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Whether a fellow lawyer is in a sticky situation or a civic group needs help,
people tend to turn to this commercial litigator at Tampa’s Hill Ward Henderson
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED AND EDITED BY BETH TAYLOR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MATT MAY
Benjamin H. Hill III
22 SUPERLAWYERS.COM
Q: What’s it like being the lawyer other
attorneys turn to when they’re in trouble?
A: It is a fascinating practice. You’re dealing
with very good lawyers usually … who are
probably much more talented than I am,
and, you know, I’m sitting there giving
them advice.
Q: Obviously, you’ve earned their trust.
A: I’ve tried lawsuits throughout the state.
And slowly but surely, to the extent that
I did a job worthy of remembering, those
lawyers would call on me for assistance.
I think probably one of the greatest
compliments that an attorney can have is
when you try a case against a lawyer on
another side, and two or three years later
that lawyer comes to you for assistance
for their own personal needs, or they’ve
referred one of their good clients to you.
Q: What is a typical legal malpractice
situation?
A: The one I probably get the most of is
the lawyers who have allegedly made
mistakes because they had a conflict
of interest. When they take on a client
and they have other conflicting interests
that arguably do not allow them to give
the client their full attention, and if the
client becomes dissatisfied, there can be
a lawsuit. Those conflicts of interest are
very, very difficult to handle.
Q: Do any cases stand out?
A: I have represented a large number of
very large firms, both in Florida and the
eastern part of the United States; and
those firms, when they are involved in
a legal malpractice action, the matters
are usually very significant. They deal
with an awful lot of money, they deal
with securities, they deal with big pieces
of property, and allegedly they’ve made
mistakes along the way. I did have one
where I was representing a large firm that
was involved in giving advice with respect
to the purchase of 2,000 acres of land
with some 6 to 8 miles of waterfront. You
can appreciate how valuable that piece of
land was. It involved mangroves, it involved
Indian mounds, it involved eagle nests and
just about every other environmentally
protected animal or plant that you can
name. My opponents, the people who were
suing the law firm, were some of the best-known athletes, I can’t go any further than
that, but some of the best-known athletes
in the United States. So it was a pretty
high-profile matter with a lot at stake. [My
client was] accused of not fully informing
[its] client of all the problems associated
with developing the property. The property
today still exists intact, undeveloped, and
the clients blamed the law firm for allowing
them to buy the property and then not
being able to develop it. It turned out that
the law firm did not do anything wrong, but
I don’t want to say that it was an easy case.
Q: You’ve also been involved in some
major issues involving public officials.
A: Probably the highest-profile one in
the Tampa Bay area was when I went up
to Tallahassee and was working with the
governor [as his general counsel]. As a
coincidence, within a week ... three of the
five county commissioners of Hillsborough
were indicted, which caused them to be
removed from office, leaving only two
county commissioners, which is not a
quorum under the law. So Hillsborough
County was literally stymied; could not
transact business in any way; couldn’t
technically sign a paycheck. We had an
emergency situation where we had to find
at least one more county commissioner
to be appointed by the governor; since
I happened to be from Tampa and
happened to be his general counsel at the
time, [I] was charged with going out to find
[one]. I located one county commissioner
who came in and served on an interim
basis until we could locate three more to
serve permanently. It was a real public
crisis at the time. I happened to be there
when that crisis developed, and I happened
to be in a position to help solve the
problem.
Q: How did that end up?
A: The county commissioners came from
different districts in the county, so you had
to find someone not only who was good
but from a certain district. You had the
opportunity to find someone who really
knew something about running a business
or developing. A lot of the successful
people had no desire to serve, but we
were able to find highly qualified people,
[including] the first African-American who
served in county government, and those
three did a tremendous job of bringing the
county back to a functioning county.
