News

Stetson Law students crowned champions

Students from Stetson University College of Law came home champions from two national competitions on the east and west coasts of the United States. Stetson teams won both the eighth annual National Civil Trial Competition in California and the inaugural Navy JAG Corps National Moot Court Competition in Florida .

Stetson’s trial team of Olesea Collins, Derrick Connell, Allana Forte and Katelyn Knaak competed against teams from 15 other law schools around the country to win the National Civil Trial Competition on Nov. 14 at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles . Connell was named Best Advocate in both the preliminary and final rounds, a first for the competition. Professors Roberta Flowers and Lee Coppock coached the winning team to victory. More than 100 members of the Los Angeles legal community volunteered to judge the competition, including a U.S. magistrate judge and Los Angeles Superior Court judges. The competition was sponsored by the law firm of Greene Broillet & Wheeler.

Students Joseph Etter, Larry Miccolis, Amie Patty and Brice Zoecklein were named the champions of the Navy JAG Corps 2009 National Moot Court Competition at the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville on Nov. 14. Twenty-three teams from law schools across the nation competed, including Georgetown, Harvard and Yale. Professor Charles Rose, Faculty Moot Court adviser Professor Stephanie Vaughan and Professor Brooke Bowman helped prepare the winning team, which argued before a group of jurists that included the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, federal district court judges, the Chief Judge of the Department of the Navy, judges from the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, and judges from the Navy, Army and Marine trial courts. The competition was hosted by Region Legal Service Office Southeast.

These wins bring Stetson’s Fall 2009 advocacy championship count to five. Earlier this semester, Stetson teams came in first and second place in the E. Earl Zehmer Workers’ Compensation Moot Court Competition. Stetson also won the John Marshall Law School International Moot Court Competition in Information Technology and Privacy Law, and the Veterans Law Appellate Advocacy Competition.

Spain contends the 200-year-old treasure comes from the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes y las Animas, which exploded in battle and sank in the Atlantic Ocean west of Portugal in 1804, claiming the lives of 200 people. If the cargo comes from the Mercedes, the company says, the vast majority of the bounty never belonged to Spain, but rather to private merchants.

Melinda MacConnel, vice president and general counsel for Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa said no vessel has been recovered near the 2007 discovery of thousands of silver coins and other artifacts which others have estimated to be worth $500 million. The company's research indicates that the ship was transporting goods and was not a war ship and that it exploded possibly at the hands of an attack by British forces, then battling with France.

"This is unlike any discovery we've ever had," MacConnel told Central Florida Law Journal. "In the spring of 2007 we found piles of coins on the ocean floor. It looked like rocks. We discovered this find was indeed not rocks."

MacConnel said there are no date-indicative markings on cannon that have been discovered near the site, and no conclusive evidence as to the identification of any vessel is evident. Furthermore, research has indicated, she said, that although Mercedes had been on the Spanish naval registry, she was on a commercial mission at the time of her demise, a critical point in determining sovereign immunity.

Additionally, research indicates the gun decks had been reconfigured to accommodate paying passengers, the company says.

In June, a federal magistrate in Tampa issued a written recommendation, saying the wreck was probably the Mercedes, accepting Spain’s claim that it had never given up ownership of the ship and property aboard.

Barry Law School names Carrie Lee as new director of Juvenile Justice Center

Orlando, Fla. – Carrie Lee, a longtime child advocate, has been promoted to director of the Juvenile Justice Center (JJC) at Barry University’s Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law. Prior to this appointment Lee served as the staff attorney for the JJC.

As director, Lee will continue the work of the Center creating systemic change in the quality of representation of children in the delinquency court. She will also be spearheading the implementation of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Models for Change pilot projects in Florida.

Prior to joining the Juvenile Justice Center, Lee’s commitment to children’s representation developed while working for four years with children in delinquency court as a lead attorney with the Juvenile Division of the Orange and Osceola County Public Defender’s office. She was also employed as an attorney for the Department of Children and Families.

Lender Forensics assists attorneys

By DONNA BALANCIA
CFLJ Editor

     NORTH PALM BEACH — Gary Lacefield said there are three "buckets" of people that he, Lender Forensics principal Steve Dalia, and the attorneys with whom they work are seeing:
     Bucket 1: The homeowners are being foreclosed on and they're walking away from mortgages. They never put anything into it to start with and they have nothing to lose because it was a 100 percent financing deal. A lot of them don't know they shouldn't have been placed in the loans.
     Bucket 2: The homeowners are determining whether they need to file bankruptcy and what they need to do. They may have more skin in the game or have a 30-, 60-, or 90-day delinquency. They're not making their credit card payments and they're about to go under.
   Bucket 3: These are the folks that are making the payment that they never should have been put into, they've changed their lifestyle and they're barely hanging in there. They're not using the credit card, they're not going out to eat, and they're not traveling.
     Evaluating where the clients fall and getting the attorneys the ammunition they need is the service Lacefield and Lender Forensics provides to attorneys.
     "We review the loan file and we do the audit," Lacefield said. "The attorney doesn't want to be spinning his wheels on marginal stuff, and he or she wants to be armed with as much information as possible to help the client. In most cases we show that the client was a victim of predatory lending, the bait-and-switch, and deceptive trade practices."

      Lacefield will be the lead presenter at the course "Foreclosure and Loan Modification: Maximizing Results, Settlement, Litigation Strategies and Ethics," presented by Lender Forensics LLC.
     Topics include how to win awards and fees to fully compensate your clients for damages, how to use forensic auditing along with state and federal laws to settle or litigate cases and “Ability to Repay” and how to use federal agencies to settle your cases.

For more information on Lender Forensics services http://lenderforensics.com/ and for info on the CLE courses, call Steve Dalia at (561) 228-8800.