Via The Legal Intelligencer:

A Montgomery County jury vindicated Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll on Monday in a breach of fiduciary duty suit brought against the firm by a man seeking between $17 million to $30 million in lost profits plus interest and punitive damages.

Famed Florida litigator Roy Black of Black Srebnick Kornspan & Stumpf represented Epstein along with Boca Raton-based Lance W. Shinder and local counsel Marc R. Steinberg, managing partner of Rubin Glickman Steinberg & Gifford in Lansdale, Pa.

Black handled the opening statements and closing arguments and handled questioning of most of the witnesses, May said.

Black is a criminal defense attorney. He’s apparently an extraordinary one, one of the best in America, but let’s look at his experience:

  • Acquittal of William Kennedy Smith on rape charges in Palm Beach, Florida
  • Acquittal of Eller Media in charges stemming from the bus-bench electrocution of a 12-year-old boy in Miami
  • Dismissal of matter involving Albertson’s, Inc., when the State of Florida charged the Fortune 500 Company with manslaughter in the death of a shoplifter
  • Acquittal of a Miami jewelry supplier and his sales manager on charges they laundered more than $8 million in cocaine profits for Colombian drug lords
  • Acquittal of a Miami attorney charged in an Internet sex case

How does that qualify him to do a legal malpractice, fiduciary duty, and tortious interference case in front of a suburban/rural jury in Pennsylvania? Those are some of the most complicated and boring claims a plaintiff’s trial lawyer will ever have to make. Worse, he was up against a large, well-respected law firm and he represented some guy who wanted to start a payday loan company.

It’d be no different from hiring me for a murder trial. I’m sure Black is more than qualified to defend virtually any defendant on virtually any criminal claim, but that doesn’t mean he can make any  plaintiff’s civil case, much less a complicated, high-stakes one. There’s plenty of room for lawyers to move within their fields, but perhaps not so much outside of that.