Fred Ridley is a 48-year-old partner at Tampa's Annis Mitchell Cockey Edwards & Roehn with a partner's income and all the perks of working at an established 73-lawyer corporate firm. In his spare time, he likes to golf. It's a useful hobby because his clients include golf course developers and lenders; his work takes him to some of the most beautiful golf courses and resorts in the country. He also serves as a board member of the United States Golf Association, a sideline that takes him to some of the nicest golf resorts in the world.
Ridley insists the practice isn't as exotic as it sounds. "I'm basically a real estate lawyer," he says. But he makes this argument having just returned from Scotland, where he served as an official for the British Open at the revered St. Andrews course.
But before you trade in your wingtips for a pair of golf spikes, you should know that Ridley began earning his credibility as a golf specialist long before law school. He's been playing since he was a kid, attended the University of Florida on a golf scholarship and won the prestigious U.S. Amateur Golf Championship between his first and second years of law school in 1975.
After law school, he spent 21¼2 years working for an international sports management firm. He returned to Tampa in late 1979 and worked at a small corporate firm until its breakup about four years later.
When he began at Annis Mitchell in 1984, he decided he wasn't going to have anything to do with golf. He'd done well in law school and wanted to concentrate solely on developing his legal skills. And to be honest, he was a little sensitive about being constantly introduced as a former golf champion. He wanted to be known as a great lawyer.
He vowed to have nothing to do with the sport for five years. But in 1987, at age 34, Ridley got an invitation he couldn't refuse. "I was sort of pushed back in," Ridley recalls. "It was an invitation to captain the Walker Cup team, one of amateur golf's most prestigious tournaments. Then, in 1996, Ridley's partners asked him to help in developing a national golf practice. Since then, the firm has handled development deals for nearly 70 golf courses and resorts around the country, including Tampa's Avila Golf & Country Club, Jacksonville's Hidden Hills Country Club, the Imperial Lakes Golf & Racquet Club in Polk County, Miami's Kendall Golf Club and the Killearn Golf & Country Club in Tallahassee.
For Ridley, a scratch golfer, it was a natural fit, even if he still winces a bit at being introduced as a former national champion. He swears he doesn't really play that much golf with clients, turning down "five or 10" invitations for every one he accepts. But if pressed, he will admit to deserving at least a little bit of envy. "There are not many days when I really don't look forward to going" to work, he admits.
Sexual Harassment: Adding Confusion
Just when it seemed as if the courts had finally developed a set of rules that employers could understand, along comes a case that business lawyers say threatens to make sexual harassment law murky once again.
It's a question many employment lawyers thought had been settled: Sexual harassment complaints in Florida are channeled through a very specific set of procedures laid out under federal law's Title VII and the state's Civil Rights Act. Plaintiffs have to comply with strict reporting requirements and deadlines. Employers can limit their liability by creating and enforcing specific sexual harassment prevention policies in the workplace.
But former Miami Beach police dispatcher Alina Guerra -- who alleges she was sexually harassed by a supervisor and fired in the aftermath of the investigation that followed -- never filed a sexual harassment complaint. Instead, Guerra sued the city for negligence for failing to keep its workplace free of sexual harassment. The distinction is critical for Guerra because she filed her lawsuit too late to comply with the 365-day statute of limitations under sexual harassment law. The statute of limitations for negligence is four years.
A Miami trial judge allowed the case to reach the jury, which awarded Guerra $206,250 last year. But the 3rd District Court of Appeal overturned the judgment, holding that there is no such cause of action under Florida law.
The discrepancy between the two rulings comes from different interpretations of a 1989 worker's compensation case. In that case, the Florida Supreme Court said that although worker's compensation law was generally the only remedy available to an injured worker, it did not protect employers from "all tort liability" arising from "incidents of sexual harassment."
The trial court read this to mean that an employer could be sued for the tort of negligence despite the existence of a statute created to cover the type of allegations involved. The 3rd District Court of Appeal concluded that was too broad a reading of a case that was really only intended to prevent employers from using worker's compensation as a shield against certain kinds of liability.
Lawyers for Miami Beach and for employers throughout the state are hoping the Florida Supreme Court will see things the same way. But the fact that the Florida Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Guerra case -- oral arguments are scheduled for late this month -- has some worried that the outcome could be otherwise.
If the high court was in complete agreement with the 3rd District Court of Appeal's reading of the law, it could have simply declined to take the case and let the opinion stand. At stake for employers is more than just the extended statute of limitations that exposure to negligence claims would bring.
Eric Gabrielle, an employment lawyer with Holland & Knight in Fort Lauderdale, says many of the defenses available to employers under sexual harassment law would not be available under negligence. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a Florida case in 1998 that employers who implemented sexual harassment policies that included clear procedures and open channels for reporting would not be liable. Employers who can prove they've taken such steps can generally get sexual harassment lawsuits dismissed in the earliest stages. Under negligence, such statutory defenses are not available. That means more cases might proceed to a jury -- a process so expensive that winning the case does not always seem like a successful outcome.
Another disadvantage for employers, Gabrielle says, is that negligence complaints would be brought and heard in state courts. Sexual harassment complaints, because of the intertwined federal law, are often removed to federal courts, which tend to be a more difficult forum for plaintiffs. Still, Gabrielle cautions against reading too much into the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case. "The court wants to say something. We hope it's a reaffirmation of what's out there," he says.
Donna Ballman, a Fort Lauderdale attorney who represents Guerra, says whatever the outcome, employers who are properly supervising their employees and following sexual harassment policies have nothing to fear. "I don't think people need to be alarmed," she says.