of people will just see a Black guy walking down the street, with all that goes along with that. It’s only been five years and four months, and I’m exhausted of worrying. I can’t imagine the anger I would feel if I had to face that reality everyday.
So yes, all lives matter, but we don’t have to say that, because no one has ever questioned that white lives matter. But Black lives matter too. They matter equally. And until this country gets that in word and deed, America can never be what it claims to be.
