Awards given during the Florida Bar’s annual convention in Boca Raton:
• Former Jacksonville Legal Aid director Kent Spuhler received the President’s Award of Merit. Sphuler received his undergraduate degree from Ohio State University in 1968 and his Juris Doctorate from Harvard in 1972. He came to Florida and began working as a staff attorney with Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and served in that position until he became deputy director in 1978. Three years later he was promoted to executive director and he held that position until 1994. Spuhler is now the executive director of the Tallahassee-based Florida Legal Services Inc., the statewide office for support legal assistance programs for the poor.
• Tampa’s George Edgecomb Bar Association received the 2004 Professionalism Award for their program entitled “Sligh Middle School Project.” The “Sligh Middle School Project” provides a year-long mentor relationship between attorneys and students, encourages academic achievement, assists with career planning, and promotes the importance of professionalism to impressionable pre-teenagers.
• State Rep. Jeff Kottkamp received the President’s Legislative Award. Kottkamp is a Republican from Cape Coral and practices law with one of the oldest law firms in the state, the Fort Myers firm of Henderson, Franklin, Starnes and Holt, founded in 1924. He is the past president of the Lee County Bar Association and remains active in Florida Bar activities.
• Rep. Joe Negron of Stuart also received a President’s Legislative Award. Negron has been a litigator in the Treasure Coast area of 17 years and he has been active in the community including serving as the president of the local Chamber of Commerce. For the last two years, Negron has been in the middle of the crucial issues facing the court system in Florida. As chairman of the House Appropriations Judicial Subcommittee, he was responsible not only for the continuation budget of the state court system but also for all the new funding required by the Article 5 Revision 7 requirements. He also fought this last year to fully fund the Supreme Court request for new judges.
• Melissa Zelnicker of Fort Lauderdale received the President’s Award of Merit. She is a second-year Equal Justice Fellow at Legal Aid Services of Broward County and was recently featured in the FSU College of Law magazine where she credited Paolo Annino, director of the school’s Children’s Advocacy Center for steering her in the direction of legal aid. Through her project called The Bridge, she is representing children in the foster care and criminal justice system. She is not only a legal advocate for these children, she offers judges, social workers, teachers and probation officers a broad picture of her clients’ lives to help them understand the whole child.
• Professor Ruth Stone of Florida State University College of Law won the 2004 Faculty Award. Throughout her career, Stone has served as both a prosecutor and a private practitioner. She is a clinical legal education teacher and co-director of the Florida State University in-house clinic, The Children’s Advocacy Center. She has developed her own program for the domestic violence section and law office management, ethics and professionalism. In addition, Stone has revised the chapter “The History and Philosophy of the Juvenile Court” for the last three editions of the Florida Juvenile Law and Practice book. Stone is the faculty advisor and head coach for the FSU College of Law Mock Trial Team and is current president of the Tallahassee Women Lawyers.
• Matthew Wilson Dietz was recognized with the G. Kirk Haas Humanitarian Award. Dietz has been practicing in the areas of discrimination, employment law, personal injury and civil rights litigation since 1996. As a result of his work on recent landmark cases, he has contributed to the law to define the legal rights and obligations of both cruise lines and retail stores, guaranteeing access for the disabled. Dietz served as the 2003-04 chair of the Public Interest Law Section. To educate the public, he has frequently shared his expertise regarding disability rights and discrimination through speaking engagements to various community and civic groups.
• Edward Zebersky of Hollywood received the 2004 Standing Committee on Professionalism Chair’s Choice Award. Zebersky was the Guardian ad Litem for Loren Hinton, a two-year-old who almost drowned in her family’s apartment complex pool. Although she survived, she suffered permanent brain damage from her time underwater. The subsequent case was highly litigated and a Broward County jury awarded over $100 million. The case ultimately settled during the appellate process for an undisclosed amount. Despite the complexity of the case and the hours spent on the case, Mr. Zebersky waived his fee so that all of the proceeds could go to help provide for Loren.