About Carlos Harrison
Carlos Harrison is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, two-time Emmy nominee, and author of 16 books ranging from biographies to legal issues (e.g., The Ghosts of Hero Street, Trained to Kill, and The Memorandum). A graduate of the University of South Florida, his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Miami Herald, People, and other publications. Several of his articles for Super Lawyers have won awards from the Society for Professional Journalists.
Articles written by Carlos Harrison
Walking the Talk
When it comes to diversity, Fort Lauderdale firm Kim Vaughan Lerner means businessListening to the partners at Kim Vaughan Lerner chime in on a freewheeling conference call feels like sitting in with siblings at a family gathering. They finish each other’s sentences, banter playfully, and correct each other’s stories about how they came into the group. Despite that comfortable dynamic, what they most have in common is how different they are. And that, they all agree, is a cornerstone of their firm’s success. “Nobody’s going to be able to address a particular …
Trail Blazer
Amy Emerson hits the ground running, whether she’s taming construction disputes or exploring trailsA movie poster-size photograph on Amy Emerson’s office wall reflects both who she is and who she isn’t. It’s an aerial picture of Manhattan, showing Wall Street and the soaring skyscrapers beyond. But it’s not a place she dreams of being—it’s a challenge she conquered. “I'm not a brick-and-concrete girl,” she says, “but I ran the New York Marathon.” Running is a defining force in Emerson’s life. Her now-husband, environmental litigator Jason Hill, introduced her to …
Technical Difficulties
Or why you should always bring a stack of boxes to courtIn 2017, T.J. Jones represented Dallas photographer Andrea Polito in a defamation trial after a newly married couple attacked Polito on social media over a disputed $125 fee for their wedding album. The posts went viral, destroying Polito’s business. The jury ordered the bride—a lifestyle blogger—and groom to pay Polito just over $1 million. En route to the successful verdict, Jones learned that Murphy’s Law applies to trial apps, too. This was actually my first jury trial ever. We …
Force for Nature
Bill Jackson has taken on cases involving Agent Orange and the Deepwater spill; this one is biggerBill Jackson says the case he’s currently handling is probably his biggest ever. That’s a high bar for someone who helped win $355 million in settlements over Agent Orange contamination of the Passaic River in New Jersey in 2014, then the next year made that amount look tiny by helping Louisiana recover billions in the $20 billion global settlement over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. “I guess, throughout my career,” he says, “each case, as I did it, seemed like I would never get …
'I'm in the Right Place'
How Laura Brown found her niche handling birth injury casesLaura Brown didn’t really plan on following her father and grandfather into the law. But the pre-med training she got before switching to the family’s legal legacy has certainly come in handy. “You have that fundamental basis of understanding of anatomy, physiology, histology,” she says. “So I may get a new topic that I haven’t had before, but I have that basic understanding of the process and, with some reading and studying, it’s pretty natural to pick up and understand on a …
Moving Society Forward
As Frank Scruggs sees it, that is the ministry of his workFrank Scruggs was just a boy, sitting amid a sea of high schoolers in his mother’s American history class, when he determined exactly how he wanted to make a difference in the world. It was the early 1960s, and the Fort Lauderdale elementary school he went to was segregated. So, too, the historic black high school where his mother taught. At the same time, the civil rights movement was in full swing and doors were opening. Scruggs wanted to be part of that change. “From the time I was old …
The Dealmaker
Lobbyist Mark Vane shines at persuading lawmakers to change things. Or, sometimes, keep them the sameMark Vane knows how to get it done. So says Daniel Morales, director of public affairs for Walmart in Texas, who should know. Vane, a lobbyist at Husch Blackwell in Austin, represented Morales’ company, part of a group of retailers that persuaded state lawmakers in 2011 to level the playing field by taxing internet sales just as they taxed brick-and-mortar stores. Vane’s client list also includes The Accountants Coalition, Caterpillar Inc. and Ticketmaster. “He’s got all the bases …
Everything Yvette Ostolaza Needed to Know She Learned at Sears
The Dallas litigator says the pathway to relationship-building is through customer serviceYvette Ostolaza taught herself English as a young child by watching Sesame Street. A daughter of Cuban immigrants, she has been overachieving ever since—fudging a bit on her age to get a job at Sears to fund private high school (and making valedictorian, of course), then crying her way into college (sort of). On a full academic scholarship. Now managing partner of Sidley Austin’s Dallas office, Ostolaza sits on the international corporate law firm’s management committee, dealing with …
Uncapping Pain and Suffering
Three cases converged to kill Florida’s limits on med-mal awardsIt was born controversial and it died controversial, and in between it was, well, controversial. Fourteen years after Florida’s Legislature passed a law limiting pain-and-suffering damages in medical malpractice suits, what was left of that law was brought down by three overlapping appellate decisions. Bringing the final battle to the state Supreme Court in 2017 took a convergence of circumstances—and a lot of tenacity. Three years earlier, in Estate of McCall v. United States—the …
Harley Riedel’s Move
The Tampa attorney is a master at keeping bankrupt companies in the gameHarley Riedel’s brick-lined office sits in the third-floor corner of a historic downtown Tampa building. It is, in many ways, a reflection of the man. Some might have thought to tear down the dilapidated former warehouse and marine-supply business with its century-old roots into Tampa’s past. Instead, when Riedel’s firm purchased it in 1992, he led the effort to do just the opposite—take what was there, strip away what was broken and rebuild what was usable into a showpiece. …
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