12 | The Summation
Leaving a Legacy Built to Last
for the death of a wage earner. The biggest wrongful death verdict in the country.” After the enormous verdict, Levin was invited to be a part of an elite group of attorneys called the Inner Circle of Advocates and he was featured in People Magazine, as well as other national publications like the Wall Street Journal and prominent legal journals. The case made headlines not only for the amount, but also because it was one of the first times a structuredsettlement was used in a personal injury case, which has since become common place.
Attorney Fred Levin on Practicing Law and What’s Next for His Firm by Mollye Barrows
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he late legal legend Fred Levin sat down for an interview on his larger-than-life legacy just a few months before he passed on January 12, 2021, due to complications from COVID-19. Before the coronavirus hit last year, the headline making attorney was still heading into the office every day and working cases. Fred Levin built his career on innovation, hard work and perseverance; qualities he said remain instilled in Levin Papantonio Rafferty, the practice he helped build into a national law firm. Fred Levin approached every case expecting to win and whether he was trying a multi-million dollar personal injury case or settling a small insurance claim, he put in the time, work and research it took to be prepared for anything that would stop him from achieving victory for his client. He wasn’t hindered by what others expected or how much was at
stake; he plowed ahead anticipating victory, and it’s that innovative drive that helped him succeed. Last fall, he talked about some of his favorite cases and what he sees as the future of personal injury law, including for his own firm. “When a client came to see me they got it all, there was no B.S., even on the smallest of cases they got full preparation,” explained attorney Fred Levin. “You can ask the judges. Judge Blanchard, who the Pensacola judicial building is named for, he wrote the bar that I was the best in this area and I was best in the State of Florida, maybe even in the nation, as a trial lawyer. It’s not because I had anything special, it’s because of preparation.” It was preparation and innovation that launched him from everyday personal injury attorney to the cover of People magazine in 1980. That’s when Levin won the biggest wrongful death verdict in the country. A Pensacola doctor and his wife died after an L & N train derailed and spilled anhydrous
ammonia near their home and they were unable to escape the toxic fumes. Their two young children survived, but were seriously injured. Levin and his team were able to show similar accidents had been happening on a regular basis, but until the accident involving Dr. Jon Thorshov’s family, no one had been killed or injured. Despite previous complaints about trains going too fast, little to no action had been taken to remedy the problem that was causing the trains to derail. Fred Levin made his case in court and won. “We’d been offered two million dollars to settle both death cases and I just thought it was worth a lot more. I worked it like crazy. We knew it was going to be a big case. The train shot the track. Two deaths. Dr. Thorshov died immediately and then his wife died 75 days later and they left two children, a boy and a girl,” Levin recalled. “We ended up getting over $18-million. It was at the time the largest verdict for the death of a housewife in the country and it was also the largest verdict
It was the beginning of what would become a long list of innovative achievements both in and out of the courtroom including orchestrating the legislation that led to Florida’s class action lawsuit against Big Tobacco, resulting in a $13.2 billion settlement; his $10 million dollar donation to the University of Florida in 1999 was the largest private contribution to any law school at the time and resulted in the school being named after him and propelling the Levin College of Law to where it is today; and even his groundbreaking legal advertising. Fred’s popular “I’ll Personally Return Your Call” ad campaign was named the best legal ad in the country by a national marketing agency and later, after becoming frustrated with the cost of advertising, Fred convinced other members of his law firm to invest in Pensacola’s BLAB-TV in the 1980’s so he could start a legal show, one of the first of its kind. The station eventually developed into a 24-hour cable access channel that gave a variety of professionals a platform to talk about their business. Fred also became a familiar face on the national cable channel, HBO, as manager of Olympic athlete and prize winning boxer, Roy Jones, Jr., also from Pensacola. Jones, Jr.’s father had come to see Levin’s brother, Stanley Levin, about representing
