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Lawdragon Q & A with:Aaron PodhurstBy Katrina Dewey500Mr. Miami has done it all and seen itall. The young man who grew up in the Catskills wherehis parents repaired mattresses found his way to theUniversity of Michigan, where he played basketball andwon the heart of Dorothy, who had grown up in theSunshine State. After law school in New York and astint in the military, the couple returned to Miami.They’ve never looked back. After a stint at a standoutlocal firm, Podhurst opened the doors of PodhurstOrseck, with Bobby Orseck in 1967. Just five yearslater, he was appointed lead counsel for litigation overthe crash of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, which crashedin the Florida Everglades on Dec. 29, 1972, killing 101.That starring role led to many others. His firm is oneof the standout aviation litigation practices in theworld, which, increasingly, is the locale of air crashcases given the globalization of the practice. He’s alsohad the opportunity to counsel leaders at the highestlevels, including serving as the unofficial mediator inthe tense standoff over Elian Gonzalez, the young boywhose mother drowned in November 1999 as sheattempted to escape Cuba and take Elian to Florida ina small aluminum boat.LAWDRAGon: I’d love to hear a little bit more aboutyour background.AARon PoDHuRST: I grew up in the Catskill Mountainsof New York State. I was a little boy and worked in thehotels during the summer and in high school.Then, believe it or not, I got a basketball scholarshipto the University of Michigan. And that was my firsttime away from home. My folks renovated mattressesfor the hotels. We always had food, but we were relativelypoor and so this was a great opportunity to go tocollege. I had very good grades. And so the basketballscholarship got me to the University of Michigan. Ihave two older brothers and I was the first of my familyto go to college.LD: It’s a long ways from the Catskills to Michigan toMiami.AP: While I was a senior at the University of Michigan,I met my wife, Dorothy, who was a freshman. She wasfrom Miami Beach, and that’s the reason I’m downhere. I went to Columbia Law School and then weended up down here. I thought it would be easier toraise a family in Miami than it would be in New YorkCity. So she actually was not the pusher, I was, andI’ve loved being down here. After law school, I was inthe service and then came to Miami. I didn’t know anybody.I worked for an appellate judge for one year as aclerk, and then I went to a very well-known firm startedby a guy named Perry Nichols, who was like thefather of demonstrative evidence. I actually learnedhow to try cases as a young associate with him.LD: What led you to start your own firm?AP: The Nichols firm basically was splitting up becausethe then-senior partner, Perry Nichols, wanted to gopractice with his son. And so it was an opportunity tostart my own firm with the fellow who was the appellatelawyer for the firm, Bob Orseck. Bob tragicallydrowned in Israel in 1978, but he and I were very closefriends and it’s been a great ride.LD: Were you scared when you went out on your own?AP: Yes, I was very scared when we opened our ownfirm. We didn’t have two pennies to put together. Wegot some business in the dissolution of the old firm.And Bob did some appellate work for them as theywere dissolving. And then one thing led to another andwe developed business until he died. We were together11 years. And the firm has done very well.We have sort of a specialty in aviation work, plaintiffs’aviation work, in addition to many other things.So in 1972 was the crash of the first wide-bodied jet,an L1011 aircraft in the Everglades, Eastern 401. I gotone case, and I’d never really been involved in aviationparticularly. There were many cases, several hundredon that crash; one-third of those on the plane walkedaway, one-third were killed and one-third seriouslyinjured. And all of the big-shot plaintiffs lawyers hadcases, they all came down before U.S. District JudgePeter Fey, who’s now a retired senior 11th circuitappeals judge.All of these big lawyers were vying to be the chairmanof the plaintiffs’ executive committee, the leadcounsel. And they’re all fighting - all these guys withreputations from all over the country - and he listenedand he listened, and my application was just to be onthe committee. I didn’t have the daring to even askhim as a young lawyer to be the lead. And he says,“You know, we’re in Miami, I think I’m going to appointMr. Podhurst as the lead counsel.” To make a longstory short, that was my breakthrough, because of thatjudge. From there, I got other cases, and on and on.Everybody gets a break along the way and that wasmine. The entire case was handled within a year, whichwas unheard of, for multidistrict litigation, and it was asuccessful result for our clients. View all Q&As at www.lawdragon.com/news-features.Photo by: Josh RitchieL A W D R A G O N 155 I s s u e 13