Sunshine State?

With Boston’s Leo V. Boyle currently serving as president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, it was no surprise to see a number of Massachusetts lawyers in attendance at ATLA’s winter convention last week in Miami Beach.

The weather could have been better (it was rainy or cloudy for much of the time), but that didn’t dampen the spirits of locals like Warren F. Fitzgerald (Boyle’s law partner), Kathleen M. O’Donnell (the Massachusetts Bar Association’s treasurer) or Douglas K. Sheff (the immediate past president of the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys).

One perhaps unexpected Massachusetts face on South Beach was that of Supreme Judicial Court Justice John M. Greaney. While newspapers back home were buzzing about the House speaker’s comment that judges in the commonwealth should face voters in elections, Greaney was in Florida to appear on an ATLA panel about, of all things, judicial independence.