The Daily Business Review is pleased to present its Professional Excellence awards, which celebrates Lifetime Achievers, Rising Stars and the Attorneys of the year.
In this special Lifetime section, we honor 14 attorneys and judges who have made a notable impact on the South Florida legal community. The honorees have made significant marks in deciding cases, public service, building and managing law firms, handling all manner of matters in private practice and representing the poor. We feel these attorneys are prime examples of the very best the legal community has to offer.
We also present our fourth annual Rising Stars, recognizing 23 South Florida attorneys under the age of 40 for making a difference in the industry and the community.
And we recognize three outstanding lawyers for their work in the past year. The finalists for the award are Ira Rosner of Greenberg Traurig, William Scherer of Conrad & Scherer and Whitney Untiedt of Akerman. The winner will be reported in Friday’s edition.
We congratulate the outstanding honorees.
George Haj
Editor-in-Chief
Daily Business Review
At age 33, Roy Altman’s career already is studded with accomplishments, capped earlier this year by his appointment to the District Court of Appeal Judicial Nominating Commission.
When Altman joined Podhurst Orseck as a partner in 2014, he was the firm’s first lateral hire in nearly four years and only the second since 1980.
Altman is the lead trial attorney representing 20 Engle-progeny plaintiffs in litigation against tobacco companies. He also is a lead attorney representing family members in one of the first lawsuits filed over the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 People aboard.
He is one of four attorneys at the firm who have worked on multidistrict litigation against the National Football League that alleged the league intentionally misled current and former players about the risks posed by concussions and head trauma. A federal appeals court last month upheld a potential $1 billion settlement plan to resolve thousands of lawsuits.
Altman previously served as deputy chief of special prosecutions at the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami. His high-profile cases included the successful prosecution of a former police officer and pornography producer for drugging and raping hundreds of women and selling videos of the rapes. He also won the stole the identity of an American to run a violent international human-trafficking business.
For his efforts, Altman was named Federal Prosecutor of the Year in 2012 and received two awards from the director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys.