From left: Christine Cerniglia, associate professor and director of Clinical and Experiential Education; Linda Anderson Stanley, ABA director of Disaster Legal Services and the senior manager for Disaster Programming at Equal Justice Works; and Jean-Luc Adrien, Community Justice Project of Miami – Equal Justice Works Disaster Recovery Legal Corp. Fellow.
Stetson Law now offers a new course and corresponding externship experience designed to train students in an increasingly essential area of advocacy: disaster law.
The Disaster Law Primer is a one credit course offered over two weekends that provides a basic overview of disaster law including FEMA benefits, highlights systemic legal issues in a post-disaster world, and prepares students to complete and file a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) appeal.
With hurricanes and rising sea levels, not to mention other less predictable disasters such as oil spills, it behooves young lawyers – and their communities – to build the knowledge and skills needed to navigate FEMA benefits. Even for those who have studied the law, the government agency’s processes are not always intuitive. Much of the United States is vulnerable to some type of disaster, whether it is a tornado, wildfire, hurricane or winter storm – Stetson students who plan to work elsewhere in the country after graduation are able to utilize the skills to help clients trying to rebuild their lives.
After disasters, the burden often falls heavily on legal aid offices and pro bono attorneys to help victims with legal issues. And despite the seemingly increasing occurrence of disasters, it is an area of law suffering from a dearth of experience and no standardized strategic approach, said Anthony Palermo, the ABA YLD District Representative who presented as part of the course. It is an important long-term problem that calls for a solution, and practical training courses such as the Disaster Law Primer could be the key.
Brittanny Perrigue, Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid Equal Justice Works Disaster Recovery Legal Corp. Fellow, was one of the guest lecturers.
The program was two years in the making, said Christine Cerniglia, associate professor and director of Clinical and Experiential Education. And in just two weekends, all 12 of the participants in the inaugural course reported they felt confident they could effectively tackle a FEMA appeal.
“We just created change agents,” said Cerniglia, who co-teaches the course with Linda Anderson Stanley. Linda is the ABA Director of Disaster Legal Services and also the Senior Manager for Disaster Programming at Equal Justice Works. “We are lucky to have the expertise of Linda in the classroom who works on many systemic issues on a national level. The students are lucky to learn from her.”
Students study the role of agencies, legal aid offices, volunteer efforts, and government at both the state and federal level in a post-disaster context, particularly FEMA’s National Response Framework and the new standards for benefits under its Individual and Households Program. They focus, too, on the launch of Disaster Recovery Centers (DRC’s), legal issues relevant to Legal Aid offices, pro bono attorneys, and the responsibility of the American Bar Association and the State Bar to coordinate a response. Over the two-week period, students researched a specific disaster to understand how each scenario presents a different response and how all disasters impact the most vulnerable in our society. For the final assignment, students had to draft a FEMA appeal based on a fact pattern similar to what they would find after a disaster.
Michelle Walker
Michelle Walker, a part-time student in her third year, said the material was unlike anything she had been exposed to so far in law school and that it was a great, practical, hands-on opportunity. It helped put a personal, human face on the application of administrative law, which she found very helpful.
Walker was selected as the first Disaster Law Extern. The Primer course is a prerequisite for the Disaster Law Externship where students have a chance to put their newfound skills to use and work on actual FEMA appeals under the supervision of Equal Justice Works disaster fellows. Students who have successfully completed the primer may apply for the 1 credit externship at any point in their law school career.
Stetson University, Stetson
University College of Law and Pryor Education Insights will conduct a Campus
Climate Survey to ask students, faculty and staff about the institution’s
progress on becoming a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community.
The confidential survey will arrive by email on Monday, Feb.
3. The deadline to respond is Friday, March 6.
Stetson University conducted its first campus climate
survey in 2016, and the College of Law instituted a number of initiatives
to promote diversity and improve campus climate as a result of its findings. For
example:
A Diversity and Inclusion Committee, comprising faculty, staff and student members, was created to track the college’s progress on these issues. The group engaged the Student Bar Association’s diversity committee as it worked to increase cross-cultural interaction on campus.
The College of Law followed up on the committee’s suggestions by sponsoring several diversity and inclusion education sessions by Elon, Prism, Community Tampa Bay and others.
For students, various on-campus health resources were created in April 2017 to help with wellness, and at students’ request, results of Honor Code violations are published (anonymously) online, so that they know those are addressed and resolved appropriately.
Efforts to increase transparency and inclusion for staff included creating an internal, online organizational chart of the school’s leadership. A Staff Advisory Committee was created in 2018 to give them a stronger voice in College of Law decisions.
The College of Law’s search processes for open positions was changed to attract diverse candidates, resulting in more inclusive hiring for faculty and staff throughout the school.
Dean Michèle Alexandre
“These and other tangible accomplishments are important
to show students, faculty and staff that their opinions matter and can bring
about change,” said Dean Michèle Alexandre. “I hope that each of you will take
the time to complete the survey and provide meaningful feedback. The results
will help us embark on new initiatives and take any needed
action.”
The survey consultant, John Pryor and his Pryor Education
Insights, is expected to present the results in fall 2020.
Jan. 30, 2020 – Stetson University College of Law is excited to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Yale Law School Professor James Forman Jr. to campus as the keynote speaker for the Annual Inns of Court Banquet and Wm. Reece Smith, Jr. Distinguished Lecture on Feb. 5, 2020.
Professor Forman is the J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale Law School, and his book, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and featured on the New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2017.
He has devoted much of his career to working with people who
have been incarcerated. As a member of the Public Defender Service in
Washington, D.C., he spent six years representing juveniles and adults charged
with crimes.
During his time as a public defender, Forman became so frustrated with the lack of education and job training opportunities for his clients that he started the Maya Angelou Public Charter School, an alternative school for school dropouts and youth who had previously been arrested. A decade later, the institution expanded and agreed to run the school inside D.C.’s juvenile prison. That school, which had long been an abysmal failure, has been transformed under the leadership of the Maya Angelou staff. The court monitor overseeing D.C.’s juvenile system called the turnaround “extraordinary.”
Professor Forman, a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School, taught at Georgetown Law from 2003 to 2011 before joining the Yale faculty. At Yale, he teaches Criminal Law and a seminar called Inside Out: Issues in Criminal Justice, in which Yale law students study alongside men and women incarcerated in state and federal prisons.
He teaches and writes in the areas of criminal procedure and
criminal law policy, constitutional law, juvenile justice, and education law
and policy. His particular interests are schools, prisons, and police, and
those institutions’ race and class dimensions.
Wm. Reece Smith, Jr.
Professor Forman’s lecture will be a wonderful addition to
Stetson Law’s Annual Inns of Court Banquet, which brings together prominent
lawyers, experienced teachers, and law students to exchange ideas, experiences,
and education. The event includes The Wm. Reece Smith, Jr. Distinguished
Lecture in Ethics, as well as the Wm. Reece Smith, Jr. Award. Both are named in
honor of the legendary Florida lawyer who served as founder of Florida Legal
Services, president of the International, American and Florida Bar Associations,
a distinguished professorial lecturer at Stetson Law, and a member of the
Stetson Law’s Hall of Fame.
Jan. 27, 2020 — Stetson University College of Law has selected Leland Ware as the recipient of this year’s William A. Kaplin Award.
The Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy
at Stetson University established the award in honor of Professor William A. Kaplin
to recognize scholars who have published works on education law that embrace
the intersection of law and policy.
Ware is the Louis L. Redding Chair and Professor of Law
& Public Policy at the University of Delaware where he also teaches
Africana Studies. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Fisk University
and a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School.
Ware’s research focuses on civil rights and civil liberties
law, employment law and constitutional law. His book, A Century of Segregation:
Race, Class, and Disadvantage, (Lexington Books 1998), explains how race and
class intersect in ways that uniquely disadvantage African Americans and other
racial minorities.
He has authored more than 100 articles in academic journals
and other publications on various aspects of civil rights law and co-authored
two books, “Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture and the
Constitution” and “Choosing Equality: Essays and Narratives on the
Desegregation Experience.” Prior to his work in academia, Ware was a trial
attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice.
The award ceremony will take place as part of the 41st
Annual National
Conference on Law and Higher Education, Jan. 29-Feb.3, 2020, in Clearwater
Beach, Florida. The conference, now in its 41st year, is designed to provide
attendees with the vision, motivation, and intensely practical tools needed to
return to campus to meet the dynamic law and policy challenges in higher
education. It features the top thinkers, lawyers, and authors in the field.
The Stetson University College of Law Trial Team of, from left, Drew Trautman, Rachel Wise, Megan Tiralosi and Amy Trentalange won the 2020 Chester Bedell Mock Trial Competition.
Jan. 24, 2020 — The Stetson University College of Law Trial Team of Drew Trautman, Amy Trentalange, Megan Tiralosi, and Rachel Wise won the Chester Bedell Mock Trial Competition Jan. 22-24 in Tampa, Florida.
Megan Tiralosi also won the best advocate award. A second
Stetson team of Olivia Bergert, Justin Bell, Magner Tiuso, Molly Goodwill made
it to the quarterfinal round.
This marks the 24th time in 38 years a Stetson team has won
the competition. Hatters claimed the inaugural trophy as well in 1983. The
Trial Lawyers Section of the Florida Bar conducts the prestigious competition
for mock trial teams from across the state annually, and distinguished members
of the judiciary preside over the final round.
A Stetson University College of Law Trial Team of, from left, Justin Bell, Molly Goodwill, Olivia Bergert, and Magner Tiuso made the quarterfinal round of the competition.
All eight students sacrificed their winter break to prepare for the competition, and the winning team was ultimately made better by having practiced against their schoolmates, said Julia A. Metts, director of Trial Programs and professor of practice.
“Iron sharpens iron, and that is how Stetson stays consistent,” she said. “Together we make each other better. Together we push towards a goal of personal and professional growth. Together we advocate with a purpose!”
Stetson’s program in trial advocacy is nationally ranked No.
1 by U.S. News & World Report. To learn more about the advocacy program,
visit stetson.edu/law/advocacy.
Donation will provide security awareness training to employees, create scholarships and internships, and help develop the school’s cybersecurity law program.
KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, today announced it will make a $250,000 donation to Stetson University College of Law.
The donation includes:
Creation of the KnowBe4 Cybersecurity Law Scholarship Fund that will provide $5,000 merit-based scholarships for the next five years;
Creation of the KnowBe4 Cybersecurity Law Program Fund to support the establishment and growth of the cybersecurity law program at Stetson Law; and
A subscription to KnowBe4’s diamond-level new-school security training platform to enhance security and data protection awareness with Stetson’s staff, faculty and students.
“We see this donation as a great opportunity to contribute to and build our community,” said Stu Sjouwerman, CEO of KnowBe4. “It’s also an opportunity to help fulfill the need to educate and train more cybersecurity talent. We’re excited to work with Stetson University College of Law to help develop an entire collegiate program that’s focused on cybersecurity in the Tampa Bay area.”
The agreement includes the creation of other initiatives, such as a weekend course on the topics of cybersecurity and data privacy for Stetson Law students, speaking events, student-led research, student organizations, internship opportunities for law students, and providing general support for business law initiatives at Stetson Law with cyberlaw course offerings and other resources related to cybersecurity law.
“We strive to be at the forefront of all that we do at Stetson Law – whether it is educating students in emerging areas of law or ensuring our faculty and staff are highly trained in new technology – so this collaboration with KnowBe4 is a fantastic opportunity to advance both our mission and theirs,” said Michèle Alexandre, dean of Stetson University College of Law.
About KnowBe4
KnowBe4, the provider of the world’s largest security awareness training and simulated phishing platform, is used by more than 30,000 organizations around the globe. Founded by IT and data security specialist Stu Sjouwerman, KnowBe4 helps organizations address the human element of security by raising awareness about ransomware, CEO fraud and other social engineering tactics through a new-school approach to awareness training on security. Kevin Mitnick, an internationally recognized cybersecurity specialist and KnowBe4’s Chief Hacking Officer, helped design the KnowBe4 training based on his well-documented social engineering tactics. Tens of thousands of organizations rely on KnowBe4 to mobilize their end users as the last line of defense.
Jan. 3, 2020 – Stetson University College of Law, as part of the annual Wills for Warriors event, will again partner with the Community Law Program in Pinellas County and the St. Petersburg Bar Foundation to prepare free simple wills and advance directives for low income veterans and their spouses aged 60 or older.
The event will take place on Stetson Law’s campus in mid-February. Walk-in appointments are not available. Veterans or their spouses must schedule individual appointments in advance by calling 727-562-7577 by Feb. 4, 2020.
The Wills
for Warriors program is designed to assist veterans and their spouses aged 60
or older who have low incomes and limited assets. Individuals who own real
estate outside the state of Florida are not eligible to participate.
Stetson
students and volunteer attorneys from the Community
Law Program will
assist Stetson Law’s Center for Excellence in Elder Law with this program. The Center for
Excellence in Elder Law was established to meet the increasing need for legal
education and research in the field of law and aging. The Center provides legal
education to law students, attorneys, and judges in the field of elder and
special needs law and produces scholarly research and writing on issues
impacting those who are older and/or have special needs.
Stetson University will launch an additional
layer of online security known as multi-factor authentication this month for
students, faculty and staff to log in when they are off-campus.
Stetson will be a pioneer in cybersecurity initiatives as it is the first higher-education institution in the country to develop its own multi-factor authentication for its online services. The multi-factor authentication process will require students, faculty and staff to verify their identity in two ways when they log in from an off-campus location.
For example, users will need their password and a numeric code texted to their mobile phone. The Stetson multi-factor authentication will offer the added flexibility to use biometrics, such as a fingerprint or facial recognition, to confirm one’s identity in addition to other options, such as passwords, tokens, text messages and push notifications.
The new security feature will go live on
Stetson’s four campuses in DeLand, Celebration, Gulfport and Tampa on:
Monday,
Jan. 20, for non-faculty employees
Monday,
Feb. 3, for faculty
Monday, March 9, for students
How to use Multi-Factor Authentication?
Stetson Authenticator icon
Users will be required to complete an extra step (typically on their mobile phones) after they enter their User ID and Password to log in while they are off campus. Users will be required to use two authenticators and will be prompted to download these to their mobile device when they log in:
• Stetson Authenticator –
for all Stetson services, such as myStetson, Banner and Blackboard
Microsoft Authenticator icon
• Microsoft Authenticator – for all Microsoft services, such as Outlook email, Office 365, OneDrive, etc.
There are five main options for these authenticator
apps:
A. Users receive a notification on their mobile
devices via the Authenticator app. They can then accept or decline it.
B. Users read a one-time-use token from the
Authenticator app and enter it on the screen provided.
C. Users receive a one-time-use token via text
message on their registered phones and enter it on the screen provided.
D. Users receive a phone call on their
registered phones and respond to it using the prompts.
E. Users receive a one-time-use token via a non-Stetson email that they will indicate during sign up. They will then need to enter it on the screen provided (This option is only available for Stetson Authenticator).
Options in Stetson Multi-Factor Authentication, such as “Send push to Phone,” and “Enter Token from App.”
Although the multi-factor authentication is designed by default to be used off-campus, users have the option to choose to use it on-campus, as well. They will need to indicate their preferences during registration or subsequently through their settings page on the MyStetson portal. Certain users with access to confidential and sensitive information like Banner administrative users and IT users will be required to use this security feature irrespective of their location.
Users will also have the option to trust their frequently used browsers, so that they will not be prompted to use multi-factor authentication for 30 days while using those browsers.
Options in Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication
In addition, since the Stetson Authenticator mobile app has biometric authentication capabilities, users can use their phone’s TouchID or FaceID (fingerprint and face recognition capabilities), if applicable, while responding to the notifications received (Select Option A above: “Send Push to Phone”).
Go-Live dates for Multi-Factor
Authentication
Starting in fall 2019, both the Stetson and Microsoft multi-factor authentication systems were tested on a pilot basis by users in IT and by students in a Management Information Systems (MIS) class, taught by Vikram Ahmed, EdD, director of Stetson’s Enterprise Information Systems (EIS).
The first group to go live was Banner administrative users on Nov. 4. The security feature will be launched to the three remaining groups of users on all Stetson campuses starting Monday, Jan. 20, for all non-faculty employees; Monday, Feb. 3, for all faculty; and Monday, March 9, for all students.
When users log in on or after the go-live date for their respective group, they will receive a prompt to download the Stetson Authenticator Mobile App and the Microsoft Authenticator Mobile App (available on Apple App Store and Google Play) on their iOS or Android phone, set up their preferences (including phone numbers to receive text messages and calls, and an external non-Stetson email address for the Stetson multi-factor authentication); and follow the instructions to complete the login.
They also have the option to enroll to use this
feature before the respective go-live dates. The link: https://my.stetson.edu/apps/mfainfo/
has all the details and instructions.
IT will continue to send updates as the launch dates approach, as well as dates for trainings and demonstrations. For any questions or concerns, please contact I.T. at [email protected].
One of the first steps of cybersecurity is access
control, which involves the identification and authentication of users. There
are three common factors used for authentication:
Something users know (such as their
passwords)
Something users have (such as their mobile
phones)
Something users are (such as their
fingerprints or face recognitions)
Identification occurs when users indicate their identity (such as with a username), and authentication occurs when users prove their identity. For example, users are authenticated when they provide both their username and their correct password. Permissions, rights and privileges are then granted to users based on their proven identities. Among the three authentication factors indicated above, passwords are the most commonly used, but are also the least secure. As Verizon’s 2018 Data Breach Investigations Report noted, “Eighty-one percent of hacking-related security breaches leveraged stolen and/or weak passwords.”
Multi-factor authentication is a method in which a user is granted access only after successfully presenting two or more of the above factors for authentication. For example, users may enter a password (something they know) and respond to a notification on their phone (something they have) to complete the login process. The idea behind this approach is the understanding that a perpetrator may somehow obtain a user’s password, but is very unlikely to have access to the user’s phone as well. Thus, the security of the authentication process is enhanced.
Vikram Ahmed, director of Stetson’s Enterprise Information Systems (EIS), watches as Matthew Samuels, Applications analyst/developer, demonstrates the new Stetson Multi-Factor Authentication process. Samuels was the chief architect of the Stetson Multi-Factor Authentication system.
Multi-Factor Authentication at Stetson
University
Over the past 18 months, the Stetson Information
Technology (IT) department has been researching Multi-Factor Authentication
solutions to increase security, as well as to address IT security audit
suggestions.
After the research was completed, the department received proposals from a couple of vendors of multi-factor authentication solutions that included an annual price in the range of $25,000-$30,000 to cover all of the university users. Additional research showed that a common practice in academia is to separate Microsoft products (email, OneDrive, Office365, etc.) from the institution’s enterprise systems.
For Stetson, those systems include Banner, MyStetson,
Blackboard, Slate and many others. Following this design, the IT department
took advantage of the university’s existing Microsoft License to deploy
Microsoft multi-factor authentication for the Microsoft products at no
additional cost to Stetson.
Stetson Authenticator using Face ID
Stetson Authenticator using Touch ID
At the same time, the Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) unit of IT developed a multi-factor authentication system using internal resources. This solution known as Stetson multi-factor authentication has been designed to be used with the university’s enterprise systems.
Stetson’s multi-factor authentication comes with a mobile app that has been tested and validated by both Apple and Android prior to being included in their respective app stores. In addition, this Stetson Authenticator app advances the security component by incorporating biometrics (fingerprint, face recognition) as an authentication factor.
Ahmed, director of Enterprise Information Systems, said, “Effective cybersecurity is a balance between convenience and security for the user. Stetson MFA combines the best of these two diametrically opposite goals to create an efficient, convenient and secure solution. Very few (if any) MFA commercial solutions offer the use of biometrics as a standard option, and the fact that this solution was completely developed in-house underlines the quality of talent available in EIS.
“In addition, since this solution has been built in-house, we have the flexibility to make required changes quickly and easily, something that would not be available with a commercial solution,” he added.
Matthew Samuels, Applications analyst/developer in EIS and the chief architect of the Stetson Multi-Factor Authentication system, shared his experiences working on this solution, “Developing Stetson MFA was a massive, ambitious project involving many different technologies, such as our single sign-on system (CAS), cloud services in Amazon Web Services (AWS), and various software frameworks.
“After quite a bit of research and development, our year-long endeavor has culminated in a system that provides a variety of methods to finish logging in using MFA and provide an extra layer of security to the Stetson community,” he added.
The late Wm. Reece Smith Jr. at Stetson University College of Law
Dec. 2, 2019 – Stetson University College of Law is currently accepting nominations for the prestigious William Reece Smith Jr. Public Service Award, which recognizes individuals who have provided outstanding service to the legal profession and community. This year’s award will be presented at the Annual Inns of Court Banquet in the Great Hall on February 5, 2020.
Nominations must be received by close of business on Monday, Dec. 17, 2019. Completed nominations may be emailed to [email protected].
Wm. Reece Smith Jr. served as a distinguished professorial lecturer at Stetson Law
The annual award is named in honor of legendary Florida lawyer William Reece Smith Jr. who served for decades as a distinguished professional lecturer at Stetson Law. Smith, who passed away in 2013, dedicated more than 60 years of service to the legal profession. He worked tirelessly to provide legal services to the poor. Smith founded and served as the first president of Florida Legal Services, served as a city attorney for Tampa, chair and trustee of numerous colleges and universities, interim president of the University of South Florida, and as board member of countless religious, charitable, civic and professional organizations.
Stetson established the William Reece Smith Jr. Award in 1990 to honor outstanding contributions to public service, the justice system and the community.
Dean Michèle Alexandre accepts the John Mercer Langston Legal Education Leadership Award at the 15th Annual National Black Pre-Law Conference and Law Fair in New York.
Dean Michèle Alexandre received the John Mercer Langston Legal Education Leadership Award at the 15th Annual National Black Pre-Law Conference and Law Fair at Columbia Law School in New York in early November.
The award is named for John Mercer Langston, the founding dean of the Law Department at Howard University and first black law school dean in 1869. Today, 150 years after Langston’s achievement, we have reached the largest number of black law school deans serving at American law schools in history.
Also during the conference, Stetson University College of Law was honored with a Diversity Outreach Champion Award. The award recognizes Stetson Law’s demonstrated commitment to recruiting black law students. The conference previously recognized Stetson Law as a Diversity Outreach Champion in 2014.
The National Black Pre-Law Conference and Law Fair aims to provide a powerful forum to help increase the numbers of excellent, strategic and competitive African American law school applicants, students and graduates nationwide.
Staff and students secure 100 percent disability for Marine with cancer; recognized for community service
Members of the Veterans Advocacy Clinic received community service awards at the Marine Corp Ball on Nov. 16, 2019. Veterans Law Institute Coordinator Shirley Booker, far left, Veterans Law Institute Director Stacey-Rae Simcox, second from right, and Stetson Law Student Mary Samarkos (2020), far right.
Stetson University College of Law Veterans Law Institute received the Distinguished Service Award from the Marine Corps League of Florida at Major B.F. Hickey – Detachment 57’s Marine Corps Birthday Ball celebration on Nov. 16, 2019.
The award recognized the work of the students, faculty and
staff in the Veterans
Advocacy Clinic to prove that a terminally ill Marine had been exposed to
toxic water at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, in the 1980s and developed terminal
bile duct cancer. As a result of their efforts, the Marine won an appeal to the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) administrative board and secured benefits
to care for him and his family into the future.
Clinic law students, staff and faculty spent two years
working to find evidence to support that their Marine client had been in
contact with the water. They collaborated
with environmental science faculty and students on Stetson University’s main campus
in DeLand, environmental law faculty at the College of Law, and sifted through
thousands of pages of environmental records received under a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) request.
A little help from an alumnus
Professor Stacey-Rae Simcox.
Joshua Magidson, a shareholder at Macfarlane Ferguson &
McMullen, Stetson Law alumnus and a Marine himself, helped connect the Clinic staff
with Florida’s Marine Corps League. The League was able to spread the word and
track down other Marines who could corroborate that this Marine was exposed to
toxic water. After speaking to dozens of
Marines, law students found three witnesses who could prove the exposure.
At first the VA denied his claim, but the Veterans Clinic
appealed to the administrative board that oversees the VA. In the end, the Marine was awarded a 100
percent disability rating for his cancer.
“It’s an incredible example of the collaborative environment
we have across our campuses, and it’s a classic illustration of the impact our
law students can have on the world and the individual,” said Stacey-Rae Simcox,
director of the Veterans Law Institute and the Veterans Advocacy Clinic.
Major B.F. Hickey – Detachment 57 also presented law student
Mary Samarkos (2020), Veterans Law Institute Coordinator Shirley Booker, and
Professor Stacey-Rae Simcox with Community Service Awards for their work on the
case. The awards were presented by
Detachment 57 member and Stetson alumnus Brandon Robinson.
Case Background
The Veterans Advocacy Clinic had been working on this case
since the summer of 2017 and logged more than 400 hours of student legal work. The
veteran’s main goal was to have the VA recognize that his cancer was caused by his
military service so that his wife would be entitled to ongoing widow benefits
after his death.
Simcox said in her nearly 15 years of legal practice, this one was
case she feared was not winnable initially because they had no clear way to
prove the veteran’s cancer was caused by service in the Marine Corps. They
had to get creative and seek out further expertise.
They tapped faculty and students in Stetson’s Institute for Biodiversity
Law and Policy as well as biology and chemistry department faculty in
Deland for help deciphering the meaning of FOIA’d chemical records, aquifers,
ground water tables and myriad other environmental law terms that were foreign
to many of the staff in the Veterans Advocacy Clinic. Others involved
included: Law Professor Royal Gardner, Law Professor Paul Boudreaux, Dr.
Kirsten Work (professor of biology in Deland), Dr. Danielle Devoney (visiting assistant
professor of environmental toxicology in Deland), Christine Martin (a Stetson
DeLand employee and grad student in environmental studies), and law students Oscar
Sugranes (’18), Katherine Pratt (’19), Dane Petersen (’19), Brian Paul (’19),
John Pilz (’18), and Erica Eddy (3L).
The VA had already
recognized the water at Camp Lejeune was toxic and a contributor to bile
duct cancer, but the clinic staff had to factually prove that the veteran had
been physically exposed to the water there. While the veteran said his
job as a truck driver required him to drive back and forth to Camp Lejeune from
his actual duty station, the clinic had no proof he had ever actually been to
Camp Lejeune besides his word.
Students William Cocarro (’18) and Julie Munderback (’19) spent
hours poring through military historical records and trying to locate any
witnesses who might have been able to corroborate his travel between the two
installations. Finally, in the spring 2019 semester, the veteran remembered
that he had been sent to a small training facility called Bogue Field for
almost a month. Bogue is geographically in the middle of Camp Lejeune and
another Marine Corps installation. The students learned that Bogue had no
potable drinking water from the 1950s to the early 2000s and that water had to
be shipped in, but no one could verify where the water originated.
Based on that information, 3Ls Mary Samarkos and Chesley Roberts,
with the help of Phillip Saul (’19), hit the ground scouring for witnesses who
might be able to corroborate that the water at Bogue was being shipped in from
Camp Lejeune. With the help of Josh Magidson, the students contacted dozens
of veterans and identified three major witnesses who provided corroboration
that: 1). the water at Bogue Field was, in fact, shipped in from Camp Lejeune;
and 2). the veteran’s job did require him to drive to Camp Lejeune quite often.
Collaborative learning that made a difference
Veterans Clinic staff attorneys Rocky Roodhouse and Jami Worley,
along with Simcox worked hard to help the students think through the issues. Shirley
Booker, Veterans Clinic office manager, made sure that the veteran was taken
care of – even hand-carrying flowers to him on behalf of the clinic when he was
hospitalized.
The VA found that the brief submitted from Stetson, “relayed a
thorough, well documented, and scholarly discussion about the various exposures
while on active duty that may have contributed to his development of the
cholangiocarcinoma. Stated in their conclusion was that the veteran had
exposure to carcinogenic chemicals in the drinking water at Camp Lejeune,
exposure to contaminated water at Cherry Point, Agent Orange in Okinawa, Japan,
and liver flukes in Pohang, South Korea. There is ample evidence that the
veteran had contact with the drinking water from Camp Lejeune many times during
his service. Other exposures in terms of chemical or parasitic infections are
considerations for the veteran’s development of the cancer.”
A 100 percent disability rating means that not only will the
Veteran receive several tens of thousands of dollars in benefits that the VA
owed him on this claim, but he will get almost $4,000 a month into the future.
When he passes away, his wife will be taken care of as he had hoped with
widow’s benefits.
“The students who worked so hard on this case remind me constantly
why it is such a privilege to work with them,” Simcox said. “I hope it also
helps them remember that one lawyer can make a difference.”
Dean Michèle Alexandre received the John Mercer Langston Legal Education Leadership Award at the 15TH Annual National Black Pre-Law Conference and Law Fair at Columbia Law School in New York in early November.
The award is named for John Mercer Langston, the founding dean of the Law Department at Howard University and first black law school dean in 1869. Today, 150 years after Langston’s achievement, we have reached the largest number of black law school deans serving at American law schools in history.
Also during the conference, Stetson University College of Law was honored with a Diversity Outreach Champion Award. The award recognizes Stetson Law’s demonstrated commitment to recruiting black law students. The conference previously recognized Stetson Law as a Diversity Outreach Champion in 2014.
