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Tod Aronovitz Is A Mensch.

So I thought the Federation reception was pretty good for this type of event.

Lots of judges, some very touching speeches (Judge Gerstein introduced his family and longtime staff, to much applause), and Randy Kroner.

What more can you ask for?

Did you all catch this moving story about Tod Aronovitz' fight for justice for Leonard Krys:

On Nov. 30, 1991, Krys boarded a Lufthansa 747 in Miami, headed to a seminar in Frankfurt, Germany. About an hour out, off the Georgia coast, severe chest pains hit and he turned gray.

The pilot refused to divert or return to Miami. In legal filings, Krys described how a flight attendant forced him back to his seat after he lay down in the aisle, how some passengers complained that they couldn't see the movie because he kept raising his arms, and how other business-class passengers groused about not being able to smoke.

`HE REALLY SUFFERED'

Although a German gynecologist on the plane gave him nitroglycerin tablets, Krys spent nine hours gasping, sweating and clutching his chest.

''He really suffered,'' his wife said. The episode destroyed much of his heart-wall muscle.

''He was bedridden for months and lost his business,'' Sebastian said.

Krys won a lawsuit against Lufthansa in Miami federal court -- a non-jury trial -- which the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld. The airline argued that the incident should have been classified as an accident, per the Warsaw Convention, capping his payout at $75,000.

The United States Supreme Court refused to hear the airline's appeal, and in 1999 awarded Krys and his wife $3 million.

''As a result of his seven-year legal battle . . . domestic carriers for the first time installed defibrillators onboard all their flights,'' said Miami attorney Tod Aronovitz, who represented Krys.

Several lawyers had turned down the case before Krys found Aronovitz, who said he saw ``an honest and sincere man who had undergone a nightmare. . . . He was a man with a very positive attitude toward life, and a pleasure to represent.''

Krys ''filed the lawsuit for all the right reasons,'' Aronovitz said. ``He was looking for an apology and to get them to be more customer-friendly.''

See, what do I always say -- you do well by doing good.

Full post as published by South Florida Lawyers on March 20, 2009 (boomark / email).