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Mike Papantonio Frederic Levin Oral History Project LEVN-014

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Mike Papantonio Frederic Levin Oral History Project LEVN-014 Mike Papantonio Frederic Levin Oral History Project LEVN-014 Interview by: Dr. Paul Ortiz February 28, 2020 University of Florida • Samuel Proctor Oral History Program • Paul Ortiz, Director P.O. Box 115215, 241 Pugh Hall, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-5215 https://oral.history.ufl.edu Samuel Proctor Oral History Program College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Program Director: Dr. Paul Ortiz 241 Pugh Hall PO Box 115215 Gainesville, FL 32611 (352) 392-7168 httPs://oral.history.ufl.edu LEVN 015 Mike Papantonio Levin Law Frederic Levin Oral History Project (LEVN) Interviewed by Paul Ortiz on February 28, 2020 44 minutes | 26 pages Abstract: In this interview, Mike Papantonio discusses the ideology of the Levin Papantonio Law Firm including the idea of culturally significant legacy cases and of aiming to level the playing field. He explores the impact Fred Levin had on his career focusing on Levin’s support of him as a young lawyer new to the firm and highlighting a few of Levin Papantonio’s major cases such as those concerning asbestos, tobacco and C-8. Papantonio also discusses trial lawyers’ importance and the role they play in American society as watchdogs and agents of cultural change when the media, regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, and the presidency fail in this role. He decries the prevalence of agent capture and argues that the law can be just as important for social change as protests such as Occupy Wall Street. He also examines the quality of a law degree today expressing disappointment in the lack of trial law training that young lawyers receive and discussing his own daughter’s law school choice. UFDC link https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00079099 Keywords: [Law; Education; Media; Mass tort; Trial lawyers; Pensacola, Florida] LEVN 015 Interviewee: Mike Papantonio Interviewer: Paul Ortiz Date of Interview: February 28, 2020 O: Good morning Mr. Mike Papantonio. P: Morning. O: Thank you so much. My name is Paul Ortiz. We’re here at your firm where we’re doing a remake oral history interview. Thank you so much. P: Thanks Dan. O: And I really appreciate, Mike, taking time out of— P: Sure, course. O: —your busy schedule. I wonder at the last round of interviews that we did with you and other attorneys in this amazing firm there’s a phrase that almost everyone used: “We work to level the playing field.” P: Yeah I think the notion of leveling the playing field we actually take a little bit beyond that and that is that the typical lawyer gets out of law school and they’re so tied into the notion of practicing the law the same way that the generation before them practiced law and so it’s something we have to overcome and that is that that they have all these skill sets, they come out of law school they say “Well okay that generation, they did automobile, worker’s comp, medical malpractice, social security, therefore I have to do it too,” and I think one thing we think about that’s different around here is I always tell my lawyers and I tell when we go to Las Vegas when a thousand, five hundred lawyers are there I remind them of what this firm has been about all the way back to Fred Levin and that is that there’s something that is called a legacy case. I guess I’ve defined it as the legacy case and I used to write about the legacy case even as a young lawyer because it was instilled in LEVN 015; Papantonio, Page 2 me from Fred and that is that it is much more effective if you take those skills and you hone those skills and you make em work on a bigger scale it’s the difference between selling a car and selling a jet. Okay the jet is tougher to sell but it’s a bigger it’s a bigger sale and here’s what I mean by that. I could spend all my time in here handling ten thousand automobile cases “1-800 you’ve been in an auto accident gimme a call,” it’s great I mean I’m glad those people are taken care of but the way I look at everything is to say when my child or my closest friends ask me what is that I accomplished? What did I do as far as changing culture? I go all the way back to the notion of what we all have been a part of and Fred’s led that charge. What I’ve done is I’ve helped change culture and that’s what I think of Fred when he took on the tobacco industry and he said and we all men in a room can we do this? You know this is the biggest thing in the country maybe the biggest thing that been historically had ever hit in the country besides the Civil Rights Movement and so it was that big you know because we had what hundreds of thousands of people dying about it and so we all in this firm have taken on that that charge and that is if we’re gonna do something make it count. Now that’s not to say we still do a few auto cases here we do a little comp but it’s it’s a fraction of what this firm does. You can go anywhere in the country and ask about what this firm’s developed into and it is the premier mass tort firm in America that matter fact this the last two years in a row it was chosen the premier class action firm mass tort firm in America. We’re in Pensacola, Florida. You know if you think of the significance of that we’re not in New York, or LA but why did that happen? It happened because Fred’s vision merged with my vision merged with Troy’s vision LEVN 015; Papantonio, Page 3 merged with all of our leadership and we determined that this is our course. If you look at it because of that notion that he put in young lawyers’ heads I think I was I was just a kid I mean relatively a kid—[Laughter]—trying some of the biggest asbestos cases in America. Well, why could I do that? I could do it because Fred, Fred: A, enabled me to do it, okay? He said yeah this is something we want for the firm; we want to change culture we want to make societal leaps and we’ve always —so that’s always been part of the mission statement even before tobacco. Understand before tobacco we were taking on—[Laughter]—some of the biggest cases in America. O: When did you first become aware of and then meet Fred Levin? I mean take me back to that P: Well Fred and I—I was hired by another lawyer in this firm a fellow named Leo Thomas who’s a criminal lawyer and David Levin and so it’s an odd thing but I kind of came up on a different track. Fred was doing his things; my I was trying to build something completely different. But what I was trying to build was completely in concert with Fred and so I guess the time that we started really, I would think those two paths merging was with tobacco. O: Okay. P: By the time tobacco had taken place on my track we had handled the HIV contamination case which was huge you know people you had hemophiliacs dying by the hundreds because you had corporations that were selling HIV infected blood factor so that was one/won. The breast implant case was another. The half a dozen pharmaceutical cases, the asbestos cases, so all of a sudden all of those things LEVN 015; Papantonio, Page 4 that I’m doing merge perfectly with what Fred’s vision of the firm has always been which is we can do more than say you know we handled ten thousand auto cases. O: Yes, sir. P: Now don’t get me wrong the guy out there advertising 1-800 auto crash I—you know they’re helping people. But I don’t know if you could sit down with your child twenty years from now and say what did you accomplish? “Well, I don’t know you know I collected a lot of money for people that were injured and that’s good and I helped their lives and that’s good.” O: Sure. P: But did a cultural change take place as a result of what you did? O: What kind of cultural changes have you seen, sir, as a result of the work of this firm? P: Oh, I could—I could go on forever. Let’s take it all the way back because again the things that I was able to do was only because Fred had the vision to allow me to do it and to build—I mean—[Sighs]—a young lawyer doesn’t come into a law firm and say “Hey I wanna go do this,” unless the person who’s built that firm says “Yeah, I like your plan.” That was Fred Levin. Okay so the changes are asbestos. I mean the cases that this firm handled on asbestos were part and parcel of changing the way that we are ability to sell asbestos in this country. It protected workers, workers understood that they can’t work around this stuff that lung fiber of asbestos can cause mesothelioma, deadly cancer.
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