Daily Record Financial News &
Monday, September 28, 2015
Vol. 102, No. 226 • Two Sections
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For-profit referral services take a hit
Supreme Court wants new Bar plan by May
Photo by Bobby King
By David Chapman Staff Writer
Nancy Hogshead-Makar at home, where she said her last name “is a magnet for quality porcine-themed decorations.”
Differentkindofchampion Hogshead-Makar fighting for sports equality
By Karen Brune Mathis, Managing Editor Nancy Hogshead-Makar is a civil rights lawyer, athlete and advocate for women in sports. As an Olympic swimmer, she won three gold medals and one silver medal in the 1984 Summer Olympics. She is now the CEO of Champion Women, a nonprofit providing legal advocacy for girls and women in sports. In 2007, Sports Illustrated named her one of the most influential people in the history of Title IX, the federal law enacted 43 years ago that prohibits sex discrimination in education. Sports Illustrated also ranked her as Florida’s 13th greatest athlete overall in the 20th century and she is a member of 12 halls of fame for athletes. Hogshead-Makar, 53, earned her law
degree from Georgetown University Law Center and is an honors graduate of Duke University. She and her husband, Scott Makar, a judge on Florida’s 1st District Court of Appeal, have three children: Aaron, 14, and twins Helen Clare and Millicent, both 10. Hogshead-Makar also is an author and public speaker. What motivated you to focus on promoting equality for women in sports? As an attorney, I really enjoy being the advocate and when you look at the area in which I can make the most difference, it’s athletics. It’s sort of my Zen. How successful are your efforts? Sometimes very successful and sometimes not so much. You might remember in 2009, I sued the Florida High School
Athletic Association, along with a law firm here in town, and we were very successful in a budget-cutting move. This was during the financial crisis. They cut between 20-40 percent of all competitive opportunities, except for football. So that means 30 percent of boys didn’t have cuts and 100 percent of girls had cuts. So, this was kind of a no-brainer. This is not something we should ever have had to involve a court in, but we were very successful in getting all the games restored for both boys and girls across the board. So that was a real win. Some of the current losses are still in process right now. We’re trying to get the NCAA to evaluate whether or not schools are in compliance with Title IX and then not certifying them. Success
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The state Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Florida Bar proposal that would have allowed attorneys to accept referrals from for-profit groups. Shortly after, Grier Wells’ phone started ringing. The text messages started coming. “They were very congratulatory,” said the GrayRobinson shareholder. “I’m not sure why as to me.” Wells led a statewide Bar committee in 2011 that reviewed those services after the governing organization received numerous complaints about the growing amount of advertising. One need only look at buses, billboards, TV — even a Tampa amphitheater — the past five years or so to see how the services had sprung up, Wells said. In Northeast Florida, those ads come from businesses like 1-800-ASKGARY. The 15-member state Bar group Wells worked on its plan for more than a year, with Wells saying he spent five-10 hours a week on the effort. There were public forums. Testimonials and complaints from clients. Legal arguments from each side of the issue. The Bar committee unanimously suggested that attorneys should not accept client referrals from a person, entity or service that also attempts to refer clients to other professional services for the same incident. For example, if a referral service recommended a victim to an attorney in a personal injury case, it couldn’t also recommend a chiropractor or doctor for treatment. The committee noted the potential negative
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Cancer therapy firm calling Jacksonville home
Another public company is apparently calling Jacksonville home, now listing a Downtown office as its headquarters after moving from Seattle. TapImmune Inc. describes itself as an “immunotherapy” company that is researching and developing treatments for cancer and infectious diseases. Its move to Jacksonville is likely tied to its relationship with the Mayo Clinic’s facility in Jacksonville, which recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense for a trial of a
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breast cancer treatment licensed by TapImmune. TapImmune said Mayo Clinic also has a financial interest in the company, but TapImmune’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings do not list Mayo as holding 5 percent or more of its stock. TapImmune has been headquartered in Seattle and it has not made any announcements about moving to Jacksonville, but its most recent quarterly report filed with the SEC last month listed its headquarters address as the
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25th floor of the Bank of America Tower Downtown. That space is leased by Regus, the company that sublets office space to small businesses. TapImmune’s annual report filed in April said the company was leasing a 2,682-square-foot office in Seattle at the time on a
month-to-month basis, and only had one full-time employee. CEO Glynn Wilson did not respond to phone messages and the company also did not respond to a message sent through its website. Wilson and the company did hold a conference call for investors two weeks ago after the announcement of the Mayo Clinic grant. The Defense Department is giving the clinic a five-year $13.3 million grant to test a vaccine intended to prevent the recurrence of a type of breast cancer.
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The vaccine also has the potential to treat ovarian, endometrial and non-small cell lung cancer, TapImmune said. “This news, as you can imagine, is a truly amazing step forward for the company,” Wilson said in the conference call. TapImmune says it has several other medications under development but has no products on the market and has no revenue. It recently completed a recapitalization that brought in $5 million, which allows the company to Basch continued on Page A-10
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