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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 & Partners. 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.

When 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 & Partners 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 & Partners includes the following:

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.

If you or a loved one has been involved in an automobile accident or any other type of accident and sustained serious injuries you will want to know what compensation you can recover. Most attorneys will tell you that it depends on the liability, causation, degree of damages and the amount of available insurance. All of this is true, except that the amount of available insurance should not always be seen as the maximum amount you can recover.

Most lawyers will never look beyond the insurance policy and accept defeat that the insurance limits are the limits of available recovery. That is not always true. Over the past 15 years our office has recovered more than $26,000,000 more than the available insurance directly from the insurance companies when they engaged in bad faith handling of the underlying claims.

This amount does not include the millions more we have recovered from defendants personally above the insurance policy limits when there were no allegations of bad faith claims handling from the insurance carrier. When a defendant has traceable and collectible assets, your attorney should pursue those in order to maximize your recovery. We have done this by securing personal payments above policy limits and having personal property deeded to our clients including non-homestead properties. We recently were able to settle a claim for the policy limits of insurance, for additional cash money from the insured, and for multiple properties. In an inadequate security case, our firm secured a settlement for the policy limits and for an entire apartment building.