Kendall Coffey Discusses Consolidation of Marriage Equality Suits in Florida

Motions filed to consolidate gay marriage suits

Motions filed to consolidate gay marriage suits

By Dan Sweeney, Sun Sentinel2:27 p.m. EDT, July 31, 2014

Two same-sex marriage lawsuits currently winding their way through the Third District Court of Appeals may soon be combined into one

Circuit court judges in both Miami-Dade and Monroe counties have struck down Florida's same-sex marriage ban, but both decisions were stayed pending appeals.

"Consoldiating the two cases makes all the sense in the world, not only because of the importance but because of the commonality," said Kendall Coffey, an adjunct professor at the University of Miami's School of Law.

Kendall Coffey is an attorney in Miami and former U.S. Attorney for the Southern Region

• Lawyers for both sets of plaintiffs have filed motions seeking the consolidation and the defendant county clerks have not objected.

Both sets of plaintiffs are also asking the court of appeals to let the case move straight to the Florida Supreme Court because the issues addressed "are of great public importance.''

Such action is "occurs in truly extraordinary cases," Coffey said. He also said the appellate court could also accelerate the speed at which it heard the case.

dsweeney@sun-sentinel.com, 954-356-4605 or Twitter @Daniel_Sweeney

See the story here:  Motions filed to consolidate gay marriage suits

Attorney Kendall Coffey Questions Plaintiff in Malpractice Suit

Kendall Coffey of Coffey Burlington

Miami Attorney, Kendall Coffey, Partner in Coffey Burlington, questions Rodger Shay during Shay's malpractice suit against Shutts and Bowen Attorneys.

From the Daily Business Review:

"Coffey politely but stridently grilled Shay on the witness stand Thursday, clearly trying to paint him as someone who was calling his own shots in the disputed real estate transactions.

Coffey got Shay to admit that he gave power-of-attorney not to Brown or Souto, but to a member of the condominium sales staff in the Dominican Republic.

Shay also testified he visited the construction sites several times, knew construction was behind schedule and was aware the beachside development hadn't been subdivided, which would indicate he couldn't take title of the plot.

Coffey, in a pleading filed in 2013 arguing against allowing punitive claims, saying the contracts were already signed by the time Shay hired Shutts & Bowen for four months in 2005. The lawsuit boils down to Shay wanting Brown and Souto to negotiate a better deal for him or advise him "this is just a lousy deal, walk away," as the millionaire testified in a deposition."

Attorney Kendall Coffey Questions Plaintiff, Shay, in Malpractice Suit

Read more: http://www.dailybusinessreview.com/id=1202656802522/Multimillionaire-Rodger-Shay-Goes-Up-Against-Shutts--Bowen-Attorneys-In-Malpractice-Case#ixzz35816CA2W

Kendall Coffey on the Rights of Life

Flickr CC via Mercy Health

Kendall Coffey discussed a case in Texas with Steve Malzberg last week.  There is a law in Texas that is keeping a woman on life support because she is 14 weeks pregnant. Here is Kendall Coffey's commentary on the case:

The family is frustrated with the law, and they’re considering whether to in affect file a court challenge.  The essence of the court challenge would be that she has this tragically impaired woman has some right of privacy to determine her own death with dignity.  What I haven’t developed in the law, and certainly, other people who are not carrying a human life inside them, no question can provide living wills that specify under certain conditions.  Such as when someone’s brain does not seem to have maintained cognitive ability, they have a constitutional right to terminate their life. 

This situation, though I haven’t seen a court that says she has the right to end her own life if it eliminates the life of an unborn child.  That is the decision that has to be accepted.  Nor do I know, and haven’t been able to find the details whether she still wanted her own life terminated if she were pregnant. Surely this is not a situation that they would have anticipated at the time that the directive was given, but I would suggest that from a constitutional standpoint, that she is being described as virtually brain dead, it seems to be that there has to be a greater respect for the life of the unborn child, where her own life is irretrievably damaged.

This is not the normal situation of a Roe v. Wade where you have a healthy vibrant person who is in full possession of their power and chooses to invoke a decision of their constitutional right to privacy.  This is someone who is no longer capable of making any decision at all.  So in that situation, do you override the laws of Texas, which says that if there is an ability to keep an unborn fetus alive to maturity then that is what the law requires?  It’s very different than some the cases we’ve been talking about.

I think it’s a fundamentally different question if the woman is pregnant, and I don’t know if there is any evidence that she said she would want to be taken off of life support even with an unborn child.  There’s a lot of discussion between balancing the rights of a woman and the later months in pregnancy.  It’s a much more difficult question when the only life that is able to be saved is that of the child.