1. Fred Levin was best known for rewriting Florida's Medicaid Third-Party Recovery Act to allow the State of Florida to sue and recover billions of dollars from the tobacco industry for smoking-related illnesses.
66 Facts About Fred Levin
1. 2.
Fred Levin was accused of two murders, and often met with controversy because of his relentless fight for justice against big companies.
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Fred Levin grew up in a conservative Jewish household, with his mother, father, and brothers.
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Fred Levin's father was a pawnbroker catering to the large military presence in the Pensacola area, and ran the concessions at the Pensacola Greyhound Park and at a store on Pensacola Beach.
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Fred Levin attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, as an undergraduate, but did not do well academically.
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Fred Levin was a member of Pi Lambda Phi, one of two Jewish fraternities on campus.
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Fred Levin began law studies in 1958, as a student enrolled in the College of Law at the University of Florida.
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Fred Levin approached the dean of the law school, asking for time off from school to attend his brother's funeral.
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Fred Levin drove from Gainesville to Pensacola, but Martin died before he arrived at his brother's bedside in Pensacola.
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Fred Levin began his legal career in family law, but once a client explained that her husband said he would kill her divorce lawyer, he chose to switch to general civil law.
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Fred Levin won the case and decided he wanted to become a trial lawyer.
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In 1980, Fred Levin received a jury verdict for the family in the amount of $18 million.
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Fred Levin received more than thirty jury verdicts in excess of $1,000,000.
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Fred Levin was listed in every edition of Best Lawyers in America; was a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates; and was inducted into the National Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame in 2009.
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Fred Levin played a significant role in the litigation brought by numerous states against the tobacco industry during the 1990s.
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Fred Levin was at a trial lawyer conference when another attorney saw Fred Levin drinking whiskey and smoking a cigarette.
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Fred Levin did not believe the legal theory would be successful, explaining that the tobacco industry had never paid a penny to anyone as a result of smoking injuries.
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Fred Levin returned to Pensacola and thought about the potential case, and went to the Florida statute allowing the state of Florida to recover against individuals and companies that harm someone where the State has to pay Medicaid.
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Fred Levin thought that with a few changes in the statute's language, he could rewrite the law so that the State could sue the tobacco industry without the tobacco industry being able to raise the numerous defenses it had relied upon in winning the cases against it.
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Fred Levin made the changes, and then approached a good friend who was the dean of the Florida Senate.
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Fred Levin had a lengthy and hostile relationship with the Florida Bar whom he often and openly referred to as "lily-white elitists, country club, men".
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Fred Levin has been prosecuted by the Florida Bar on two occasions, and formally investigated on another two occasions.
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Fred Levin mocked law enforcement for arresting and prosecuting local bookies, as if they were an elite swat team fighting terrorism.
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Fred Levin commented that the local law enforcement and prosecutors wouldn't have the guts to go down to the high crime streets in Pensacola to arrest drug dealers and rapists because they would be scared to get shot.
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Fred Levin was found guilty and a public reprimand was recommended.
26.
Fred Levin challenged the decision to the United States Supreme Court, but in the end he received his public reprimand.
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Fred Levin won both cases and received large jury verdicts, but both verdicts were taken away on appeal because the appellate court believed Fred Levin inflamed the jury by calling the defense ridiculous.
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The Florida Bar then brought charges against Fred Levin alleging that his closing argument violated ethics rules because he was stating his personal opinion.
29.
Fred Levin is currently the 16th largest utility company in the world, and the fourth largest in the US.
30.
Fred Levin became embroiled in the incident because he was one of the last people to speak with Jake, and he was legal counsel for Gulf Power.
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Fred Levin's law firm had been serving as private counsel for Gulf Power for many years, and Fred Levin was a close personal friend of Jake.
32.
Southern Company wanted Fred Levin to convince Jake to resign, but Jake wished to remain employed and clear his name.
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Southern Company finally agreed to allow Fred Levin to testify, but only on the limited subject of his conversation with Jake on the morning of the plane crash.
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Southern Company would not permit Fred Levin to talk to the National Transportation Safety Board or the Escambia County Sheriff's Office.
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Also, someone called the FBI stating that Fred Levin would be killed if he were to testify.
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Fred Levin testified with US Marshals escorting him to and from the hearing.
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In 1989, Fred Levin began managing the boxing career of Roy Jones Jr.
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Fred Levin was awarded the outstanding competitor in the games by the International Amateur Boxing Association.
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The fact that Fred Levin was chosen to help manage Roy's career was controversial considering he had no experience in the boxing business.
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Fred Levin negotiated a middleweight championship fight for Roy against James Toney.
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Fred Levin received the 1995 Al Buck Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America as boxing manager of the year; and received the Rocky Marciano Foundation President's Award in 2001.
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Fred Levin's last fight with Roy involved heavyweight champion John Ruiz on March 1,2003.
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When Fred Levin entered the University of Florida College of Law in 1958, George Starke, the first African American student to enter a public institution in the state of Florida, entered with Fred Levin's class.
44.
Fred Levin was dressed in a suit, and the rest of us were dressed like bums.
45.
Fred Levin goes home, and I clean up and go to the exam, and he never shows up.
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Fred Levin had gone home just to lay down for a second [snap of fingers], slept through the exam.
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Shortly after becoming a lawyer in Pensacola, Fred Levin nominated Nathaniel Dedmond to be the first African American as a member of the Escambia-Santa Rosa Counties Bar Association.
48.
Fred Levin received the Perry Nichols Award in 1994, which is the highest honor bestowed by the Florida Justice Association, and is given in recognition of a person's lifetime achievements in the pursuit of justice.
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Fred Levin was named in the October 4,1999, edition of The National Law Journal as one of the "Top Ten Litigators for 1999", which again included both plaintiff and defense counsel.
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In 1999, Fred Levin was honored at the United Nations by being made a chief in the Republic of Ghana.
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Fred Levin was a member of the Inner Circle of Advocates, an organization limited to 100 of the top trial attorneys in the country, and has been listed in every edition of the publication Best Lawyers in America.
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In 2016, Fred Levin was named Trial Lawyer of the Year by The National Trial Lawyers.
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In December 2017, Fred Levin was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws from University of West Florida.
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In 1995, Fred Levin gave a professorship at the University of West Florida, in honor of his father.
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In 1998, Fred Levin gave the University of Florida law school $10 million, the second largest cash donation ever given to a public law school as of that time.
56.
In 2006, Levin gave the University of Florida law school $2 million to help fund the Martin H Levin Advocacy Center.
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In 2013, Fred Levin gave $1 million in memory of his recently deceased wife to the Lubavitch-Chabad Student and Community Center at the University of Florida.
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In 2015, Fred Levin gave $1 million to the YMCA of Northwest Florida to support the construction of its new facility in downtown Pensacola.
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In 2016, Fred Levin gave $1 million to the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition to help fund the institute's 30,000 square foot research facility in artificial intelligence, robotics, human-centered computing, agile and distributed computing, and many related areas.
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In 2017, Fred Levin gave $550,000 to the University of West Florida to establish the Reubin O'D.
61.
In 2018, Fred Levin gave an $8 million home, including its personal belongings, to the University of West Florida.
62.
In 2019, Fred Levin gave 300,000 shares of Charlotte's Web Holdings, LLC stock to the University of Florida Fred Levin College of Law.
63.
In 2021, Fred Levin donated an additional $40 million to the University of Florida Fred Levin College of Law through his estate.
64.
In January 2016, Fred Levin was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that had metastasized to his brain.
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Fred Levin died from COVID-19 on January 12,2021, after surviving stage 4 lung and brain cancer.
66.
Fred Levin was asymptomatic for 10 days and died within 5 days of experiencing any symptoms.