UB Law School Gears up for Sixth Annual Trial Competition

Release Date: November 12, 2009

Nearly 130 law students from 32 colleges and universities will descend on the courtrooms in the Buffalo City Court building on Nov. 13 to test their legal mettle and wits at the University at Buffalo Law School’s sixth annual Buffalo-Niagara National Mock Trial Competition.

Seventy-three mock trials will be conducted before more than 150 local lawyers and judges who have volunteered to serve as evaluators in the national competition running through Nov. 16. The law student advocates will try both sides of a mock murder case before the local judges and trial lawyers

“This is far and away the biggest competition in the country,” said Hon. Thomas P. Franczyk, competition director and co-director of trial advocacy in the UB Law School. “The combined support from our law school, court system and bar association is phenomenal.”

This year’s case was drafted by Syracuse University Law School Professor Travis Lewin — who was Franczyk’s trial team coach at Syracuse University Law School in the early 1980s. The case involves the murder of a law school dean, shot to death in his office. The defendant is a law professor who was the dean’s rival for the attentions of a popular law school co-ed.

“You’ve got a dead dean, a femme fatale and a slew of suspects to go around,” Franczyk said. “Professor Lewin assured me the fact pattern is entirely fictional.”

The event includes a welcome breakfast in City Court on 9:30 a.m. Nov. 13 and an awards banquet in Pettibone’s Grille in downtown Buffalo at 7 p.m. Nov. 14. The championship round will be held 2 p.m. Nov. 16 in the State Supreme Court ceremonial courtroom. State Supreme Court Justice and UB Law School Evidence Professor Kevin M. Dillon will preside.

At the conclusion of the final round, the Best Advocate award will be presented in honor of Matthew J. Schnirel, a 2008 UB Law School graduate and former trial team member who died in a plane crash in April while returning home to Amherst from Ohio.

In addition to UB Law School, the competition will include students from Fordham University, Pace University, St. John’s University, Syracuse University, Barry University, Florida Coastal School of Law, Nova Southeastern University, Chicago-Kent College of Law, University of Illinois, John Marshall Law School, Duquesne University and Temple University.

Also, Thomas Jefferson University, Widener University, University of Georgia, Georgia State University, Northern Kentucky University, St. Mary’s University, South Texas College of Law, University of Connecticut, Pacific McGeorge School of Law, Cumberland University, Campbell University, Faulkner University, Creighton University, University of Wisconsin, University of Akron, Thomas M. Cooley Law School, Michigan State University, American University and Catholic University of America.

UB Law School to Host Veterans Day Conference to Help Military Personnel Obtain Benefits

Release Date: November 6, 2009

Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009
1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
UB Law School
Room 106 O’Brian Hall

Contact: Melinda Saran,
(716) 645-6223 or saran@buffalo.edu

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The University at Buffalo Law School will host a Veterans Day symposium at 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 10 in 106 O’Brian Hall on UB’s North Campus designed to explore ways to make it easier for U.S. military and service-members to obtain their entitled benefits.

The conference will feature speakers with professional and legal expertise, an established commitment to the needs of veterans and extensive first-hand military experience.

Panel members will include: Hon. Eugene F. Pigott Jr., associate judge on the New York Court of Appeals; Hon. Robert T. Russell Jr., Buffalo City Court judge who started the nation’s first Veterans Treatment Court, a legal venue designed to address veterans’ needs and who has been instrumental in establishing several dozen similar courts throughout the country; and Town of Amherst Justice Mark Farrell, who started the first veterans treatment court in Amherst.

Also on the panel will be Patrick W. Welch, director of the Erie County Office of Veterans Services, and UB Law School student John Soron, president of the UB Law School Armed Forces Student Association.

“Last year the Bar Association of Erie County formed a committee to specifically address veterans and service-members legal issues,” said Michael Lancer, managing attorney for the Buffalo office of Cascone & Kluepfel LLP and chair of the Committee on Veterans’ and Service Members’ Legal Issues of the Bar Association of Erie County. “The purpose of this committee is to ensure that veterans and service-members receive proper legal services. There are so many more of them coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan that there is a heightened need for services.”

Lancer, a non-combat veteran who earned the rank of major after 10 years in the U.S. Army, said the UB conference comes at a crucial time for veterans benefits, both in the magnitude of those in need, and because of the quickly changing legal landscape that determines whether these service-members obtain these benefits.

Prominent in the topics to be discussed are new legal guidelines that allow private attorneys to advocate for the rights of individual veterans before the Veterans Administration. Before the recent law changed, Lancer said, lawyers were not allowed to represent individual veterans seeking benefits before the VA. Veterans advocates from the Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion would argue their cases in the interests of these veterans.

“Now, lawyers can advocate on behalf of veterans,” said Lancer. “There are so many things happening as far as veterans benefits and veterans issues right now.

“We want to use this conference to celebrate Veterans Day, but at the same time we want the conference to have a future focus and look for ways to best address the needs of veterans.”

Pigott, a judge on the state’s highest court and a Vietnam veteran, said the conference brings together people who not only are committed to responding to the needs of military and service-members, but also those who have established a track record of concrete accomplishments to address the problems.

“As far as I am concerned, our veterans are solid gold,” said Pigott. “I benefited from the services of the Veterans Administration. But I also understand the frustrations of my fellow military colleagues facing the difficulties they have getting their benefits. The need is huge. The VA has an extensive backlog of cases that need to be addressed.”

The conference will also highlight other local efforts to provide more skilled leadership to veterans seeking their benefits. These include a legal education program designed to certify attorneys to represent these veterans bringing claims before the VA. The program, called “Take A Case,” has been administered through the Mental Health Association of Erie County, and will be offered this spring in the UB Law School. The course, designed to significantly increase the legal resources available to veterans going before the VA, is also available to law students as well as attorneys.

“Under this program, law students looking to get their hands on a real case can actually go through this course and represent veterans,” said Lancer. “If we can get law students interested in these issues now, when they graduate and take the bar exam they will be more inclined and able to assist veterans from the get go. There are a number of good things going on.”

Since its founding in 1887, the University at Buffalo Law School — the State University of New York system’s only law school — has established an excellent reputation and is widely regarded as a leader in legal education. Its cutting-edge curriculum provides both a strong theoretical foundation and the practical tools graduates need to succeed in a competitive marketplace, wherever they choose to practice. A special emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, public service and opportunities for hands-on clinical education makes UB Law unique among the nation’s premier public law schools.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system that is its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.

Toward a New Economy: Visiting professor Angela Harris keynotes ‘People of Color’ conference

Angela P. Harris

As the nation’s economy begins to emerge from recession, theorists and teachers need to start thinking about what a “post-capitalist” economic structure could look like, said the keynote speaker at the Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference, held at UB Law School.

The speaker, Angela P. Harris, is visiting UB Law as the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy Distinguished Scholar for the 2009-10 academic year. A tenured faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, she is widely known as a leading voice in critical race theory and feminist legal scholarship.

“America’s New Class Warfare” was the theme of the two-day conference, held Oct. 23 and 24. It was organized by UB Law professors Teresa A. Miller, Athena Mutua and Martha McCluskey, and co-sponsored by the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law, in New York City. Panel discussions took up the issues of class and critical race theory, class struggle in 2009, class in the city, class in the marketplace, class in public policy and class in criminal justice.

Professor Harris’ keynote address was delivered in the elegant confines of the new visitor center at Buffalo’s Darwin Martin House, a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed masterpiece that is being restored as an architectural tourism attraction.

Before an attentive audience, Harris began by citing some of the dozens of cities that have passed laws against feeding the hungry, such as Las Vegas, whose City Council “made it illegal to provide food to poor people in city parks for free or at low cost. It remains legal,” she added wryly, “to provide food to well-off people.” Such laws, she said, are “designed to make the homeless – not homelessness – disappear.”

In reference to the theme of the conference, Harris said, “The question of whether there is or isn’t a new class war is, in some senses, a distraction from a deeper question” – the idea that “capitalism as we know it” is unsustainable. Key, she said, is the end of low-cost oil, which has fueled the United States’ long-term growth of 3 to 7 percent annually. Even new oil drilling and new technologies, she said, won’t reverse that factor, given that emerging economies like China will stretch world oil supplies to the limit. As well, she said, global warming “will produce economic and social devastation.”

As Americans, she said, “our level of collective cultural blindness is such that to say ‘Capitalism is unsustainable’ is unthinkable. The question is, how do we as teachers figure out what comes after capitalism?”

Harris pointed to some principles on which to build “in the coming period of reconstruction.” For example, she said, “There are no culture-free market forces.” Thus class inequality is built into our economic system because human labor is seen as a commodity: “Human flesh is made invisible as flesh when it is reduced to labor power and thus can be bought and sold. … Capitalism teaches us that inequality makes us free.” She also pointed to “nested and chained associations of race, class and gender” entrenched in the free-market system, saying, “We’re taught to accept and practice inequality and subordination” in the name of economic progress.

Finally, she said, a post-capitalist economy might be organized along a most non-economic principle: that of love.

“Love is an idea that has been debased in political theory,” she said. “We’re used to thinking of love in private, romantic things that should be tucked away. But our existing economics is about the allocation of scarcity. Capitalism as we know it is therefore based on anxiety and fear. What might a post-capitalist economy look like if it were based on love?”

She then returned to the anti-homeless ordinances, many of which, she said, were passed in response to the work of Food Not Bombs, a loosely organized volunteer collective that distributes to hungry people surplus food gleaned from grocery stores, bakeries and markets. Harris noted that this work has gotten the organization placed on an FBI anti-terrorism watch list.

“Their fundamental principle is that society has to promote life, not death,” she said. “Taken seriously in the practice of everyday life, this commitment to the non-violent life, to love and the alleviation of suffering, threatens the invisibility and inequality that is so central to the capitalist system. Seen in this way, Food Not Bombs is a revolutionary organization.” But, she said, such a revolution might be the best way forward into a new economy.

‘People of Color’ Legal Scholarship Conference Comes to UB

Release Date: October 22, 2009

NEPOC09 Live
Streaming begins Friday, Oct. 23, 10:30 a.m.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The University at Buffalo Law School will host the annual Northeast People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference (NEPOC) Oct. 23 and 24 in the UB Law School on UB’s North (Amherst) Campus.

The annual event will bring scholars from around the country together to discuss legal issues and topics of concern to people of color.

“This year, the theme of the conference is ‘America’s New Class Warfare,’” says Teresa A. Miller, UB law professor and an organizer of the conference. “The theme was selected to focus attention upon the role of socioeconomic class in creating and perpetuating racial inequality, as well as the new Class Crits (class analysis within a critical legal framework), movement within legal thought, developed by UB Law School professors Athena Mutua and Martha McCluskey.”

This year’s keynote speaker, Angela P. Harris, is an early contributor to Class Crits scholarship, according to Miller. “She is a leading voice in the fields of critical race theory and feminist legal scholarship,” Miller says.

Harris is visiting UB Law as the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy Distinguished Scholar for the 2009-10 academic year, and is a tenured faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law.

Panels participating in the conference are expected to look at class and critical race theory, class struggle in 2009, class in the city, class in the marketplace, class in public policy and class in criminal justice.

Elaine M. Chiu, professor of law at St. John’s University School of Law and a conference organizer, said one possible topic of discussion for the panel would be the extreme levels of scrutiny for the wealthy and the poor.

“The political right has long rallied against the inappropriate scrutiny of the wealthy,” says Chiu. “Indeed, the wealthy and, in particular, the people commanding the heights of corporate America, are under more scrutiny today than usual, thanks to the global financial meltdown. The poor, too, have been under extreme levels of scrutiny over the past several decades.

“Given that our economic system is both racialized and gendered, such that young black men have been the hardest hit by the recession and women continue to earn less money than men, how might the current burdens and policy solutions soften or reinforce these patterns? And what role is law playing in shaping the structures, power, interests, resource uses, individual and group identities and distributions of wealth and recovery?”

The conference is sponsored by the Baldy Center and the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development at St. John’s University School of Law. For more information about the conference, visit the Web page at www.law.buffalo.edu/nepoc09 or contact Miller at tmiller@buffalo.edu.

Since its founding in 1887, the University at Buffalo Law School — the State University of New York system’s only law school — has established an excellent reputation and is widely regarded as a leader in legal education. Its cutting-edge curriculum provides both a strong theoretical foundation and the practical tools graduates need to succeed in a competitive marketplace, wherever they choose to practice. A special emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, public service and opportunities for hands-on clinical education makes UB Law unique among the nation’s premier public law schools.

Former UB President, Tireless Mentor William R. Greiner Retires from UB Faculty

Release Date: October 21, 2009

Listen to WBFO’s interview with
William Greiner

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Former University at Buffalo president, provost and longtime Law School professor William R. Greiner, who earned the unofficial title of quintessential university citizen, has retired for health reasons after 42 years of serving the university he loved.

Greiner, UB’s 13th president whose lasting contributions include leading the university’s drive to upgrade its athletic program to the NCAA Division I level, reluctantly cut short due to medical issues what he called his “second stage of retirement” following his 13-year tenure as president from 1991 to 2004.

“I was hoping to continue the next stage of my career in my mentoring role,” said Greiner, 75, who up until his retirement was still active in the classroom, despite health concerns and a multiple bypass surgery. “We’ll see. I just have to focus on feeling better.”

Last year Greiner published the thought-provoking book, Location, Location, Location, which chronicles factors leading to construction of UB’s North Campus in Amherst, and debunks the urban legend that the decision to build in Amherst, and not in Buffalo, was made for dubious or politically short-sighted reasons.

For the past five years, Greiner has taught courses for the UB Law School and Graduate School of Education.

His list of accomplishments at UB includes launch of the most ambitious fundraising campaign in university and SUNY history, construction of state-of-the-art student residence halls, the establishment of several research institutes and research centers; and years of dedicating himself as a tireless and strategic administrator, as well as a beloved professor and mentor.

When asked about the proudest accomplishment of his distinguished career at UB, Greiner said: “It is the people and careers I was able to help over the course of these many years, at the university and in the community.

“I’m most proud of the people we were able to advance. I helped recruit some of them and hold on to some of them, and I’m very proud of that.”

News of Greiner’s retirement brought an outpouring of admiration and appreciation from UB leadership, administrators and faculty. UB President John B. Simpson praised Greiner’s passionate tenure as president and his ongoing support of the university.

“From his front-row seats at countless Bull games to his impassioned support for UB’s growth and development, Bill Greiner has — and continues to be — the consummate UB citizen,” Simpson said. “As Bill’s successor, I have benefited not only from his wide experience and institutional knowledge, but also from his remarkable ability to inspire love for UB from so many others.

“In moving ahead with our strategic planning for UB 2020 and beyond, we build on President Greiner’s many achievements, his intellectual range and dedication to mentoring future scholars and, in particular, his abiding belief in the university he has served with such distinction.”

UB Provost Satish K. Tripathi said, “Bill Greiner dedicated his professional life to UB. Those who know Professor Greiner, those who worked under his leadership and those who were students under his tutelage have a true appreciation of his untiring commitment to UB.

“Looking out across our university, we see Bill Greiner’s corpus of work, including a residential student experience, Division I athletics, a world-class faculty and innovative research across the disciplines. We as a university community owe so much of our success and future successes to UB’s 13th president.”

Law School Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Law Makau W. Mutua said Greiner has provided invaluable advice to the Law School and has been a mentor “to countless law students.”

“Wherever I travel in the country, he is fondly remembered by UB Law alumni,” Mutua added. “Professor Greiner’s loyalty and selfless service to the Law School and to UB has made our community a better place. He and his wife, Carol, will continue to be valued members of our community.”

Law School Vice Dean for Academic Affairs James A. Gardner echoed Mutua’s thoughts.

“Bill Greiner has always been a citizen of the university in the fullest sense,” Gardner said. “The foremost question in his mind at every moment is always how can he contribute to the well-being of UB, the Law School, his students, his colleagues and his community.

“Given the range and depth of his experience, virtually anything Bill chooses to do always represents a significant contribution,” Gardner added.

Greiner is known among the UB community for remaining true to his roots, driving a car with the license plate UB13, referring to his position as the university’s 13th president. While serving as president in the 1990s, he cultivated many of the Buffalo-UB alliances that have blossomed under the current Simpson administration at UB.

Greiner’s affiliation with the university began in 1967 when he joined the faculty of the UB Law School. He served for seven years as the university’s first provost before his appointment as president in 1991. Throughout his more than four decades of UB service, Greiner’s dedication and commitment to students was his trademark.

UB awarded its highest award, the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal — given for service to the university and the region — to Greiner at the May 2003 commencement ceremony. At that time, UB Council Chair Jeremy M. Jacobs remarked that Greiner’s “outstanding leadership has ensured UB’s place among the nation’s best public research universities, and his passionate advocacy for Buffalo Niagara has led directly to increased opportunities for greater regional economic development.”

In 2004, UB established the William R. Greiner Scholarship Fund in his honor. Former UB Law School Dean Nils Olsen said the reason Greiner received this honor highlighted one of Greiner’s greatest priorities during his tenure as provost, president and professor: UB students.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.

Will Judicial Judgment Change Cyberspace?

Expert on intellectual property rights warns of the real-world implications of a current legal trend

Release Date: October 20, 2009

Mark Bartholomew

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The struggle of American courts to control the explosion of intellectual property rights violations on some of the most traveled highways of cyberspace poses a legal challenge to the judicial system with implications that could threaten the survival of Web sites clicked on by the average Internet user every day, a University at Buffalo Law School expert on online intellectual property issues said today.

A disturbing trend in these complicated copyright and trademark cases is a judicial tendency to borrow precedents from criminal law, explains Mark Bartholomew, UB associate professor of law, whose new research, Cops, Robbers and Search Engines: The Questionable Role of Criminal Law in Contributory Infringement Doctrine, is forthcoming in the Brigham Young University Law Review.

“The problem is that what makes sense for liability in criminal law does not necessarily make sense in the world of intellectual property,” says Bartholomew. “It turns out that the rules of criminal law are based on very different theoretical justifications than the rules of intellectual property law.”

Much of the issue revolves around what is known as “contributory infringement law,” a legal principle that deals with someone or an organization that helps someone else commit an act of copyright or trademark infringement. This can occur either by encouraging infringers, renting out commercial space where they could sell illegal material, or providing money or technological expertise to illegally copy something from cyberspace.

“Technically speaking, none of these entities would be guilty of infringement because they did not do the illegal copying themselves,” Bartholomew says. “But under the doctrine of contributory infringement, they can be held liable and suffer the same legal penalties as the direct infringer, the person who did the copying.”

And the idea of “contributory infringement” is much more common than the legal term would indicate. Mainstream search engines such as Google, Internet auction houses such as eBay and credit card companies such as Visa have all faced major litigation accusing them or their employees of knowing others were using their services to illegally copy information, and holding them responsible for the infringement of others. Colleges and universities who provide the computer infrastructure that allows students to post and illegally download digital files of copyrighted works also have been charged under these contributory infringement laws.

“Think of any major Web site you use that allows people to post content or search the Internet,” Bartholomew says. “Chances are that Web site has had to think long and hard about potential liability for contributory infringement.”

The problem comes when American judges look to use the legal grounds used to punish those convicted of criminal laws for those charged with violating intellectual property rights, according to Bartholomew. Remaking contributory infringement law in criminal law’s image would be “a mistake,” he says. Criminal law is used to punish morally inappropriately behavior, Bartholomew says. “To act immorally, you have to know what you are doing, and it is that guilty mental state that criminal law tries to detect and punish.”

But intellectual property law is fueled by what Bartholomew calls an “instrumental” principle. “It seeks to generate the greatest number of expressive or inventive works in society as possible, not to punish those who violate some sort of moral code.” In general terms, modern intellectual property law doesn’t care if you knew what you were doing was right or wrong. Instead, it is concerned with what the aggregate effects are of your actions on the larger society. In other words, intellectual property law asks whether your conduct will result in less creative work being shared with the world, Bartholomew says.

“It therefore makes sense for contributory infringement law to focus more on the material-contribution side of the equation and less on the mental state of accused individuals,” he says. “The two legal doctrines are trying to accomplish two different things.”

Bartholomew’s legal recommendations have major implications for virtually everyone who uses these electronic platforms – “the millions of individuals who engage in intellectual property infringement every day,” as he describes it — as well as the giant companies who have become the bellwethers for cyberspace commerce.

“The courts are struggling with whether or not to hold these Internet giants accountable. And this is a decision with big implications for all of us,” says Bartholomew. “If search engines and Web sites displaying user-generated content find themselves responsible for greater policing of their own sites to root out infringement, that will cost a lot of money.

“If the standard for contributory infringement is set low enough, Internet intermediaries would have to allocate millions to hire staff to scan their own Web sites for infringing activity. Some of them are already doing this. If the standard is too low and the costs of policing the Web too onerous, this could even threaten the survival of the Web sites that we use everyday. And if the standard is too unpredictable, investment in innovative digital technology may be chilled from concern over the paralyzing costs of defending contributory infringement suits.”

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.

Professor James A. Gardner to Speak on the Role of Persuasion in Election Campaigns

James A. Gardner

James A. Gardner, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Joseph W. Belluck and Laura L. Aswad Professor of Civil Justice at the University at Buffalo Law School, will speak on the topic, “What Are Campaigns For? The Role of Persuasion in Electoral Law and Politics,” on Tuesday, October 27, at 7:30 pm in Temple Sinai, 50 Alberta Drive, Amherst (off Eggert, behind Northtown Plaza).

The presentation is part of the 43rd Annual Jewish Community Bookfair and Cultural Arts Festival. A reception will follow.

According to Gardner, “When we ask, what are campaigns for, people are often pretty sure they know the answer, but do they? It’s not nearly as clear as most people assume. Find out the truth!” he says.

Gardner makes a compelling case that our expectations regarding political campaigns are unrealistic, distracting us from the most formidable challenges that our democracy faces.

Adeptly combining history, political science, and law, Gardner argues that we should pay much greater attention to engaging citizens between campaigns rather than just during them.

He is the author or editor of five books and more than forty articles.

At UB Law School, Gardner also directs the Edwin F. Jaeckle Center for State and Local Democracy.

After earning a B.A. from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago, Gardner practiced law at the United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, in Washington, D.C. He subsequently taught at Western New England College School of Law, William and Mary, and the University of Connecticut before coming to UB in 2001.

The cost to attend the program is $6. Tickets may be purchased in advance by mail, at either the JCC front desk or at Temple Sinai before the program begins.

Vikki L. Pryor ‘78 Named one of the 50 Most Powerful Women in New York by Crain’s New York Business

Vikki Pryor '78

Vikki Pryor’s arrival as SBLI USA president and CEO in 1999 resulted in an immediate turnaround for the mutual life insurance company based in New York City.

Recently named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in New York by Crain’s, New York, Pryor led SBLI USA’s conversion into a diversified national financial services firm that since 1939 had been available only in New York State. By bringing SBLI USA into 49 states, the company boasts almost $16 billion in insurance, more than $1.5 billion in assets and serves some 300,000 customers.

Some of that growth occurred through a commitment to diversity: women, African- Americans, Asians and Latinos, among others. Women comprise more than half the company’s customer base, 57 percent of SBLI’s employees and 48 percent of its management team.

The first African-American woman to head an insurance company in the United States, the Chicago native earned her undergraduate degree at UB in history and her JD three years later.

Pryor was a trial lawyer in Chicago for the Department of the Treasury specializing in tax law. Difficulty in landing a job with a law firm in Chicago resulted in her attending evening classes at the University of Illinois-Chicago, where she went on to earn her MBA.

Her career has included positions as senior vice president at Oxford Health Plans and at Blue Cross/Blue Shield in Massachusetts, as well as a director at Allstate Life Insurance.

A member of the UB Law School’s Dean’s Advisory Council and the recipient of the school’s Distinguished Alumni Award and the UB Law Students of Color Distinguished Alumni Award, Pryor created the Marie Nesbitt Promise Prize, bestowed annually on a student of African descent who has shown academic achievement and professional promise during the first year in the school. The award honors the memory of her grandmother, the great-granddaughter of slaves whose formal education ended in third grade, but a woman of strong opinions and deeply held principles, and an inspiration to everyone with whom she had contact.

Service and social responsibility are key elements of SBLI’s mission. Since her arrival, the company has donated more than $750,000 to local and national charities.

Tort Reform is Not Enough to Improve Nation’s Health Care, Says Law Researcher

Calls for focus on cause of lawsuits — medical errors that kill 200,000 patients a year

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Tort reform — legislation that aims to reduce medical malpractice suits — will not cut medical costs and improve health care unless the government addresses the proliferation of unnecessary medical errors that victimize hundreds of thousands of patients every year, says Ruqaiijah Yearby (pronounced Roo-KY-ah), MPH, JD, associate professor in the University at Buffalo Law School.

Yearby’s research considers how laws enacted to grant equal access to quality health care can actually pose barriers to the disenfranchised, and she is critical of health care reform efforts that do not address the far-reaching problem of medical errors.

Finding ways to curb what she calls the “alarming rate of these medical errors,” will not only reduce medical malpractice suits but save lives and reduce the misery of innocent victims, she says.

Yearby, who directs the Joint JD/Master of Public Health Program at UB, cites data from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, regarding medical errors and their consequences.

“The IOM concludes that about 98,000 Americans died from unnecessary medical errors in 2000,” she says, “deaths that cost the nation approximately $39 billion.” In August of this year, she adds, additional data showed that deaths from unnecessary medical errors have increased to about 200,000, making medical error the third-leading cause of death in the United States.

“Instead of adopting the IOM’s recommendations to prevent such medical errors, however, federal and state governments have elected to focus on tort reform,” Yearby points out.

While such reform has led to minimal reductions in the costs of health insurance and a reduction in medical malpractice suits, Yearby says the underlying problem of poor-quality health care persists.

In 2003, for instance, she points out that Texas voters approved a plan that capped non- economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $250,000.

“The result,” she says, “was that the number of malpractice lawsuits was cut in half, malpractice premiums declined by 30 percent and there has been a 30 percent increase in newly licensed physicians.”

“Despite this, however,” Yearby says, “one in four Texans remains without health insurance — the highest percentage of uninsured in the country — and health care spending in Texas is growing faster than in any state.”

“Obviously, tort reform alone is not the answer,” she says, “because it does not address the root cause of malpractice lawsuits: the continuation of unnecessary medical errors.”

Instead of spending all this effort on tort reform, Yearby calls for federal and governments to do something to discourage the errors themselves. She recommends measures that would lay the foundation for tracking and preventing medical errors, thereby making malpractice lawsuits unnecessary.

“We need to create a mandatory national medical error reporting system and adopt initiatives that mandate the disclosure of medical errors,” she says, and also strongly urges states to require health care facilities and health care practitioners to apologize for errors and compensate patients or families for harm.

“State initiatives like those in Michigan and other states that require the disclosure of medical errors are the best models for health care reform because everyone gets what they want: reasonable insurance rates,” Yearby says, “a fair partnership between the medical profession and government, and, perhaps most important, better care for patients, who need a system they can trust.”

New York is another state that has addressed the problem, but in an inadequate way, Yearby says. She points out that while New York requires mandatory reporting of medical errors, it does not use this information to regulate health care facilities or health care practitioners, and it does not disclose the information to patients.

Since its founding in 1887, the University at Buffalo Law School — the State University of New York system’s only law school — has established an excellent reputation and is widely regarded as a leader in legal education. Its cutting-edge curriculum provides both a strong theoretical foundation and the practical tools graduates need to succeed in a competitive marketplace, wherever they choose to practice. A special emphasis on interdisciplinary studies, public service and opportunities for hands-on clinical education makes UB Law unique among the nation’s premier public law schools.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.

Trial Advocacy Program Ramps Up

As the Law School continues to refine its legal skills program under the direction of Professor Charles Patrick Ewing, the school is consolidating the way it teaches one of the most important of those skills: trial advocacy.

Erie County Judge Thomas P. Franczyk and Christopher O’Brien, a partner in the Buffalo law firm O’Brien Boyd, are co-directors of the school’s Trial Advocacy Program. Franczyk, a former Erie County prosecutor, has been coaching trial teams and teaching trial advocacy and drafting case problems since 1994. O’Brien, a trial attorney, teaches trial advocacy for the National Institute of Trial Advocacy.

The goal of their work, Franczyk says, is to achieve “a greater continuity of purpose, consistency of approaches and quality of communication among instructors so that all of our students receive the best possible training to become effective and ethical trial lawyers.”

The program has two parts: trial technique classes and the trial competition program.

Trial Technique is a one-semester course that teaches the fundamentals of trial advocacy as students prepare and try a civil or criminal case. Each week, the students work on different aspects of the case and the trial process. They also learn the nuts and bolts of lawyering, such as how to use exhibits to present their case in a dynamic and persuasive manner, how to refresh a friendly witness’ recollection, and how to impeach an adversary witness with a prior inconsistent statement or omission. Their work, live and on videotape, is critiqued and analyzed by their
instructors and fellow students.

The Trial Technique classes culminate in a final trial session conducted before local judges and trial lawyers, who serve as evaluators. The students take all they have learned and put it together in a realistic trial in a downtown courtroom.

The second part of the trial advocacy program, the Law School’s broad participation in trial competitions, deepens and intensifies the training for students especially interested in ligation.

Second- and third-year students are invited to try out for one of UB Law’s national teams. They prepare a fact pattern, deliver an opening statement and cross-examine an opposing witness before the coaches, who then decide which students will be selected for which teams.

From Nov. 13 to 16, UB Law School will host the sixth annual Buffalo-Niagara National Mock Trial competition. Top student advocates representing 32 law schools from across the country (including UB) will descend on Buffalo’s downtown courthouse at 50 Delaware Ave. to try a murder case before local judges and trial attorneys.

This fall, in addition to Buffalo-Niagara, UB Law teams will take part in national competitions hosted by Michigan State University, St. John’s University, Loyola University of Los Angeles and Georgia State University. In the spring semester, UB Law teams will compete in the National Trial Competition (regional hosted by Syracuse University), the AAJ competition (formerly ATLA) in New York City, and the National Ethics Competition hosted by Pacific
McGeorge Law School.

A new part of the trial advocacy program will be a series of January-term bridge courses, with two new instructors: civil trial attorney James Scime and career prosecutor Diane LaVallee ’83. They join a long list of adjunct instructors that includes judges, trial attorneys and others with demonstrated skills in trial advocacy and teaching.