Lawyers Vie To Land Crash Victims’ Families Grieving Space Violated Before Valujet Solicitation Ban Expires

And they’re off.

With the expiration of a 30-day ban on ValuJet crash solicitations, Florida lawyers legally can seek business today from the family members of those killed aboard the DC-9 that plunged into the Everglades on May 11.

But the families say the Florida Bar Association’s no-solicitation guideline has been ignored. Two lawyers, for example, were reprimanded for hustling clients in the lobby of a Miami airport hotel. Direct-mail legal eagles sent job pleas there addressed to the victims’ families.

The intent of the guideline was to protect the privacy of families while they mourned. But the rule, applying only to Florida lawyers, had its limits.

“It’s just a mess,” said Wanda Williams, who has received prospective contracts from at least 25 attorneys since the crash killed her son, San Diego Chargers running back Rodney Culver, and his wife, Karen Culver.

“If it wasn’t Federal Express, they were calling on the phone,” Williams said Monday from her home in Marietta, Ga. “They’re not giving us a chance to grieve.”

About 50 attorneys nationwide have called or written to the Medeiros family of Rex, Ga., in the month since their parents - Robert and Judy Medeiros - perished in the crash. Most begin by expressing their condolences, then request their services be used, said Dana Jones, the couple’s daughter-in-law.

“They’re like vultures coming in from everywhere,” said Jones. She hired Dallas aviation specialist John Howie, who represents six ValuJet crash families, after a recommendation by a family friend.

Howie, who has been representing air crash victims for 20 years, opposes direct-mail or phone approaches to relatives of those killed in any tragedy.

“In my opinion, it shouldn’t be open season on clients,” Howie said. “It’s inexcusable to send unsolicited materials to people, whether it be 30 days, 60 days or whenever.”

A victims’ advocate, Victoria Cummock, said she often saw the legal packets in the hotel rooms of family victims and saw them pressured to sign up with a lawyer in the days after the air tragedy.

“They’re really being preyed upon,” said Cummock, of Coral Gables, who remembers the experience from the 1988 explosion of a Pan Am jetliner over Scotland, which killed 270 people, including her husband.

Cummock is among victims’ advocates going to Congress next week with a plea to protect victims from lawyers, who are hungry for a share of a multimillion-dollar settlement.

Cummock and Doug Smith, who lost his daughter Alison in the Halloween 1994 crash of an American Eagle commuter plane in Roselawn, Ind., want the National Transportation Safety Board to be given more authority.

Smith supports a number of changes. He believes Florida’s 30-day moratorium on any legal solicitation of victims should be adopted nationwide. He also would like to see it expanded to prevent solicitation by airline officials or their insurance representatives.

“I think the 30-day clock should not start until the burial and memorial services have occurred,” said Smith, of Burlington, Vt. Now it starts the day of the accident.

The Florida Bar Association approved the 30-day ban on lawyers’ solicitations - the first such guideline in the nation - precisely to prevent intrusions of privacy at moments of grief, said bar association President John DeVault. Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the rule.

After the ValuJet crash, the Florida Bar moved quickly to enforce it, considering the suspension of the two Dade County lawyers who, the association contends, tried to drum up business at a hotel where family members stayed. The Florida Supreme Court on Friday appointed a senior judge to determine whether the two lawyers should forfeit all fees they may receive in connection with the ValuJet case.

Bar officials are investigating a third lawyer for sending out a free video on how to sue the airline.

DeVault agrees with Smith that Florida’s law is hampered because the state bar cannot take action against the out-of-state lawyers who were behind many of the mailings. He has recommended that other state bars punish those lawyers. The bar association of one state, Texas, has adopted a similar ban.

“If they prosecute people who did it wrong, maybe it will work,” Miami lawyer Aaron Podhurst said. “Listen, robbing banks is against the law, but you have to enforce it to deter robbers.”

One suburban Cleveland lawyer who sent letters to victims’ families, Richard French, has not signed a client, his secretary said Monday. French’s office did not know of the Florida guideline against direct solicitation at the time, his secretary said. Firms that mailed out brochures to victims’ families included the Washington law firm of Greta C. Van Susteren, the co-host of the CNN legal program “Burden of Proof.”

Joe Slama of Fort Lauderdale, whose firm represents families of three victims, said he would never solicit - before or after Florida’s 30-day ban. Slama says such direct pleas turn off prospective clients.

“Some people from the ValuJet crash have said they have had to disconnect their phones,” Slama said. “Two of the family members said the solicitations hurt the (soliciting) lawyers’ efforts. Basically, anyone who would do that to them, they wouldn’t retain.”