Well, if you’ve not looked at your calendar, hopefully this will remind you that Mother’s Day is this Sunday. Believe it or not, Mother’s Day wasn’t really created in the US at least, until 1908. According to Wikipedia, the first instance of it recorded was in 1908 at a Methodist Church in Grafton, WV. But now it’s official enshrined as the 2nd Sunday in May.
And my Kids and I will be taking my wife out for a special lunch on Sunday. But for the first time in 56 years of life, I won’t be able to celebrate for a woman I called Mom. In 2020, totally unrelated to the pandemic, we lost my Mother In Law, Betty Holdridge. When the worst thing you can say about a Mother in Law is that she completely took away your ability to tell a Mother In Law joke to anyone who knew her, you know you’ve got a good Mom. Betty was there for me from the first time, we met, a month or two into dating my wife, until the last week of her life. She had my back, giving of every part of herself to support my wife, myself, our kids and everything we did. When I was running for Toledo City Council, she even went door to door in her senior living apartment complex to get me votes. My Mother Mary Anne was a pretty amazing Mother too. She was an unofficial single Mom about 2-3 years out of my first Fifteen years of life. My Dad was career Navy so for a year he was in Vietnam and on multiple occasions, he was out to sea, including two stretches of six months at a time, when we lived a littel over ten hours from the nearest family member. She actually helped me start our office with an investment of some cash, and some of the art work that decorates our office to this day. But sadly, last year we lost her too. So Sunday will be my first without a Mom. But I have them in my life, including Lisa from our office who is “Little Floyd’s Mom”, and he will be little Floyd forever even if he’s in his thirties and a Dad himself and my wife. But I will celebrate all of the Mom’s out there. Just remember though, Mother’s Day can be sad, for those of us who lost our Mom, for those who never had someone who acted like a Mom for them, for those who never got to be a Mom but wanted to. Also, let’s remember those who did the job without the title. There are many people who have stepped up for kids of all ages who needed one. So thanks Mama Betty and Mary Anne both for being there for me and for all the Moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day from all of us.
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 Sadly, working is a dangerous thing. Every year somewhere between 5,000 to 6,000 people nationwide, about 150-200 people in Ohio leave their home for work in a civilian job and don’t return. Some die instantly, some days, weeks or even years later. But it’s too high a number. And it’s not just the people you think of. God bless our first responders who run to danger and don’t always make it back, or without long term cancer or cardiac and pulmonary issues. It’s not just factory workers or nurses, it can be a custodian. It can be supervisor driving for work. On April 28th every year we who fight for workers, lawyers, labor leaders, people of faith, gather to remember those we lost in Northwest Ohio. Workers’ Memorial Day, which is also known as International Commemoration Day for Dead and Injured is held on that around the world, to remember the injured and dead from our workforce. Our neighbors to the north in Canada make it a national day of morning. This year’s remembrance will be held on Monday April 29th @ 6 PM by our partners at Local 500 of the Laborer’s International Union for North America (LIUNA) on Nebraska. There will be speakers, there will be stories about those we lost, we’ll light candles and sing “Solidarity Forever’, and in the words of Mother Jones (Mary G. Harris an Irish born labor organizer from the 1800 and 1900's, she died at the age of 93) , “Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living”. This all started in 1989 when the AFL-CIO declared this day to be Workers’ Memorial Day. Why April 28th? It is the anniversary of the date the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 went into effect, and when the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was formed (April 28, 1971). Previously, in 1984, the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) established a day of mourning. The Canadian Labour Congress declared an annual day of remembrance in 1985 on April 28, which is the anniversary of a comprehensive Workers' Compensation Act (refer to the entry Workplace Safety & Insurance Board), passed in 1914. In 1991, the Canadian parliament passed an Act respecting a National Day of Mourning for persons killed or injured in the workplace, making April 28 an official Workers' Mourning Day. And this has spread to England, and then around the world thanks to labor unions. Having done this for 30 years I can tell you I have represented double digit numbers of families whose loved one died due to physical harm from a job. Some died at the scene, some hours or day later in a hospital, others months or years later. It’s always a horrible thing to deal with. I can tell you that there is some help for these families. But it is dependent on whether they had people who depended on them. Spouses are automatically taken care of if legally married, children until age 18, unless they continue their education in an accredited trade school or college. Anyone else has to prove their dependency. If you can’t they pay a burial expense. That’s it. Unless you can proven an intentional act by the employer, that’s the extent of it. If a worker has benefits that were due them, and passes away without dependants, or we can’t prove that the death was related to work, we can still get an estate those accrued benefits. My most used Ohio Supreme Court case involves that type of death claim. An injured worker who lingered in a coma for 16 years before succumbing to injuries from an on the job motor vehicle accident. When you hear people claim that the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation is neutral and will take care of legitimate hurt workers, read The State ex rel. Estate of Sziraki vs. Bureau of Workers’ Compensation, et al., for lawyers it’s 137 Ohio St. 3d 201, you can get it from the author’s here - https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2013/2013-ohio-4007.pdf Dean Sziraki was 34 years old, unmarried and with no children. He had taken over the family business ahead of schedule due to the untimely death of his father. He was involved in a horrific accident, driving site to site to check on projects. Dean severed his spinal cord and so horribly damaged his brain that he lingered in coma from May 14, 1991 to until his death in a long term care facility in January of 2007. But he never regained meaningful consciousness. The employer, his mother Marilyn took over the company, certified the claim. They paid Dean Temporary Total Disability (TT) benefits for about a year then found him to have reached Maximum Medical Improvement (MMI). This is the end of ongoing money and normally you would apply for Permanent Total Disability (PTD). Dean’s mother, as the employer filed for that for him. Normally that takes about 9-12 months to process and can go back to the end date of the TT. But, nothing was done with the application for several years. When it was processed, someone decided they were doing family a favor to convert this to Statutory PTD. Statutory PTD is a benefit available to those who lose to amputation or lose all work use, of two or more limbs or other major body parts. The advantage to a worker is that you will get paid every two weeks for the rest of your life AND can return to work if you can. Dean was in a coma, he was a quadriplegic, but again, was not going back to work. In all a process that should have take 9-12 months didn’t result in a payment to the family from 1992 to until 2007. You read that right, 15 years. And that was after Dean died, his family’s probate attorney hired me, and we fixed what we could. But Dean’s family, had the hired any workers’ compensation attorney would have got paid from 1992 until his death, PTD, a benefit for PTD recipients where the ravages of inflation (Ohio workers’ compensation claims have no cost of living adjustments) put you below a liable payrate called DWRF, and $363,800 for the fact that his arms and legs never worked again known as a Scheduled Loss Award Instead they cheated these people, and they admitted in court the BWC knew the family was entitled to these benefits, out of $44,512 in Permanent Total Disability payments and $297,032 in Scheduled Loss Awards. The BWC’s attorneys in court actually argued with a straight face they have no legal duty to pay any benefit, even when the law allowed them to pay it without a motion and they didn’t take legal action to protect Dean, they said they were going to do and didn’t, a year past a deadline for them step in had passed. So to the families of the next 65,000 - 70,000 or so injured workers in Ohio (yearly average per BWC Annual Reports 2020-23) and the 150-204 (yearly average per BWC Annual Reports 2020-23) hire an attorney. They are not looking out for you. If they did that Dean’s family, imagine what you’re not getting. And until I can’t do this anymore, I will mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living.   So when most people think of Toledo and history they don’t think of much. Oh, a nearby battle or two, a very large venue built in North Toledo for an event and torn down, Jeeps, a few stars. But one of the most important moments in workers right and labor in the US occurred here in Toledo 90 years ago this week. Toledo had been hit hard by the Great Depression. Willys-Overland, the folks that started what is now the Jeep, had declared bankruptcy, Two the largest banks and almost everyone of the savings and loans associations had failed, 150 police officers had been laid off and the unemployment rate was 70%. Which meant, of course, employers were running over workers with a steamroller. The American Federation of Labor, which later becomes the AFL-CIO, was organizing workers and a large scale strike between locals of the AFL and major car and parts manufacturers were only adverted by the intervention of President Franklin Roosevelt. But the agreement didn’t hold everywhere. Federal Labor Union, Local 18384 in Toledo was organized a bit differently than most locals at the time, but more like many today, representing workers at not one but multiple employers including the Auto-Lite Factory in Toledo. Auto-Lite was a major manufacturer of spark plugs. Later Champion Spark Plug where my grandfather worked was another one. The Local and Auto-Lite were nowhere in negotiations. Management was not even giving in on the unacceptable compromise that the President had negotiated. So on April 12, 1934, a strike voted on by the workers began. Initially it wasn’t a huge success but groups, including the American Workers’ Party and other organized unemployed workers to essential surround the factory and try to stop efforts to break the strike. Over the coming months a legal battle ensued. And then a physical one between the Ohio National Guard, the Lucas County Sheriff, professional strike breaker and the strikers. It escalated from isolated fist fights, to leaders being addressed and beaten, to rock throwing and worse. When the dust cleared from the physical confrontation, two were dead, hundreds injured. But by June 6th, a new contract was signed, the union was in place and the labor movement in Toledo, then the region began to flourish. Toledo was one of the most unionized cities in the Nation for most of the 20th and early 21st Century. And FLU Local 18384 become UAW Local 12. My Uncle and Grandfather were members of it’s sister local, UAW Local 14. Both of which we are proud to support and help the injured members of. In August of 1999, the site was turned into a memorial park. In the Vistula neighborhood, just outside of Downtown Toledo. We frequently hold rallies and events there to this day. And I can tell you it is an inspiring spot. See a video I shot at Lucas County Party Chair for Labor Day years ago. https://fb.watch/rvEDr6e8XN/ So, thank you to the brave strikers and their supporters for giving us many of the laws we have today and for standing up to protective them over and over again. So, believe it or not, there is an actual day for this. It’s the second Tuesday in April. And while it’s a little self-serving, we thought what a great opportunity for us to pass along a little knowledge about the law and lawyers. Now, I am sorry to say that shows like Suits, LA Law, Ally McBeal, the Practice, etc. are not really good portrayals of the life of a lawyer. I really do wish I was Harvey Specter and could get my clients the kind of deals and wield the kind of power he can bring to bear. But let’s give you a quick history of lawyers. The first references to law in record history appear in Ancient Egypt around 3000 BC. These “laws” were based on Ma’at, which promotes concepts like truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. The idea of a court and lawyers begins to appear in Mediaeval England and other places. Originally it was the King’s Court, you know those scenes in movies and TV where a king or queen on a throne and nobles, and occasionally the commoners, came to ask the monarch to intervene. Generally you had to be a nobleman aka a knight to appear. It was then taken down to the level just below that, or the Esquires. And yep, we kept that one. Lawyers use that title from time to time. And we brought our legal system over from our days as a British Colony. So the common law, esquires, judges, sovereign immunity came with us when we founded the United States. In the 1700's, lawyers and judges emerge as a profession in the United States. Early lawyers were not formally trained—instead, they would learn the trade through apprenticeship and watching court hearings. So Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr didn’t go to a law school. That’s now about a seven year college journey. In 1779, the first law school—The College of William and Mary—opens in the United States and is still in operation today. In 1844, Macon B. Allen becomes the first African-American admitted to the Bar in the United States. In 1879 Belva Lockwood becomes the first woman admitted to the Bar in the United States. By 1900 there were approximately 114,000 lawyers in the US. By 2022 that number, per the American Bar Association estimates. there are over 1.3 million active lawyers in the United States. So why a day to love your lawyer? Well here’s some statistics from studies done in the last 10 years of lawyers and law students from the American Bar Association. A survey of 3,300 law students from 15 law schools. found that 25 percent of law students are at risk for alcoholism, 17 percent of law students suffer from depression, 37 percent of law students report mild to severe anxiety, 6 percent of law students report having suicidal thoughts in the last year. And that doesn’t end when they become attorneys. One study of 13,000 working lawyers found that 28 percent lawyers suffered from depression; 19 percent of lawyers had severe anxiety; 11.4 percent of lawyers had suicidal thoughts in the previous year We go through training every two years that keeps us current on the law, but it also includes about 90 minutes on helping us avoid joining those statistics and there are special programs to help lawyers in substance abuse and mental health crisis. So, I can tell you I love my job, but it’s not an easy one. I have to help out 300-500 of you at any given time to stay afloat. My main area of practice, Workers’ Compensation is shrinking dramatically. In 1997 when I moved to Toledo after practicing in Cleveland for a year and half, the largest firm who does what I do was about 16 attorneys and about 30 support staff. That firm now has 1 full time, one part time attorney and two support staff. The largest has 2 attorneys and about 3-4 support staff. They make it harder and harder to help my clients every year, the last change was just a few weeks ago which will cost my clients and me countless tens of thousands of dollars per year. But we keep on fighting. What can you do to celebrate. And no you don’t have to spend a dime. Don’t get me wrong, I have many tokens of appreciation from clients all over my office. But it’s not about money. Here’s several free ways: 1. Leave your favorite lawyer a review. Positive Google reviews are critical for lawyers—in fact, the 2022 Legal Trends Report found that positive reviews are the most influential factor for consumers when hiring lawyers. We are listed on Google, Linked In, Facebook, Avvo, and others. A good review from you helps other clients find us like you did. 2. Consider giving the gift of a referral. Know someone looking for help with a legal problem? Referrals are another great (and free!) gift for the lawyer in your life. The lawyer benefits from a customer referral and a one-off client issue may set the groundwork for a great long-term lawyer-client relationship. We get about 80% of our clients via word of mouth, so telling someone in need about us helps tremendously. 3. Follow your lawyer’s social media pages. Lawyers work hard to get their business out there. Show them you appreciate their hard work by following their professional accounts and engaging with their content. If you’re reading this, you probably are already, but go to Facebook, Linked-In, YouTube, and other platforms and give us a follow. We’ll appear in your social media feed and you can help others get helpful information and assistance. 4. Once in awhile, say thank you to your lawyer and their team. We know we’re handling some of the darkest times in your life. And we are the voice and face of a system that is not pretty. But a thank you, I appreciate, you and your team rock, goes a long way and gives any of us a boost and incentive to stay in the fight. Oh and if gifts are your love language, don’t hesitate to show your lawyer you care with a gift. Following the advice of a wise friend and writer on the practice of law as a business, I have little tokens of appreciation from clients all over my office. A hand made lighthouse clock, a coffee mug, a hand painted Yoda picture, a hand drawn portrait of one of my favorite presidents a Simpsons figure, a few hats, just to name the ones I can see scanning the room. And my team and I love food, so feel free to drop us off handmade or store bought goodies. Lawyers play a crucial role in ensuring access to justice and upholding the rule of law. In doing so, they’re often subjected to stress, long hours, and complex cases and clients. Taking the time to recognize and show gratitude for lawyers’ hard work can go a long way in boosting morale. So Happy International Be Kind to Lawyers Day 2024 (and you know me, full disclosure there is a Love Your Lawyer Day in November too, but hey ready above tough gig).    Recently we started posting videos to a You Tube Channel and our website about dealing with workplace injuries in Ohio. Why, what we do in Ohio Workers’ Compensation is complicated contrary to anything someone at work, the Employer MCO or TPA, or the BWC tells you. How can I prove to you it’s complicated? Well, besides over thirty years of being a part of this system, how do I know?
In, the Ohio Supreme Court in 1993 decided that it was time for lawyers to be allowed to say they specialized in certain complicated areas of law. First organizations had to apply to be one allowed to confirm them, The Ohio State Bar Association (OSBA) was if not the first one of the first. When the Ohio State Bar Association picked areaa of law to do that in to select areas of law that were highly complex and complicated, assemble panels to practice length, reference & other criteria and create an administer a test. The Ohio State Bar Association looked at wide variety of the areas of practice that Ohio’s attorneys engage and decided upon Ohio Workers’ Compensation Law as the first because it is that complicated for all sides. That’s how complex the underlying law is. Since 1999, when the first class of these specializations were granted for the first time, I have had the honor of being one. However, we in the legal field are supposed to help you, the Public understand the law. I we take that seriously around here. I take extra time with every client, starting from that first interview and moving forward to explain things in ways you can understand. Well for awhile now, I have been saying we should do something about explaining topics, in bite size, five minutes or less videos, so you can understand them. Finally this year, about two months ago, should do it, became doing it. Here’s the address to the page: https://www.youtube.com/@LawOfficesofKurtM.YoungLLC/videos But to take it a step further we added a VLOG or video blog page to our website. Now I will tell you if the look on that page is not as slick as the rest of the website, that’s because I created it not our very amazing web designers and hosts at Ape Forge (https://www.apeforge.com/). So you can go right on our website and get a brief description of each of these and the link right to the videos. So if you want to know in terms you can understand about certain topics, it’s all right there. Now they are the polar opposite of slick, me at the desk I do my work, talking right to the camera, about these subjects, but so far people who have at least commented to me or others about them have said they are good. You can decide. But again, knowledge is power, so hopefully they help you.  So in a effort to keep you in the know on various religions, I want to talk about my faith and one of our holiest of holy weeks, in fact we call it Holy Week and this year ir starts on March 24th and ends on March 31st this year. Why do I say this year. Well like Ramadan, Easter does travel through our secular calendar.
The reason is that it follows the lunar calendar. Holy Week ends with Easter Sunday and Easter Sunday is traditionally the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox. Now in twist due to the adoption of calendars, one of the major Christian denominations, Eastern Orthodox, actually will start their Holy Week as the others end it with Easter. So Holy Week is preceded by Lent. This is for many Christians a time of preparation. Lent is 40 days, not counting the Sundays before Easter. It starts with Ash Wednesday, where people make a commitment often to some kind of spiritual discipline for the whole of Lent. Most Catholics for instance don’t eat Meat on the Fridays of Lent, hence a whole bunch of parishes with fish fries. Now I can tell you I am lawyer, married to a pastor, who got about six years of good Catholic education to, so I know the Lent Loophole. You can take a break from your Lenten practices on the Sundays of Lent. By the way, if you don’t know, Mardis Gras or Fat Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday, hence the one last party before the preparations for Lent. On Sunday March 24th, Holy Week began with Palm Sunday. In the biblical story, Jesus who was known as a teacher to most, is at the peak of his popularity during his life. People were very much starting to follow his teachers in larger numbers, with growing enthusiasm. And when he went to Jerusalem, he was greeted by cheering crowds waiving palm fronds aka leaves. Some of those palms will be kept by the church if they can, as they are burned next year to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. Now in the biblical story, this didn’t do good things for Jesus health and safety. The religious and civilian leaders of the area were none to happy with his popularity and growing claims he was the Son of God, a promised savior or messiah, so they began scheming to end his threat. On Thursday we celebrate Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday. Jesus was Jewish, and he and his followers celebrated the Jewish holiday of Passover with a large meal. At the end of the meal, knowing his time was about up, he gathered them and created a ritual now called communion. A ritual where believers share bread and wine in memory of Jesus life and later sacrifice. This was the last meal for Jesus with his followers, hence the name the Last Supper. That night, in the middle of the night, aided by one of Jesus’ inner circle or disciples Judas, the authorities arrested Jesus. There is a great story of Jesus telling one of his followers to put away a sword they had used to try to defend him and even performing a miraculous healing of one of the people there to arrest him that had been injured. By Friday morning, Jesus had been paraded back and forth to the secular and religious leaders, found guilty of crimes, mocked and tortured the whole time. He was then force to carry the instrument of his death, a wooded cross of crucifix to the place of his execution. Crucifixion was a form of execution in the Roman Empire and it was not pretty. You get nailed by your wrists, not hands as in most depictions and feet to the large wooden cross and left to die there, slowly, due to blood loss and other causes. And by later in the day, Jesus had died. His body was placed in tomb, but wasn’t fully prepared as Sunset began the Sabbath and per the strict adherence of the Jewish faith, work was not to be done. So the body was there Friday night and Saturday Night. On Sunday morning, a group of women in his inner circle went to the tomb to finish the proper burial rituals of their faith. Per our faith, when the women arrived the large stone closing the tomb off had been moved, and the body of Jesus was gone. The women saw someone and asked where the body had been moved, not realizing they were talking to Jesus who had risen or resurrected from the dead, on the third day, as the Jewish scriptures said would be the case. In the past Easter has been used as a time to bring new followers into the faith. It is usually a time of great celebrations with large displays of flowers at churches, large family meals, people dressed up in new spring clothing, etc. So, for my brothers and sisters in the Christian faith, I wish you all a blessed and meaningful Holy Week as travel from the joy of Palm Sunday, to the reverence of the Last Supper and pain and sacrifice of Good Friday to the Resurrection, both for those of us who start the journey this coming Sunday or the Sunday after. TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE & MOURNING FOR THE DEAD AND FIGHTING LIKE HELL FOR THE LIVING by Kurt Young3/15/2024 I have written on our Facebook page before about this tragedy, but it’s worth revisiting here. Why? Well it helped drive many of the workplace safety innovations and systems we have today. So I talk about it quite a bit. Also, many people have never heard of it. On March 25, 1911, in Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, many women, and several women were working in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Today we would call it a sweatshop. Most of the workers were recent Jewish and Italian immigrants, some a young as 14. The conditions were as bad as you would imagine. At 4;40 PM, there was a fire. Unfortunately there was no thoughts of how to get people out of such workshops, in fact often the doors were chained shut. The first itself spread rapidly. Some died from the fire, some from smoke inhalation, some accidentally fell trying to get out of the way, some jumped rather than be burned to death. When all was said and done 146 workers, 123 woman and 23 men were dead and another 71 were injured. It was a huge tragedy that made a nationwide splash. And thanks to that, several good things did happen. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union which had already formed, grew dramatically. It has merged with other unions and it became UNITE HERE. Also, the momentum to create OSHA was born from this tragedy. But most relevant to us was what it did to the possible formation of a new way to take care of injured workers and employers. In Ohio the debate about whether to create a workers’ compensation system was well under way. But this pretty much sealed the deal. It was only a matters of months before our system was born, as people discovered just how horrible protections for workers who were injured or died were. In the early 20th Century, the US economy had become one where factories and workshops were rapidly replacing farms as the way that most people earned a living. But this wasn’t without costs. There were few, if any laws designed to protect workers safety or give them much recourse if they were injured on the job. Under the old system, a worker would have to sue their employer, prove the employer was solely responsible, and then get a settlement or a judgement. If no one was at fault, or a co-worker without any means, or a the worker themselves made a mistake, then there was no recovery. Labor unions and other workers’ advocates fought hard for workplace safety laws and safety nets to protect workers, but like now, Government was more concerned with businesses being profitable than about workers. I have seen that creep back in my three decades fighting for workers. This tragedy was on March 25, 191, just under three months later, the Workers’ Compensation Act in Ohio was passed and became law, on June 11, 2011. The original law was voluntary. A year later, the State of Ohio held a constitutional convention and the workers’ compensation system became a part of that. Ensuring that both employers and workers would get protections from the compromise that is workers’ compensation. Sadly, over the last thirty years especially, with one party rule in Ohio, for a party who once again is about corporate profits above all else, many protections for workers have been chipped away by amendment after amendment and court decision after court decision. But still, even in this weakened state, it’s far better than the system from before that date. So today, as a firm that fights for working families, we at the Law Offices of Kurt M. Young, LLC, celebrate the start of our great compromise, and the power it gave it’s advocates in 1911. It’s taken far too many hits over the three decades Kurt has worked in this system, but thanks to the hard work of labor, workers’ advocates and attorneys like Kurt, it’s still there today. Still, to use of our favorite quotes from Mother Jones, repeated every year at Workers Memorial Day services throughout Ohio and the United States, we “mourn the dead, and fight like hell for the living”. Then again, that’s what we have done every day for our 20 years as a firm and Kurt’s 30 as an attorney. We are entering Ramadan, one of the most holy periods in Islam. For many, this is a little bit of a mystery. I believe that we, as good allies need to educate ourselves on things we don’t know about, and it shouldn’t fall to those in a group with different traditions and beliefs to explain it to us. So, I decided we should talk about this practice, as I have had the pleasure of participating in multiple events during and around this annual faith practice and decided I could try to help clear up some mysteries. Like my faith, Christianity and the one ours flows from, Judaism, the Islamic calendar is lunar. So this observance moves throughout our secular calendar. It is ing the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. It’s observance is one of the five major pillars of the Islamic faith. It lasts about 29 days running from the sighting of a crescent moon to the next. So, for 2024 it begins on March 11th. For the time of this practice, adult Muslims who are not acutely or chronically ill, travailing, elderly, breast-feeding, diabetic, or the like, fast from Dawn to Dusk. There is a pre-dawn meal, the suhur, and a nightly feast that breaks the fast is called an iftar. I have had the honor of attending several of the later, and after appropriate prayers and meditation it truly is a chance for great community. During the hours of fasting Muslims refrain not only from food and drink, but also tobacco products, sexual relations, and other things they believe separate them from God. Typically, practitioners devote themselves instead to salat (prayer) and study of the Quran. Like Lent for Christians, it is a time of spiritual reflection, self-improvement, and heightened devotion and worship. The act of fasting is said to redirect the heart away from worldly activities, its purpose being to cleanse the soul. Muslims believe that Ramadan teaches them to practice self-discipline, self-control, sacrifice, and empathy for those who are less fortunate, thus encouraging actions of generosity and compulsory charity. Muslims also believe fasting helps instill compassion for the food-insecure poor. Having undertaken fasts and other ways of denying myself during Lent, I can tell you it really did focus me on my prayer life and it also reminded me when I would fast for a whole day in high school that there are people in this world, and not far from me in my country, who go to bed hungry every night. Having seen family and friends break the fast with women & men of the faith and having done it myself, I can tell you it is a great chance to get to know someone else’s beliefs. And for me, it has been a meaningful experience. I can tell you years ago, after the horrible events of September 11th, local Mosques and Islamic Schools were under threat. A group of churches, including mine helped out by sending women and men to the schools during lunch breaks to provide extra eyes and protection for the children and allow the faculty and staff a break to take care of themselves. The next Ramadan, after the threats had died down, we are all invited to break the fast at an iftar and we were welcomed into a community and truly had a great meal with friends. And I can tell you every chance since, has lived up to that. So, from one who has enjoyed the spiritual and physical benefits of fasting from time to time, we wish our brothers and sisters of the faith, a meaningful Ramadan, Ramadan Kareem.  In February of 2004 I had a difficult decision to make. I had joined a new firm a little over a year before, and it wasn’t a good fit. I had gone there after almost nine years at another firm that kind of came apart thanks to one partner not wanting to sell their controlling interest in the firm to the others. The choice was try out yet another firm or do something crazy, start my own firm. I had some serious roadblocks. First, I had a 30 day window of opportunity. In the move from the firm of nine years I lost six out of seven of my clients. Unbeknownst to me the partners at the new firm were deliberately tanking the transition as they wanted to get my former senior partner to join them, and bring ALL of the firm’s clients with her. And it’s pretty near impossible to create a 600% increase in your client base in a year. And my wife was trying to turn around an inner city church that was constantly resulting in her cutting her pay. Any new firm would have to be done on the most modest of shoestring budgets, I managed to borrow from my mother basically three months worth of expenses for what I designed. So, the race was on. I had 30 days to find an office, set it up, help transfer all of my files, which meant getting every client in to sign a gaggle of forms, and basically create something from nothing. And it was a race against the clock. But I found an office in a good location. Saved a few dollars by agreeing to paint the office and pay for it myself, thanks to everyone who helped do that. I found a place that resold used office furniture and between them and Sauder we were set on that. Bought three computers, two copier, scanner printers, three two line phones, hung a room partition that turned two rooms into three, and on the morning of March 11, 2004, I opened. Now the first month, it was me. That was it. I had reached out to a former colleague at the firm I was at for years. She was willing to work multiple jobs so long as part time with me was one of them. But due to cash flow, I did the first 30 days solo. But it took off from there. A key settlement check came in, clients started finding us, we were able to bump Lisa to full time, and things took off from there, in part thanks to a client’s wife calling me and asking me a favor. I remember even saying, OK, but don’t get your hopes up on what I can do. She was asking if her son could intern for us to get college credit and see if he wanted to be a lawyer. Well, he not only did his internship, we hired him and he worked through his graduation from both undergrad and law school. Speaking of employees, in our 20 years we’ve helped employ seventeen people with either full time or part time jobs. Two of those were of counsel attorneys, which means they also had their own practices outside of our office, and they helped employ four more people over that time. And we have consistently tried to help out our local paralegal programs at the University of Toledo and Stautzenberger College, the essentially pre-law program at Lourdes University and both Toledo School for the Arts and Toledo Public Schools. We’ve had the privilege to have eighteen interns over that time with three of them eventually joining us as employees. And thanks to those employees and staff we have made a difference. We have managed to guide thousands of people, over 5,600 to date, to some type of legal help. Along with our Workers’ Compensation practice, we have also, with the help of our of counsel partners, helped people in Personal Injury in two states, Social Security Disability, Probate, and more. In the Workers’ Compensation practice, that has meant approximately 9,000 hearings before the Industrial Commission at their offices in Toledo, Lima, Dayton, Cincinnati, Mansfield, Columbus, Cambridge, Youngstown, Cleveland and Akron. Including seven trips to the final or Commission level hearing. In case you’re wondering, that is about 450 per year or an average of 9 hearings per week. But we’ve not just been handling administrative Workers’ Compensation hearings during that time frame. There are two types of appeals to court on our Workers’ Compensation Cases. One involves a jury trial in the county in which you were injured and we have filed several hundred of these appeals, trying several of them. We have also taken cases up to the Tenth Appellate District Court of Appeals (for some fights go to the court of appeals in Columbus on Workers’ Compensation medical or money benefits issues), we also handled cases in the Sixth, Third and Eighth Appellate Districts. And we have fought three fights to the Ohio Supreme Court, winning two of three S tate of Ohio ex rel. Johns Manville v. Harold Housman; State ex. rel Daimler Chrysler v. Industrial Commission ; and State ex rel. Estate of Sziraki v. Administrator Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. During that time we have been busy trying to make our community a better place. Our employees worked with Toledo Area Jobs with Justice offering voters free rides to the polls for nearly a decade until I became to prominent in local politics to stay and be considered non-partisan. We also have worked the YWCA Hope Center helping out domestic violence victims. We have volunteer with the Seagate Food Bank, Mobile Meals and others try to help stamp out hunger and Promise House Project to end youth homelessness. And we have members serve in unpaid positions at four churches. We have also done our best to make the legal profession better with I have hadtwo articles on the practice of law published in that time frame. I have also been an instructor at Fifteen Continuing Legal Education Seminars for the Akron Bar Association, The Toledo Bar Association, and the Ohio Association for Justice. And that’s just Kurt. Our other of counsel attorney Russ Gerney has spoken to other ones. And during all this time, I have also held three other paid jobs at various times, including Toledo City Council Member at Large, Instructor Stautzenberger College, Board Member of the Lucas County Board of Elections and some pretty intense unpaid servant roles. How have we done? The firm and I have received thirteen different awards for practicing law, four political awards and two awards for his work in the community. So not bad if I say so myself. But none of that would be possible without the support of all of our families, our vendor partners, our incredible team members here and those who have left, and our clients. We all want to thank you for whatever way we’ve worked together to make this possible, an we look forward to our next big anniversary. As I said before, we wanted to talk about the famous and the not as famous figures of African American History this month. And honestly, despite getting A’s in history and all, this is a hero of our country I had never heard of until a few friends posted a meme about him and his story. And there have been attempts at making a movie about his life, but none have gotten to the screen yet, but believe me, when it does, it will be worth it to see. Robert Small was born a slave in 1839 in South Carolina. Now, his mother was one of their owner’s favorites. She had made it from field hand to servant in the house. At first, their owners were not having Robert work in the fields or the like, but his mother asked for and was granted a chance for him to work for awhile on their fields. She wanted him to know that the life they had was not the plight of most slaves. By Age 12, he was sent as laborer for hire in Charleston where his master got 15 of every 16 dollars he earned per week. He feel in love with the ships and the seas and worked as a longshoreman, sail maker, a rigger, and even up to a wheelman. Slaves were not allowed to have the title helmsman, but that is the job he did and he became very knowledgeable about Charleston Harbor. By Age 17, he had married Hannah Jones, an enslaved hotel maid in Charleston. Together they had two children and he worked hard to try to win their freedom. But the cost was $800 per child, that’s just shy of $30,000 in 2024 money. He did manage to save an eighth of it, but was never able to reach that amount. The Civil War broke out and he was conscripted into the Confederate Navy and was assigned to the CSS Planter a military transport ship. And served the ship well, gaining the trust of the captain and free crew. On May 12th, he put a bold plan into action, freedom. The free crew and captain were going ashore and he asked for permission for the slave crew’s families to come aboard and visit them. This had been allowed before and was again, so long as they were gone by curfew. But Smalls had no intention of getting them off at curfew, they instead stole the ship with their families on board, and headed out to me the Union blockade. Along the way, they had to fool the crews of six confederate harbor forts. Smalls instructed the crew on the proper signals and he wore the captain’s uniform and did his best to mimic his movements. And the gambit paid off. The last fort figured out too late that the ship was not supposed to be there. Smalls sailed the ship out to the Union ship USS Onward, and surrendered the ship and the cargo to the Union navy. He and his crew had earned their families’ freedom and were paid a large prize for the ship, Smalls’ share alone was $1,500 (just shy of $60,000 today). And he was hailed as a hero in the north. Eventually he helped earn northern African Americans the right to serve in segregated Army units. He himself was allowed to serve in the Navy, eventually serving as a captain of a ship, and again hailed as a hero for his actions there. There was controversy about it, but he was one of the few African Americans paid a pension from their service. He learned to read and right in just nine months, and became an entrepreneur. At first offering services like education to his fellow freed men. And even ended up being given his former owner’s home and successfully fending off a lawsuit from that owner, which helped other similarly situated former slaves. He then became active, during the brief time when Reconstruction made this possible in the South in politics. He was elected to as a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention in 1868, then to the South Carolina House of Representatives. He was later appointed to and retained his seat in the South Carolina State Senate. He worked his way to delegate to the Republican National Convention, while serving in the South Carolina Militia where he rose to the rank of Major General. In 1874 he served in the US House of Representatives from 1874 to 1887. He even tried to integrate the US military in 1875, but sadly his amendment failed. He was only knocked out of politics by a conviction for taking a bribe, a charge that was later subject to a pardon as many of thos charges were made for political reasons and gains. Until the mid 20th Century he was the second longest serving African American in Congress. He was later appointed to positions by several US presidents. And while few of us have heard of him, not one, but two US ships have been named in his honor. The most recent, the USS Robert Smalls a Ticonderoga class (very capable and important cruiser) CG-62 is still in commission and protecting US aircraft carriers today. Robert finally died in 1915 at the age of 75. So, I hope we all get to watch a movie about this hero of American military and public service and that a few more people now known about an amazing American.
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