WILLIAM L. PENCE (with hat), AKERMAN SENTERFITT partner obstructed efforts to protect public health and promote Environmental Justice in St. Augustine, Florida
DANIEL SAUL GELBER, AKERMAN SENTERFITT Shareholder who wants to be Attorney General
So DANIEL SAUL GELBER wants to be your Florida Attorney General.
DAN GELBER is a bully from BP’s big corporate law firm, one that has played fast and loose with the truth for too long.
DAN GELBER’s 500-lawyer AKERMAN SENTERFITT corporate law firm is the largest law firm in Florida, with excessive power and influence on behalf of Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Sugar.
It is AKERMAN SENTERFITT that represented the City of St. Augustine in its “massive resistance” to our Environmental Justice concerns. Click on the links at right to read what these money-hungry corporate lawyers had to say about our Petition for Review.
WILLIAM B. HARRISS (a/k/a “WILL HARASS), then the racist City Manager of St. Augustine, gave AKERMAN SENTERFITT its crude marching orders: “Under no circumstances, except a final non-appealable court order, will the City agree to remove the fill (sic) material to a Class I landfill.”
Nasty, brutish and bullying AKERMAN SENTEFITT lawyers archly mocked the petitioners and our quoting Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (and President Bill Clinton), casting aspersions (and asparagus) on our honor and lying about the facts. We beat AKERMAN SENTERFITT like a rented mule in the court of opinion and the waste is now in a Class I landfill (no thanks to the creeps at AKERMAN SENTERFITT, who billed our Nation’s Oldest City hundreds of thousands of dollars to resist our supporting FDEP’s order to put the waste in a Class I landfill (which FDEP was going to drop because of AKERMAN SENTERFITT’s backdoor lobbying)
You have to read AKERMAN SENTERFITT’s Motion to Dismiss (see link at right) to understand how awful they were – they mocked our efforts as “frivolous,”} supporting the City of St. Augustine’s Environmental Racism. They refused to provide any documents in discovery, while complaining that we made only “vague and general allegations,” that we said that the City violated Open Records law, that our filings contained “platitudes” and asked for criminal prosecution referrals and meaningful reforms to protect whistleblowers and the public interest.
SNAKERMAN SENTERFITT said the petition was too long (but lacking in detail).
The great American statesman and corporate lawyer Elihu Root said the function of good corporate lawyers was to tell clients “you’re damned fools and you should stop.”
AKERMAN SENTERFITT did not do that with the City of St. Augustine – it catered to its whims and caterwauled at the residents who dared to speak out and sought to preserve, protect and defend two African-American communities (Lincolnville and West Augustine), which were harmed by St. Augustines’ Environmental Racism.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT even mocked us because the federal government had not officially designated either community as an Environmental Justice Community (yet another make-weight argument from $500/hour AKERMAN SENTERFITT snoots in fancy suits.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT whined that our petition quoted “historical figures” including William Blackstone, Bill Clinton, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (about St. Augustine being the “most lawless” City in America).
AKERMAN SENTERFITT said our sworn petition contained “irrelevant” or inflammatory allegations,” such as the facts of our City’s racism.
When we called to discuss this filing – and the City’s racism – with a retired African-American judge (JOSEPH HATCHETT) who has a key management role in AKERMAN SENTERFITT, he ignored our calls.
There’s moiré. AKERMAN SENTERFITT said that we pointed out that “environmental hazards exist in areas not related to those that will be improved (sic) environmentally under the proposed Consent Order.”
That’s right.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT (and its sinister consultants) conned the City of St. Augustine (and FDEP) into arguing that it would “improve the environment” to take 40,000 cubic yards of contaminated solid waste back to Lincolnville, place it in the marsh facing two rivers, and call it a “park.”
At the January 10, 2008 meeting at St. Paul’s A.M.E. Church, AKERMAN SENTERFITT made their snide presentation and activists picked it apart. Then Judith Serpahin asked the 300 people in the church (including FDEP and AKERMAN SENTERFITT lawyers) for anyone who supported the plan to bring the waste back to Lincolnville to stand up. No one stood. We won. The City of St. Augustine backed off its nefarious plan, after wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.
AKLERMAN SENTERFITT’s snooty lawyer, WILLIAM PENCE, typifies the caliber of other-directed, soulless people who go into Big Law firm work – smart but lacking in compassion.
We wear sneaky, stinky SNAKERMAN SENTERFITT’s scorn as a badge of honor.
In fact, as Thomas Jefferson said, “I have sworn upon the Altar of Almighty God eternal vigilance against every form of tyranny over the mind” of humankind.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT is like something out of a John Grisham novel.
These are social Darwinists. These are arrogant corporate lawyers, xxx
Unlike other Big Law firms, they do little pro bono work.
AKERMAN SENTEFITT kicked Mark Herron out of the law firm in 2000 for representing Al Gore, Jr., who won Florida but saw the election stolen by George and Jeb Bush. When I asked DAN GELBER about it, he said “I don’t know about that.” This is a fact that was in every Florida newspaper, and one which GELBER must have known.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT is on the wrong side of so many issues, I don’t know where to begin.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT represented tobacco companies (whom the State of Florida was suing), defending tobacco companies in some 40 trials.
GELBER claims to be for education, but AKERMAN SENTERFITT represented the “ Florida Builders Association and Northeast Florida Homebuilders Association regarding land use litigation in challenges to school impact fees and other regulatory exactions.”
GELBER claims to be for health care reform, but AKERMAN SENTERFITT represents Aetna Health, Avmed, Inc., Humana, Inc., the Florida Association of Health Plans, United HealthCare and other health care oligopolists. AKERMAN SENTERFITT defends alleged medical malpractice and malfeasant physicians.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT has defended exploding Ford Pinto automobile death and injury claims.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT has defended Jeep rollover wreck cases.
GELBER himself was co-chair of the AKERMAN SENTERFITT white collar criminal defense cases, abusing his considerable God-given talents to represent alleged corporate criminals, but never using them to help the many poor people who are abused by the criminal injustice system.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT represents clients “concerning environmental compliance, permitting, and enforcement; defense of waste generators and site owners in CERCLA and state site cleanups; transactional environmental work for sales, acquisitions, and leases; assessment and remediation of petroleum, dry cleaning, chlorinated solvent, and arsenic impacted sites; defense of RCRA enforcement actions; environmental assessments, environmental due diligence, and risk management; and redevelopment of contaminated properties.”
AKERMAN SENTERFITT is the law firm for ethically challenged businessman WAYNE HUIZENGA and his companies, including Republic Services, Autonation and Blockbuster.
GELBER’s AKERMAN SENTERFITT biography (below) listed him as a “Shareholder” – so did his Linked-In profile, his Martindale-Hubbell profile and his Florida legislature profile. Now GELBER claims he was only “of counsel” and says he will show me his employment agreement. He has not done so yet.
Show me the money, DAN. You made $225,000/year as a white collar criminal defense lawyer for the rich and ethically challenged, the morally rotten people who have ruined our Nation.
Your AKERMAN SENTERFITT website profile stated that: “Daniel Gelber is a shareholder in the Litigation and Policy practices. His practice focuses on complex, civil, criminal, and quasi-criminal litigation. He has extensive civil and criminal trial experience in public corruption, civil rights, contracts, trademark, environmental, employment, and healthcare, and has conducted numerous internal investigations for clients. In addition to his trial court experience, Daniel has argued in the state and federal appellate courts in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C.:
So who were your clients, DAN GELBER? Why won’t you reveal any of their names? Are you ashamed of working for alleged fraudsters or mobsters, taking their money but refusing to disclose them?
As the Matt Damon character said to the corporate defense lawyer in "The Rainmaker,"
"I'm curious....I'm just wondering, do you even remember when you first sold out?"
As Lamar Alexander famously said in a 1978 TV spot in the Tennessee Governor’s race, standing outside crooked banker Jake Butcher’s United American Bank in Knoxville, “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
As the Matt Damon character stated in John Grisham’s “The Rainmaker,” “These lawyers get $1,000 an hour, and I hate them. From their lofty perch, pissing down on the justice system with disdain. I used to hate them because I wasn't good enough for them. Now I hate them for who, and what, they represent.”
DAN GELBER fits right in at AKERMAN SENTERFITT – when I asked DAN GELBER about pro bono legal work, he listed NONE (but said he was a “Big Brother” on weekends) Oh, brother, that’s not pro bono legal work.
DAN GELBER’s serving the ruling classes as a “white collar criminal defense” lawyer, refusing to disclose his clients, makes me not want to vote for him in the Democratic Primary for Attorney General.
DAN GELBER’s mocking Dave Aronberg based upon his age (and First Amendment protected activity regarding BP) shows he is insecure, and a bully.
DAN GELBER’s doing no pro bono legal work makes me not want to vote for him for Attorney General.
If I wanted to vote for a Republican, I would vote for a blatant one (not a latent one).
If DAN GELBER were nominated as the Democratic nominee, Republicans would beat him like a rented mule, talking non-stop about BP. GELBER’s acting as if BP were not an issue is the height or arrogance – to whom does he think he’s talking?
We need an Attorney General nominee from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, not a corporate clone from Florida’s largest corporate law firm.
AKERMAN SENTERFITT's Miami offices, where DANIEL SAUL GELBER for years defended white collar criminals, where his AKERMAN SENTERFITT biography stated "“Daniel Gelber is a shareholder in the Litigation and Policy practices. His practice focuses on complex, civil, criminal, and quasi-criminal litigation. He has extensive civil and criminal trial experience in public corruption, civil rights, contracts, trademark, environmental, employment, and healthcare, and has conducted numerous internal investigations for clients. In addition to his trial court experience, Daniel has argued in the state and federal appellate courts in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, D.C."
No comments:
Post a Comment