Johns Hopkins University Professor of Economics Joseph E. Harrington spoke March 30 on economic game theory and antitrust law as a part of the Bayard Wickliffe Heath Memorial Lecture Series March 30. (Photo by Kim Burroughs)

By Francie Weinberg

Joseph Harrington, professor of economics at John Hopkins University, discussed direct and indirect coordination in collusion March 30 at the third annual Bayard Wickliffe Heath Memorial Lecture at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

“Collusion is where competition is supplanted with coordination, the objective being to get prices up, to get the supply down and to raise firm profits,” Harrington said during his lecture entitled “Game-Theoretic Ruminations on Section 1 of the Sherman Act.”

“Basically, cartels are a dirty business and you ought to stay out of it.”

The Sherman Act, passed in 1890, was one of the earliest and most important antitrust laws established in the United States. This remains that way today despite the many ways in which it has become increasingly advanced more than a hundred years later.

Harrington broke down the challenges that firms face regarding collusion into two parts: coordination and implementation.

“You have to coordinate on some particular collusive outcome, maybe allocations or price, and then they have to actually implement that outcome,” he said. “So the coordination involves communication, and a big part of antitrust law is deciding what forms of communication are lawful or unlawful.”

Harrington then explained the different brands of collusion in the eyes of the law including explicit collusion and tacit collusion. He used a variety of real-world examples, including colluding between auction houses in New York as well as American and Braniff Airlines.

“What’s unlawful in these situations is unobservable,” he said. “Meeting of the minds cannot be directly observed. What is observable is actions, bringing us back to the coordination and implementation challenges.”

Harrington admitted, though, that as times and technology change, it is much harder to apply antitrust laws when much of the collusion is behind closed doors.

Harrington is one of the leading antitrust economists in the world, particularly in the application of game theory to antitrust issues. He has published more than 60 articles which have appeared in the American Economic Review, Grand Journal of Economicsand the Journal of Industrial Economics among others.

He is the co-author of Economics of Regulation and Antitrust. His work has been widely cited in legal scholarship in the field of economics.

The Heath Memorial Lecture Series is made possible by a gift from Inez Heath, Ph.D., widow of Bayard “Wick” Heath. Before his death in 2008, Heath was the senior competition consultant with Info Tech, a Gainesville firm specializing in statistical and econometric consulting, expert witness testimony and antitrust law. Previous lecturers include Herbert Hovenkamp and William Kovacic.

Martin H. Levin, left, Teri Levin and Fredric G. Levin were honored March 30 by the University of Florida Levin College of Law as they participated in a dedication ceremony for the 19,500 square-foot Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center and its second floor, the Allen and Teri Levin Advocacy Education Suite. The building was made possible by a $1 million donation from Teri Levin on behalf of her and her late husband and a $2 million donation from Fredric Levin. (Photo by Marcela Suter)

When UF Law celebrated the dedication of the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center and the Allen and Teri Levin Advocacy Education Suite March 30, a theme was quickly apparent among the many distinguished guest speakers at the event: the value and importance of advocacy in our society cannot be understated.

The event marked the end of a decade-long transformation period at UF Law, which has brought about many changes to the campus, including the multi-million dollar Advocacy Center, which houses a fully functional modern courtroom, practice areas for trial and moot court teams, two multipurpose courtroom classrooms and UF Law’s Legal Research and Writing Program.

“In this nation we need advocacy because we need the rule of law and we need trials because we must have justice,” said UF President Bernie Machen, who attended to accept the Advocacy Center on behalf of the University of Florida. “The courtroom advocacy skills of the attorneys are thus at the very center of our civil society and the democratic system of government.”

The Advocacy Center benefits many different groups at UF Law in various ways and guest speakers expressed excitement and gratitude to the Levin family during the ceremony, which included Fredric Levin, his son Martin H. Levin and his sister-in-law Teri Levin, the wife of Fredric’s late brother Allen Levin.

“It isn’t often during these three years that we can suspend reality, step out of the role of a student and into the role of an attorney, but facilities like this allow that,” said UF Law Trial Team President Tara Tedrow (3L). “And not only have we sat in this building and learned from the best, but most importantly we have learned how to be the best at our craft.”

Other speakers included UF Law Dean Robert Jerry; Legal Research, Writing and Appellate Advocacy Director Henry Wihnyk; Director of Communications Debra Amirin; Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Alyson Flournoy; UF Board of Trustees Chairman Carlos Alfonso and Trial Team Director and Legal Skills Professor Jennifer Zedalis, via taped message.

Finally, Martin H. Levin and Teri Levin offered heartfelt reflections on the University of Florida, their connections to UF Law and the late Allen Levin, whose name graces the Advocacy Education Suite.

Martin Levin said that although his uncle was not a lawyer he was a strong believer in justice and equality – that individuals should be judged on who they are and what they have done. Allen Levin believed, “the only way that could be accomplished is through the efforts of advocates, people who are willing to stand up and speak out even when their own individual may be in harm or become endangered because of it.”

Teri Levin expressed gratitude for the appreciation of her contribution to the Advocacy Center and she offered insight into her late husband’s personality.

“He was a man of integrity, compassion, tolerance. And he was an example of what he believed in, he was a loyal man, a man of his word, a mentor to all who knew him and respected and loved by all who knew him,” Teri Levin said. “He was an advocate all of his life; to honor him with this donation and dedication is the least that I can do.”

The 19,500 square-foot Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center earned the gold LEED rating for its energy efficient and environmentally friendly design. The rating is based on features such as the use of low-flow faucets, waterless urinals, reflective building materials and designs to optimize energy performance. According to the March 14, 2011, LEED report, 1.5 tons of construction waste water was diverted from landfills during the building’s construction and potable water use has been reduced by 55 percent from fittings and fixtures. Energy efficiency measures include high efficiency glazing, reduced interior lighting power density, occupancy sensors and a district chilled water system. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Rating System was designed by the U.S. Green Building Council to encourage more environmentally sustainable buildings.

Architect Sol J. Fleischman Jr., A.I.A., CEO of Tampa-based FleischmanGarcia, said the courtroom is geared to its teaching function through monitors, data, phone and Internet connections, and especially the tiered seating giving students a clear view of the proceedings. The cherry-paneled walls and leather chairs give it the stately grace appropriate for Florida’s flagship law school.

When the United States Department of Defense is a major client, secrecy is the name of the game. So it’s the stuff that Fluet, a combat veteran who holds a top-secret government clearance, won’t say that really piques the interest.

“There are so many more stories I wish I could tell you about that are a lot more fun than that,” the Washington, D.C., lawyer said with a laugh. “But that’s all I can tell you.”

Fluet is founding partner of Fluet Huber + Hoang, a small, full-service firm that specializes in high-risk and high-threat areas like Iraq and Afghanistan and non-permissive environments where U.S. presence is minimal.

“(Non-permissive environments) is a fancy way of saying ‘We will go where others won’t,’” Fluet said.

And he certainly does.

“My assistant had to go to the State Department last week to go get me more (passport) pages,” Fluet said. “I still have years left in my passport, but I ran out of pages.”

More than a few of Fluet’s passport stamps come from Afghanistan where Fluet “basically built a special operations unit from scratch.”

Fluet, who retired in November 2009 as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Armed Forces after 21 years of active and reserved service, spent a year in the war-ravaged nation in 2004 to build a counter-narcotics unit. Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world’s non-pharmaceutical opiates, and Fluet isn’t bashful to say his unit is still flying strong today.

“I don’t know if I would have retired if I wasn’t doing the work I’m doing,” Fluet said of his legal work in hostile environments like Afghanistan and elsewhere. “I feel like I’m still in the game.”

The truth is, Fluet never really retired. He’s an attorney now, but he’s much the same military man he always has been. “I always wanted to be a soldier, but I always had law in the back of my mind,” he said.

His firm’s website reads almost like a Middle East brochure, with pictures of the so-called non-permissive environments, photos of Fluet in combat uniform inside a helicopter and written promises like “We can deploy a select team of attorneys … virtually anywhere around the world on short notice.”

And the firm’s military psyche (three of the firm’s lawyers are Afghanistan veterans) might spill over a little bit in the interview process for young lawyers.

“We have a joke around here that says we’ll hire an attorney who can win a bar fight,” Fluet said.

While he often peppers his speech with laughs, the jokes stop when he talks about his time in Afghanistan.

“The poverty, the crime, the weather that the Afghan people have to experience every day would be almost incomprehensible to a lot of us,” Fluet said. “Afghanistan is unlike anywhere else I’ve ever been.”

After spending eight years in active duty, Fluet entered the Army Reserves while he attended UF Law in the late 1990s. He clerked for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after graduation, and then took a job with the firm Williams & Connolly, a firm with strong military ties. Eighteen months after taking that job, Fluet was on his way to Afghanistan to create the special forces unit where he lived alongside Afghan pilots, training them, living with them and experiencing life, as he calls it, “outside the wire.”

“When they leave their base, (troops) go ‘outside the wire,’” Fluet explained. “Many troops never go outside the wire. It’s dangerous. But by virtue of what I did, I had to make arrangements to go inside the wire.”

When he returned from the Middle East people told Fluet that his overseas experience in high-risk areas should persuade him to start a boutique law firm and capitalize on that experience.

But Fluet’s not a huge fan of limits.

“I get just as excited to help the dry cleaner down the street renegotiate her lease as I do helping an international client close a billion-dollar deal,” he said.

Whether he’s playing the role of Afghan combat veteran, experienced attorney or bar fight enthusiast, France Hoang, one of Fluet’s law partners, has learned a few things about Fluet during the past decade.

“Thank goodness the only fights we’ll have will be in the courtroom,” Hoang said.

The competition, which took place March 17 and March 18, focused on mediation advocacy, requiring the competitors to undergo mock mediation sessions where one party served as a client and the other as the attorney needing to advocate the client’s interests.

On March 17, Hoffman and Wihnyk competed against two teams from the University of Memphis: Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and West Virginia University College of Law, respectively.

With positive feedback and high scores issued by practicing mediators from the area, Hoffman and Wihnyk advanced to the final round the following day, surpassing ten other teams from across the South.

“I really felt that the vagueness of the fact patterns and the strong competitors put our skills to the test, and made for a challenging competition,” Wihnyk said. “I was incredibly proud and satisfied with how we, as a team, competed, and were able to overcome the numerous obstacles that a start-up organization faces to make it to the finals in only our third competition.”

In the final round, Hoffman and Wihnyk mediated against the second team brought by the University of Memphis.

“We were pleasantly surprised when it was announced that we would be competing in the finals,” Hoffman explained, “but it all came full circle when we realized that the other team had an advantage — having teammates who had competed against us and a coach who had observed the entire mediation. We knew that we would need to develop a strategy whereby we acted in the roles those team members had not observed us in.”

Though the team did not win the final round, Hoffman and Wihnyk felt validation for their preparation after hearing the judges explain that the scores were incredibly close, and commend them on their performance.

“In the end, it was the first time the UF ADR team advanced to the finals of any competition,” UF ADR President, Jennilyn Thiboult said, “we are incredibly pleased with the results, proud of our team and looked forward to future competitions.”

Students, faculty and other members of the UF Law community gather March 29 to enjoy pieces at the Art Law Society's annual Art Show in the Legal Information Center. (Photo by Nicole Safker)

The University of Florida Levin College of Law’s Art Law Society hosted its 10th annual art show, which featured more than 40 pieces of artwork created by students and faculty members.

On opening night March 29 in the Lawton Chiles Information Center, more than 30 students and faculty members enjoyed the gallery and hors d’oeuvres with wine pairings. For those who could not attend the reception, the gallery was featured in the library from April 2 through April 6.

The submitted pieces came in various forms, including photographs, collages, paintings, drawings and jewelry. Some of the artwork even reflected law school woes, such as a piece entitled, “Keep Calm and Lawyer On,” submitted by Jennilyn Thiboult (3L).

James Ayres (3L), president of the Art Law Society, helped to collect artwork and organize the reception. Ayres provided two digital illustrations for the event that were originally created for a Canadian band’s upcoming album.

“(The art show) is a tradition,” he said. “Some people say it is their favorite event of the year.”

The show is presented by the Art Law Society as a creative outlet for the legal community. Additionally, the show provides an opportunity for students to better understand their classmates and faculty, who can showcase their often-hidden talents through artwork.

Founded in 2001, the UF Law Art Law Society generally seeks to promote interest in art law and related topics. Art law covers numerous legal issues within the art world, including ownership disputes, forgery and cultural reparation.

According to Ayres, the Art Law Society also brings together like-minded individuals in a “niche-topic,” helping members network with potential clients.

This year the society was busy raising awareness of art law by creating a website to showcase art around the UF Law campus. Before the end of the spring semester, the society will hold an art law movie-watching party. For more information about the Art Law Society and its events, visit https://www.facebook.com/UFArtLawSociety.

Students, faculty and other members of the UF Law community gathered March 28 to hear the CSRRR panel, which discussed the legal aspects of the Trayvon Martin case. (Photo by Maggie Powers)

It would be three weeks after Trayvon Martin’s body lay on the sidewalk before Michelle Jacobs heard the Sanford, Fla., boy’s name.

“The media wasn’t interested in Trayvon Martin,” Jacobs told a packed crowd March 28 at the UF Law Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations panel that discussed the case that has stoked a national debate and left many with troubled hearts and unanswered questions. “Trayvon Martin wasn’t newsworthy.”

And that’s because Martin’s story is one that’s been told before.

Martin was fatally shot in the Orlando suburb by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, while walking home from a convenience store Feb. 26. Martin was unarmed, but Zimmerman shot Martin in what he said was an act of self-defense.

Jacobs had only heard of Martin after discussing “the talk” with fellow professor Monique Haughton-Worrell that black mothers are forced to have with their sons about subserviently obeying police officers when — not if — they’re confronted by law enforcement.

By the time Jacobs had that conversation with Haughton-Worrell, the 17-year-old had nearly been forgotten after three weeks.

Now, after almost 2.3 million online petition signatures, a social media stampede calling for “Justice for Trayvon” and a delayed media whirlwind, Martin has become the latest poster boy for the searing racial tensions in America.

The two-and-a-half-hour CSRRR event, “A Conversation on the Shooting Death of Trayvon Martin,” featured a panel of four black law professors, two white law professors and an audience that tried to understand the messy legal web with Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” statute at its epicenter.

Going so far as to call it a “bad law,” Michael Seigel, criminal law professor and director of the Criminal Justice Center and the criminal clinics, said the stand your ground statute — the self-defense law Zimmerman invoked in the death of Martin — has a host of internal issues that need to be revised.

“(Stand your ground) has put a chill factor on prosecutors to do their job,” Seigel said.

Many panelists agreed, including Haughton-Worrell, who went so far as to say Zimmerman would not be sent to prison in Martin’s death.

The law’s record seems to echo Seigel.

According to a Tampa Bay Times March analysis, defendants have invoked the stand your ground statute at least 130 times since the law’s 2005 birth. Of those cases, 28 have been brought to trial, and 19 of those instances resulted in a guilty verdict.

But beyond the stand your ground statute, the Martin case has created a media firestorm and nationwide outpourings of grief because of its racial undertones.

“One reason this case has got so much attention is because it’s racialized from top to bottom,” panelist and law professor Kenneth Nunn added.

Jacobs added to the discussion of the “racialization of Trayvon Martin” by suggesting the case was impacted by racism before it even began.

In order for self-defense to become a legitimate rallying cry, Nunn said, a victim must feel it is a “reasonable” occasion to use force.

According to Jacobs, the ever-present social perceptions of black Americans have created a “reasonable” suspicion of violence that will, according to her, allow Zimmerman to use this defense in his case.

“If you turn on the TV just once, you are infected by American racism,” Jacobs added. “The normative racist values that drive the American justice system — that’s what the Trayvon Martin case is all about.”

The panel also featured Katheryn Russell-Brown, director of the CSRRR, and law professor George Dekle.