Robert Spohrer is a licensed pilot who is among the United States’ premier aviation lawyers.
He rides sport motorcycles on mountain passes throughout the world.
And he plunges into the frosty Atlantic Ocean every New Year’s morning.
But it was an unimaginable walk down Mayport Road in the mid-1970s that ranks among the most-discussed events of Spohrer’s life journey.
It was the mid-1970s and Jacksonville legal powerhouse Mathews, Osborne and Ehrlich had taken on a huge civil litigation case. The clash involved a Hanna Park ranger who had struck a U.S. Navy sailor with his pickup truck, severely injuring him.
A New York native and Jacksonville newcomer, Spohrer was one of the firm’s budding attorneys. Every young lawyer in the firm wanted to work on that case.
“And I got the call,” he recalled.
It was a Saturday morning. Spohrer was elated.
“We want your help with this case,” senior partner Ray Ehrlich, who later presided over the Florida Supreme Court, told Spohrer over the telephone.
That night, Spohrer put on a coat and tie, and joined Ehrlich, other attorneys and a vehicle accident expert on Mayport Road to reconstruct the disputed incident.
After the introductions, Ehrlich pulled Spohrer aside and gave the marching orders.
“He said, ‘I want you to put on this peacoat and stitch cap, and put the duffle bag over your shoulder,’” Spohrer said. “And, he said, ‘I want you to walk along the road, and we’re going to see how close we can get the pickup truck to you without hitting you.’”
Depicting the accident victim wasn’t how Spohrer envisioned contributing to his biggest case yet.
Four decades later, the tale is legendary in Jacksonville legal circles.
So is Spohrer, the 65-year-old president and senior partner of Spohrer & Dodd.
“Make sure you get Bob to tell you about his walk with Ray Ehrlich,” Jacksonville attorney Wayne Hogan told a reporter after a Wednesday ceremony honoring Spohrer as Jacksonville Area Legal Aid’s 2014 Equal Justice Award selectee. “You definitely need to include that one in your story.”
Clearly, Spohrer overcame his humbling walk with Ehrlich.
He’s renowned nationwide as a litigator of complex cases against big insurance companies, business and government. His firm represents clients in cases involving airline accidents, civilian and military malpractice, workplace accidents, product safety, children’s advocacy and human rights.
Three of Spohrer’s personal injury cases have been successfully decided or reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, including a $22.9 million jury verdict on behalf of deceased and injured Army personnel and their families resulting from a Blackhawk helicopter accident.
“For four decades, Bob’s been a consummate lawyer, a tremendous lawyer,” Hogan said. “But he doesn’t stop there; he makes sure this is a better community.”
Bending for justice
Spohrer said the legal profession was bursting with idealism when he graduated from St. Louis University School of Law in 1974. That’s also when he experienced his first face-to-face encounters with poverty.
Like many of his colleagues, Spohrer provided free services for JALA, which seeks justice for poor and marginalized people. On Saturday mornings, Spohrer interviewed clients and either passed along the information to JALA lawyers or took on the cases himself.
“They had been evicted, or a wife was being battered, or someone had a disability and needed assistance,” Spohrer said Wednesday in an interview in his West Adams Street office.
It was an opportunity for him to see a different side of the profession, whether he was helping someone who had been evicted or a wife who had been battered.
“These were not corporations; they were not insurance companies. They were just people who were up against hard times and needed legal aid,” he said.
Pro bono work is a tenet of Spohrer, partner Roger Dodd, the firm’s other attorneys and the staff. The firm’s lawyers include Spohrer’s wife, Helen, and son, Matt.
“When you talk about equal justice and talk about the arch of the moral universe bending for justice, Bob Spohrer is your example,” Hogan says.
Spohrer says that’s an overstatement.
“We could walk out of here to any office around town and find a lot of my colleagues who work very hard to provide pro bono legal services to people,” he said. “I’m very proud of Jacksonville for supporting legal services for the poor.”
Rather, full-time public-interest attorneys are the legal field’s greatest champions, he says. He admits many attorneys get lured away by the money and prestige of big cases.
“So, we went to work in tall buildings instead of working at poverty law centers like JALA,” he says. “But many people stayed the course and continued to make their career representing the disabled and the disenfranchised — the people who need equal justice.”
Among Spohrer’s highest-profile pro bono cases is an ongoing effort to bring closure to 1964 racially motivated murder of Johnnie Mae Chappell, a Jacksonville mother of 10.
A grand jury indicted four white men, including three who confessed to killing Chappell because she was black. J.W. Rich, who confessed to the shooting at trial, was convicted of manslaughter and freed three years later. Prosecutors dropped the case against the other three men.
“Johnnie Mae Chappell was murdered in cold blood and the family has been denied justice since their mother was taken from them,” Spohrer says.
He was lured to the case in 2005 by Shelton Chappell, who was an infant when his mother was gunned down. Chappell was marching in front of the courthouse with a sandwich board that had a photograph of his mother in the morgue.
“It was the only picture he had of her,” Spohrer said.
So Spohrer went to work, convincing state and federal investigators to reopen the case. While state authorities have determined that speedy-trial statutes prohibit the case being prosecuted, the FBI file is open.
Intellectually stimulating
Through the years, Spohrer has managed to combine his piloting passion with his law practice by representing the military and private citizens in aviation litigation.
Most of those cases involve product safety or negligence; all involve complex questions requiring specialization.
Spohrer and two others at his firm are board-certified aviation lawyers.
In McMahon v. Presidential Airways Inc., which was featured on television’s “60 Minutes,” Spohrer argued the military airline’s negligence caused the death of three U.S. service members in Afghanistan.
Presidential claimed to be immune from the suit as an agent of the U.S. military. Also, the company said that Afghanistan law, which did not impose liability upon an employer, should apply.
Ultimately, a confidential settlement was reached.
In that case and many others, Spohrer & Dodd is called into the mix by attorneys with less experience in the aviation arena.
It also helps that Spohrer himself flies planes.
“Aircraft accident litigation is particularly challenging and intellectually stimulating because it involves so many complex areas and many facets of aviation that we are uniquely qualified to handle,” Spohrer said.
Hitting the corners
It’s not all work for Spohrer, by any means.
He treasures time with his family, which also includes daughter, Lauren, a radio producer and Duke University faculty member.
“People often ask me if Bob ever relaxes. Yes, he does,” Helen Spohrer said. “He loves to travel, ride motorcycles and is a huge movie fan, especially James Bond. In fact, my ring tone for him is the Bond theme song.”
Indeed, most of Spohrer’s adventures involve his family, including an annual “polar plunge” ritual in Atlantic Beach and exhilarating father-and-son mountainside motorcycle treks.
His keenness for motorcycles began as a 14-year-old in need of cheap, reliable transportation. Today, with four sport bikes, he rides to have fun.
“When you’re riding a bike, you’re not mulling over cases and depositions and legal theories,” he said. “You are focused on what you are doing. There is an adrenaline rush, especially in the mountains.
Among the Spohrers’ conquests: The Alps and Pyrenees ranges in Europe and the Rocky and Blue Ridge mountains in the United States.
“Sport bikes are extremely maneuverable and light and well-balanced. And hitting corners perfectly is a challenge and is exciting,” he said.
He also has flown his single-engine Piper Comanche to Europe and back, island-hopping along the way, and he fancies scuba diving in the South Pacific, scouring the deep water for downed World War II aircraft.
“Like I said, I like an adrenaline rush,” he said.