Three mediators from Upchurch Watson White & Max are playing a role in The Jacksonville Bar Association ADR Practitioners Committee's 10th annual Northeast Florida CME Seminar for Mediators on Thursday, June 2, 2016. UWWM's Robert A. "Bob" Cole is committee chair and planned the entire program with mediator Jake Schickel. This year's course will be at its customary venue, Florida Coastal School of Law, 8787 Baypine Road, Jacksonville. The course is eligible for up to 8.0 Continuing Mediation Education hours, including 4.0 Ethics, 2.0 Domestic Violence, 1.0 Diversity and 1.0 General. Mediators are required to self-report hours applicable to their areas of certification at the time of their renewal.

"Arbitration has been a hot topic this year, whether in the form of coming changes to consumer and class arbitration or developments in cross-border and international agreements," says mediator and arbitrator Lawrence Kolin, who will speak on the topic from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, June 1, 2016. Gary Salzman, a shareholder at GrayRobinson, P.A., Esq. and Beppy Owen, a partner at Akerman, will join Lawrence to present "Arbitration: An Alternative to Dispute Resolutions," a complimentary continuing legal education seminar at the Orange County Bar Association Center, 880 N. Orange Ave., Orlando, Fla. "We plan to cover the nuts and bolts of the process, as well as hints in avoiding traps while drafting arbitration provisions at the outset," Lawrence says.

Carl B. Schwait, formerly senior and managing partner for local law firm Dell Graham, P.A., has joined Upchurch Watson White & Max's panel, bolstering the mediation group's presence in North Central Florida. Mr Schwait intends to center his dispute resolution practice geographically along a corridor between Inverness and Lake City, but, like other UWWM mediators, he will travel wherever his clients desire. "I look forward to working with Upchurch Watson White & Max in helping the lawyers and citizens of Florida to settle their cases," Mr. Schwait says. Mr. Schwait is already well known among attorneys in the Eighth Judicial Circuit (Levy, Alachua, Gilchrist, Union, Bradford and Baker counties); he is serving his sixth term as the circuit's sole representative to the Florida Bar Board of Governors and has long been active in the local bar association.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (April 14, 2016) - Brandon Peters, who mediates throughout the state with Upchurch Watson White & Max, recently has been named by the University of Florida Self-Insurance Program to a panel of presuit mediators for medical malpractice cases at six participating institutions. Randall C. Jenkins, administrator of five of the six Florida Board of Governors' self-insurance programs, offers some history, beginning with the J. Hillis Miller Health Center Self-Insurance Program, which dates to 1971 at UF. "It was one of the first, if not the first, of its kind in the United States and set a standard for liability protection in the academic health care setting." Since then, "Florida has expanded the State University System’s health care education programs to virtually all areas in the Sunshine State. Self-Insurance Programs (SIPs) have been created by the Florida Board of Governors for the Florida State University College of Medicine, the University of Central Florida College of Medicine, Florida International University College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University College of Medicine and the University of South Florida Health Science Center, joining the Self-Insurance Program at the University of Florida Gainesville and Jacksonville campuses."

MIAMI (April 6, 2016) -- Mediator/Arbitrator Ricardo J. Cata will moderate an April 13 panel discussion, "The Role of Mediation in Resolving U.S. Claims Against Cuba," at the American Bar Association Section of International Law 2016 Spring Meeting in New York City. As normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations intensifies, so do the questions surrounding what will happen if individual transactions and longer-term deals go wrong in the future. It was recently addressed by Monika Gonzalez Mesa in a story for the South Florida Daily Business Review. No doubt, it will be hard to overcome history. A summary for Mr. Cata's upcoming panel explains: The U.S. and Cuban governments are already negotiating thousands of certified U.S. claims against Cuba, "with an estimated value of $8 billion, and three court judgments, with present value of over $3 billion." In return, Cuba asserts $157 billion in damages from the U.S. embargo and $270 million of assets frozen in U.S. banks.

For the fourth consecutive year, Upchurch Watson White & Max is sponsoring the major fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida: Bowl for Kids' Sake. The 2016 effort is set for consecutive Saturdays, April 23 and 30, at Bowl America Southside, 11141 Beach Blvd. in Jacksonville. Jacksonville-based shareholder and mediator Robert A. "Bob" Cole is a 12-year member of the organization's board of directors and has solidified the relationship between UWWM and the local Big Brothers Big Sisters. Nationally, BBBS has a longtime association with the legal community, having been founded in 1904 by a court clerk whose New York courtroom had seen a growing influx of boys.