InsideTrack

Rothstein paid extra to avoid revealing firm’s finances

Who would be willing to pay a six-month deposit on an office lease just to avoid having to show financial statements?

Scott Rothstein.

According to a source, the embattled lawyer "blew a cork" last year during lease negotiations for a new Boca Raton office for Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler when representatives of Mizner Office Tower owner General Growth Partners asked to see his financial statements before the deal was signed.

Rothstein "simply threw a fit," the source said.

"The red flags were there," the source said. "I’ve seen people refuse to give their statements before, but he was really upset about it."

Rothstein was so upset that he paid a six-month security deposit in order to avoid showing his finances.

A call to the CB Richard Ellis leasing agent for Mizner Office Tower was not returned.

Polling the county to build your pool

Imagine having to get an approval from the entire county to build a new pool in your house.

That’s one of many arguments used by Gunster shareholder Brian Seymour to convince a small audience of influential Palm Beachers that the Florida Hometown Democracy constitutional amendment is bad — bad for the economy, bad for growth and bad for Palm Beach County, he said.

"If you want to put a pool in your house and it needs a three-foot variance, you’ll need everyone in Palm Beach to vote on that," he told the audience of about 20 people during the Rotary Club of Palm Beach Flagler weekly meeting last Tuesday.

Seymour, a land-use and developer attorney, said he has not been hired to lobby against the amendment, which will be on the ballot in November 2010.

He said he also is not doing this on behalf of his firm. He is doing it for his kids, he said.

"I defend lawsuits so I will make more money [if it passes], but my kids will not have a place to come back to," he said.

"Hometown Democracy is not about democracy. It’s about stopping progress, stopping change," he said. "And if that’s what you want, then vote for it."

"I will," shouted Etonella Christlieb, a past president of the organization. "Look at West Palm Beach. Half of it is empty. Developers come in, knock down buildings and leave. We don’t want more of that."

The audience — which included local real estate, banking professionals, hotel owners, doctors, attorneys, marketing professional and Palm Beach town manager Peter Elwell (who did not express his opinion during meeting, saying the city is not in a place to take sides) — had a mixed reaction about his speech.

"I’m not saying the system doesn’t need to be changed but this is a complete overreaction," Seymour said.

Attorney says he caused mischief and stalked ex-partner, but didn’t try to kill her

Fort Lauderdale attorney Byron Petersen was accused of trying to run down his ex-partner with his car.

"That never happened. It’s a bunch of malarkey," he said.

In the end, he pleaded no contest last month to misdemeanor criminal mischief and stalking in exchange for the dismissal of felony attempted murder and stalking charges.

"The aggravated assault or attempted murder count never happened," Petersen said. "It was completely made up. There were items in the information that did happen — some misdemeanors, damage to property, one for $350 and one for $1,000."

He said his dispute with former law partner Kim Hawthorne of North Miami Beach was more than a conflict between colleagues, but he is bound by a confidentiality agreement in the criminal case that prohibits him from saying anything disparaging about Hawthorne.

"Though not married, this was really a domestic divorce and an unpleasant one at that," he said. Hawthorne, sister-in-law of acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman, was married to someone else at the time.

Records show Hawthorne filed for a restraining order against Petersen in March 2007. Hawthorne told police in March 2007 that Petersen called her repeatedly, used a key to scratch "paternity sperm" into her husband’s car, left notes on her car and tried to run her over. Petersen admits leaving notes and causing property damage but denies ever trying to harm Hawthorne.

Petersen sued Hawthorne in April 2007 to establish paternity of three children they raised. Petersen filed three other suits against Hawthorne in 2007. The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office said Hawthorne agreed to the plea last month. An office spokesman declined further comment.

Circuit Judge Dennis Murphy sentenced Petersen to three years probation with the possibility of an early termination after two years. He is an adjunct professor of construction law and litigation at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center and spent 17 years at Greenberg Traurig, leaving as a partner in 1993.

You never know who you’ll bump into

It’s a small world.

With the American Bar Association criminal justice section holding its fall meeting in Washington, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when a bunch of attorneys ran into each other on an opening-day American Airlines flight from Miami to Washington.

Let’s see. There was Florida International University law dean Alex Acosta, who’s on a faculty recruiting binge. Also Coral Gables Mayor Donald Slesnick, criminal defender Richard Sharpstein of Jorden Burt, Carlton Fields shareholder Michael Pasano, and Kendall office mates Dennis Urbano and Roy Rodriguez.

All the legal talk was about the travails of former law bigwig Scott Rothstein, ousted chairman of Fort Lauderdale’s Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler.

When all the chit chat was over, who stayed in first class? Urbano and Rodriguez.

ABA speaker says it’s time lawyers come to the financial rescue

The American Bar Association’s fall meeting in Miami Beach was mostly for the technical at heart.

The event opened with a sobering economic message — even for these times.

If you didn’t want to buy gold because it was hitting record prices, you would after listening to Henry de Soto, president of Peru’s Institute for Liberty and Democracy. He has been recognized by Times and Forbes magazines as one of the world’s leading intellectuals.

De Soto said the world’s current economy is built on a mountain of "toxic paper."

"You have $200 trillion of paper that does not correspond to the number of apples that are on the market," de Soto said.

The U.S. government had its chance to clean up toxic assets like mortgage-backed derivatives last year when investment banks sunk, he said. The U.S. government is just printing more money to bail out the financial and automobile industries. The record deficit left by President George W. Bush has tripled under the Obama administration.

Economists have failed to think outside the box and fix the world’s economy, de Soto said. Who is going to come to the rescue? De Soto said it will be attorneys.

"It is time the financial specialists stop dictating the solutions," he said. "We should bring in the legal profession."

If times are tough, the ABA’s venue, the Eden Roc, didn’t show it. The hotel was bustling with tourists and lawyers attending the conference at the start of the tourist season.

Lawyers learn to be quick thinkers outside courtroom as well

Former state Sen. Walter "Skip" Campbell Jr. had a scare on the golf course three weeks ago — and it wasn’t because of his score.

While playing a round at TPC Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Campbell saw a man on the hole in front of him face-plant in the turf.

"When he went down, I thought at first he was celebrating getting a birdie, but he was really suffering a minor seizure," Campbell told Inside Track.

He rushed to the green and helped flip the fallen golfer onto his back. Campbell said the golfer stopped breathing, had a small seizure and his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

Campbell started performing CPR — which he learned from courses his emergency-room-physician sister made him take. He revived the man before the ambulance arrived.

"But for me knowing CPR, this guy would have been dead," Campbell said.

Now the Krupnick Campbell Malone Buser Slama Hancock Liberman & McKee partner wants to ensure all of his colleagues have the same training. His firm is planning a voluntary CPR course and about 25 employees have signed up.

Other law firms offer similar courses. Weiss Serota Helfman Pastoriza Cole & Boniske trains three staffers in each office. Buckingham Doolittle & Burroughs in Boca Raton also has CPR training sessions.

Campbell said his quick reaction generated some humorous responses. One golf club member joked that lawyers usually suck the life OUT of people.

And Campbell, who admittedly is "not the greatest golfer in the world," said his fellow golfers just want him to play behind them.

27 candidates vie for Broward Circuit seat

Broward Circuit Judge Linda Vitale’s resignation has generated interest from 27 lawyers who are applying to replace her.

All 23 attorneys who applied to replace retiring Circuit Judge Robert Carney last month also are seeking Vitale’s seat.

They were joined by four new candidates:

• Karen E. Black-Barron

• Samuel D. 
  Lopez

• Kathleen McHugh

Charles S. Rowley Jr.

The 23 repeats are:

• Melinda K. Brown

• John D. Fry

• Julio E. Gonzalez Jr.

• David A. Haimes

• Jorge E. Hurtado

• Candace Korthals

• Judith Wolfson Levine

• Scott A. Levine

• Lorena V. Mastrarrigo

• Stefanie C. Moon

• Kiernan Patrick Moylan

• Christopher W. Pole

• Derrick S. Roberts

• Michael Robinson

• Andrew L. Salvage

• Maria M. Schneider

• Anuraag Singhal

• Rhoda Sokoloff

• Mark Somerstein

• Thomas A. Truex

• Michael A. Usan

• Gerald S. Williams

• Sharon L. Zeller

The Broward Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission sent six of those names to Gov. Charlie Crist last week to replace Carney: Haimes, a federal prosecutor from Plantation; Schneider, a state prosecutor from Fort Lauderdale; former County Court Judge Gonzalez, an associate with Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler in Fort Lauderdale; and three Fort Lauderdale solo practitioners — Pole, Singhal and Usan.

Vitale, the former administrative judge of the family division, announced her retirement in September. Applications were due Monday.

Franz of the court: Kafka quoted in drug case

Czech author Franz Kafka made a cameo appearance in a pleading on behalf of a federal prisoner returned to prison after she failed what she argues was a flawed drug test.

Whether or not it was impressed by the literary touch, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons released Nicole Michelle Defontes today.

A bond request was filed Friday by attorneys for Defontes, who flunked an August drug test that showed a minuscule amount of morphine, begins with the quotation: "The guiding principle is this: guilt is never to be doubted." The passage is from one of Kafka’s most brutal short stories, "The Penal Settlement."

The brief was submitted by Miami attorneys Daniel S. Fridman of Holland & Knight and solo practitioner David O. Markus. The Kafka passage feeds the defense argument that the Bureau of Prisons has a guilty-before-innocent mentality toward drug testing.

Defontes argues the urine test that came back positive was flawed, and the morphine came from poppy seeds she ingested on a sandwich eaten shortly before the testing, according to the memorandum to U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke in Miami. Morphine is derived from the poppy plant.

The brief argues that, even under the Bureau of Prison’s own testing procedure, the minimal amount of morphine found in Defontes’ urine should not have resulted in a positive finding because it fell below a cutoff.

Defontes, 30, was removed from home confinement based on the test and is back behind bars to serve the rest of her six-year sentence for cocaine trafficking.

She offered a sample of her hair for further testing, but the bureau refused. A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday on how the federal prison agency applies the cutoff.

New Cynergi owners see opportunity at Art Basel

The new owners of the Cynergi condo tower north of downtown Miami are wasting no time trying to make some money from a mostly vacant building.

Miami-based Wellmeaning Properties, after buying the note and obtaining ownership of the 100-unit tower in a foreclosure sale, is attempting to lease the empty ground-floor retail space at Cynergi for Art Basel showrooms. The company has hired Majestic Properties to market the building’s 6,602 square feet of retail space as gallery space.

Cynergi is located at 2700 N. Miami Ave. in the city’s Wynwood section.

Majestic is already circulating an e-mail newsletter touting the availability of showrooms on the ground floor and in upper lofts for the December event. Calls to listing broker Pamela Diaz de Leon were not immediately returned.

Art Basel Miami 2009 is scheduled for Dec. 3-6, with the main international art show located in Miami Beach. More than 1,500 artists from around the world will have works on display. Several other shows, including Primary Flight, billed as the world’s largest street-level mural installation; ArtMiami; and Scope Miami take place in the Wynwood area during Art Basel weekend.

Wellmeaning took title to 97 condos and the retail space at Cynergi in a Miami-Dade Circuit Court foreclosure sale last week. Wellmeaning acquired a $30.57 million foreclosure judgment from Banco Popular North America for an undisclosed sum before the foreclosure sale. With a $9 million bid, Wellmeaning outbid several other entities for the condos.

Four of the 100 residential condos were sold before the foreclosure judgment. Cynergi was completed by Trust USA in 2007, just as Miami’s condo market began to decline.

Lawyer in the jury box? Not so fast!

What happens when you get a lawyer in the jury box?

In a Broward Circuit Court case, the answer is jury selection starts all over again.

Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld removed a jury panel in a $100 million breach of contract case against Fortune 500 company Progress Energy after GrayRobinson attorney and prospective juror Frank Rullan said he had several cases pending against the utility company.

Rullan, who works in the firm’s Fort Lauderdale office, did not return a call for comment by deadline. He is slated to appear Monday before the court to apologize. The day had been set for opening statements before jury selection went haywire.

Instead, attorneys will be starting from scratch with a new round of jury questioning. The trial is expected to last three weeks.