Politics
Will a nasty 2018 State Attorney Primary bring professional consequences for lawyers seeking Florida office?
Could fallout from a contentious 2018 State Attorney race in Southwest Florida change the rules for lawyers seeking office in 2026?
The Florida Bar brought an action against Chris Crowley over his campaign conduct after he lost a contentious 2018 Republican Primary for State Attorney in Florida’s 20th Judicial Circuit. Over the course of the race, Crowley rigorously criticized opponent Amira Fox’s record as Chief Assistant State Attorney under former State Attorney Steve Russell, while his political supporters attacked her Palestinian heritage.
Crowley, a former Republican State Committeeman for Lee County, maintained for years that he never lied about Fox, and that his rhetoric, however heated, should enjoy protection as political speech.
But the Bar alleged that the “humiliating and disparaging” attacks from one lawyer about another crossed a line to the point of being “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” A Bar referee in 2020 found Crowley guilty of misconduct and ordered his license to practice law be suspended for 60 days.
Crowley for years has fought that decision all the way to the Florida Supreme Court, arguing it would chill not only his own speech but that of any lawyer seeking office in Florida.
Bar officials argued at a Supreme Court hearing in June that all candidates for legal offices such as State Attorney, Public Defender and even Florida Attorney General should adhere to professional standards already expected of candidates for Judge.
Justice Charles Canady, the longest-serving member of the Florida Supreme Court, showed skepticism and said the Bar’s argument “flies in the face of a lot of a tradition of the way campaigns and the First Amendment works in this country.”
It’s unclear if other members of the court found Crowley’s argument more compelling than they found his assertions about Fox offensive. In the coming months, the court will release a ruling to determine not only if Crowley must take off two months from practicing law, but if every candidate for legal office in 2026 must comport their campaign rhetoric to a new standard.
Nasty campaign
Crowley once worked in the State Attorney’s Office in Fort Myers, but shifted to private practice when Russell in 2018 announced he would not seek another term. Russell signaled a desire for Fox to succeed him in office. But when Crowley filed for the seat, it set in motion one of the nastiest Republican Primaries in a red region rich with caustic rhetoric.
Before the August election, Crowley would be arrested for violating election laws by holding a gift basket lottery. But he publicly alleged that Fox and Russell were behind the charges. In one radio ad produced by his campaign, he called the legal attack “corrupt” and “swampy.”
But he also took aim at Fox’s heritage, slamming a book written by her father, Taher Dajani, that expressed sympathy with Palestinians waging war with Israel. Crowley demanded at campaign events that she renounce the book, and one political mailer posed that “she won’t answer questions about Sharia Law. Why?”
Crowley also worked with controversial political consultant Roger Stone, a South Florida-based ally of President Donald Trump who vowed on social media to “expose the radical Muslim running for State’s Attorney.” He alleged Fox’s “real name is Amira Dajana” and that her “family founded the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization” in a post reported by the Naples Daily News.
The candidate also personally shared an article on his Facebook page from the right-wing American Thinker questioning a rise in the number of Muslim candidates seeking office in the U.S. The article included Fox, though she is not Muslim, and alleged family ties to deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Ultimately, the heated rhetoric didn’t land with voters. Fox won 57% of the Republican Primary vote and went on to win the General Election against only write-in opposition. She declined to comment for this article, but at various points she attended Zoom meetings about the Bar’s disciplinary measures involving Crowley.
Crowley acknowledges that Fox allies may have found his campaign tasteless, but said he never violated the law and that his rhetoric did not justify a threat to his legal license. At his hearing before the Supreme Court, he called Fox a “nice lady.” He also stressed that the most personal attacks came from other sources, and that he cannot be held responsible professionally for others’ speech.
“I don’t know my opponent’s religion, and I don’t care,” Crowley said at the Supreme Court hearing. “Some other people said some stuff. I didn’t, OK — just to clarify those facts. When I joined the Army in 1995, I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States. Now the Florida Bar says the Constitution doesn’t apply to Florida attorneys.”
Crossing the line?
But the Bar said officers of the court should be held to a higher standard, even when seeking office. Mark Mason, representing the Bar to the Supreme Court, said Crowley did more than voice unpopular opinions. “Mr. Crowley leveled several false statements accusing his opponent in a race for state Attorney of corruption,” he said.
The Bar took particular issue with an atypical method Crowley used to calculate the prosecution record for the State Attorney’s Office during Fox’s time as the Chief Assistant State Attorney. Crowley routinely said the Office recorded just a 39% conviction rate, a figure he calculated by taking total arrests in the judicial circuit and dividing that by the number of cases that resulted in a guilty verdict and sentence.
“There could be a million reasons that there wasn’t a conviction and it doesn’t have to do with the office,” Mason argued. Regardless, he said the math was inaccurate, and the statistic floated by Crowley is flatly false.
Scott Tozian, an attorney for Crowley, argued the Florida Bar cannot hold lawyers responsible for rhetoric during a campaign.
Justice Jamie Grosshans questioned whether Crowley was arguing that lawyers could make statements with “a reckless disregard for whether they’re true.” Crowley stands by the statistic, and Tozian said no one has proven otherwise. But when Grosshans asked if “misleading” rhetoric would violate Bar standards, Tozian argued it should not.
“The whole idea of the First Amendment giving breathing space to political speech, it’s got to be something that’s pretty severe,” Tozian argued. “Otherwise, the First Amendment doesn’t mean anything.”
During the debate, Justice John Couriel questioned how many political races the Bar could potentially touch.
“If it were an election for Governor, and that sort of clearly, demonstrably true or false statement was made, what would the Bar’s position be in that case?” Couriel asked.
That seems especially relevant considering that Gov. Ron DeSantis remains a licensed lawyer eligible to practice in Florida, as is his Democratic opponent in the last election, former U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist.
But Mason said standards should be different for executive or legislative elections. The Bar argued to Justices that candidates for legal offices like State Attorney and Public Defender must abide by different professional standards. When Couriel asked if such elections should be held to the same rules as lawyers running for Judge, Mason answered affirmatively.
“It would apply to any candidate for legal office. However, that term ended up getting defined in subsequent case law,” Mason said.
But Justices also expressed some concern that Mason, as he criticized Crowley’s method of calculating a conviction rate, could not cite a figure the Bar would accept as accurate instead.
“It seems like you should have to establish that something’s false first before someone then has to defend themselves,” suggested Chief Justice Carlos Muñiz.
Mason disagreed.
“Very frankly, the burden was on him to establish that he had an objective factual basis,” he said. “The Bar just had to show that he made those statements that were questioning her integrity or her qualifications, and then he had to establish the objective factual basis.”
Wider ramifications
That’s a burden that could fall on a number of candidates if the court agrees. That includes Attorney General James Uthmeier, who has already filed to run statewide in 2026 and who has been involved in some sharply political efforts in the months since DeSantis appointed him to office.
A spokesperson for Uthmeier declined to comment on the pending case.
But just applying the standards to other State Attorney races in Florida could be messy as more political attention falls on those contests than in recent decades.
DeSantis suspended two Democratic State Attorneys, Andrew Warren in Hillsborough County and Monique Worrell in Orange County, alleging that neither aggressively enforced the law. Both ran for office in 2024 against replacement prosecutors appointed by DeSantis, and many of the same allegations were repeated on the campaign trail.
Worrell won her race and returned to office. She declined to comment about Crowley’s case.
Warren, though, lost in November to State Attorney Suzy Lopez, and maintains frustration at what he considered mischaracterization and outright lies about his record as a prosecutor. “The Governor and his cronies absolutely mischaracterized my record every time they talked about me,” he said. “That was found to be true in a court of law.”
But Justices also declined to reverse DeSantis’ suspension of Warren, and the Democrat voiced mixed feelings about how consequences might be doled out if State Attorney candidates’ law licenses go on the line as soon as they start to campaign.
“The Governor and his followers do things others would never get away with,” Warren said. “If rules are only enforced on one political party’s candidates, that would be a travesty of democracy. If the rules were enforced fairly to raise the bar in State Attorney or Public Defender races, then that’s a good thing for voters.”
Terry Miller, Fox’s Campaign Manager in 2018 and subsequent races, hopes to see Crowley face consequences for the tactics in the campaign.
“It seemed a couple Justices were more concerned with arguing the merit of the law rather than applying the law to this case,” Miller said. “However, it is not the statute that is on trial. The question is/was whether or not Mr. Crowley broke the law as it is written — which I believe he did.”
Lawyers stressed that the case relies on professional standards enforced by the Bar, and that the Florida Supreme Court has oversight power on the organization’s disciplinary proceedings.
Crowley no longer lives in the Fort Myers area, or even the state of Florida. He now resides in Georgia, where he works as a lawyer for federal law enforcement.
But he said the free speech ramifications remain too steep for any candidate seeking office to ignore.
“The Florida Bar should have never pursued this action from the beginning,” Crowley said.
Post Views: 0
That includes funding raised through a public bitcoin wallet.
Republican congressional candidate Michael Carbonara says he has raised $1.7 million to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“For far too long, Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been a fixture in Washington, and she’s done nothing to help working families struggling with inflation, high taxes and needless bureaucracy, while pushing policies that harm Florida families and take away their freedoms,” Carbonara said.
“Her approach to government is rooted in Washington bureaucracy and big spending, not in accountability or affordability.”
Of note, Wasserman Schultz had just over $1.6 million in cash on hand at the close of the third quarter. The Weston Democrat hasn’t announced quarterly numbers for the final three months of 2025.
Details on Carbonara’s fundraising are not yet publicly available. The campaign said it did invest a portion of funds accrued through a dedicated public blockchain wallet with bitcoin personally raised by Carbonara.
But Carbonara’s campaign said he demonstrated the ability to raise more than she had in the bank in her last report. The candidate has stressed a hunger for change as he challenges the longest-serving Democrat in Florida’s congressional delegation.
“District 25 deserves a leader who will fight for Florida and restore Floridians’ freedom,” he said. “I’m in the business of breaking down barriers, solving problems and creating jobs, and I’ll do the same for our community in Congress.”
No other Republican who filed to challenge Wasserman Schultz last cycle raised as much as Carbonara has this cycle. Ahead of the 2024 contest, Republican Chris Eddy raised more than $416,000 for the seat. Wasserman Schultz beat Eddy in November 2024 with 54.5% of the vote.
That was a tighter margin than when she defeated Republican Carla Spalding in 2022 with 55.1% of the vote, the only other time she ran under the current district lines. Notably, Republican leaders in Florida have signaled that redistricting will happen again before the Midterms.
Carbonara’s campaign said it also has employed social media in new ways to directly reach voters in the district. A launch video on X has been viewed more than 9.3 million times as of this writing.
Federal players, national stage
A lot of friendly wagers by Florida politicians could result in an uncomfortable amount of red and white clothing choices in Washington. But the College Football Playoff national championship game afforded political leaders, including members of Florida’s congressional delegation, a chance to show off state pride with a home team advantage.
That included President Donald Trump, who attended the matchup between Indiana University and the University of Miami at Hard Rock Stadium. The Hoosiers beat the Hurricanes 27-21, but politicians, including Sens. Ashley Moody and Rick Scott and Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, Byron Donalds and Carlos Giménez all scored pictures in the VIP box with the President.
In one shot, Donalds adorned a “Trump” cap, with the U replaced by UM’s logo. The Trump War Room social media account reposted pics of the Naples Republican with a reminder that “MAGA is all-in” for his Governor campaign.
Other politicians caught on camera at the game included Gov. Ron DeSantis and Rep. María Elvira Salazar. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with the press on the sidelines and called his hometown, Miami, a “storybook setting” for Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal. Rubio also noted that his son Anthony, who is on the University of Florida’s roster this year, knew Fernando Mendoza, the Hoosiers quarterback, from when both played high school ball in Miami.
After a losing bet with Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, Scott will end up wearing crimson and cream at the Capitol, while DeSantis has promised to send stone crabs and Key lime pie to Indiana Gov. Mike Braun.
But lawmakers said that regardless of the outcome, the championship game brought rich opportunities to showcase Miami on a national stage.
“Tonight, football gives the world a front-row seat to Miami at its best. A hometown legend returns. A historic matchup unfolds,” Salazar posted. “Only in this global city, where ambition, culture and opportunity collide, do dreams come full circle under the lights, in orange and green.”
Health care blueprint?
Is Scott’s health care proposal emerging as Senate Republicans’ favored option?
The Naples Republican made the case in a recent Washington Examiner op-ed and in a pen-and-pad briefing with the press in his Washington office.
The push, especially for the creation of health savings accounts that let consumers direct funding to insurers rather than have credits go directly to carriers, has increasingly emerged as a conservative priority. Scott also wants families to shop for care across state lines. The hope is that this will bring free-market competition and drive down premiums.
“The difference is profound. Rather than being forced to accept whatever narrow physician and hospital network Washington or an insurance company offers, families will have real, affordable options,” Scott wrote. “They can seek out the specialist three states over who has the best track record treating their condition. They can weigh whether a high-deductible plan with lower premiums makes more sense for their situation.”
So, is Senate leadership considering the plan? The inclusion of health savings accounts was part of Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s top three priorities outlined to POLITICO earlier this month, but Thune has Sen. Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican, leading a bipartisan group looking for a health care deal.
It’s also something that Trump has signaled belongs in any final legislation. Notably, Trump didn’t endorse any particular piece of legislation.
Scott could be seen on cable making the case to Fox News that his bill was the best blueprint for sending a health care package to Trump’s desk. There, he said, lawmakers must focus on reducing the cost of care, and not entertaining the extension of subsidies tied to the Affordable Care Act.
“I’m fighting to fix this broken system by working with (Trump) to put money back in your pocket and give you the choice to choose health care that meets your needs!” Scott posted on X.
In the House, Scott has worked with the Republican Study Committee, with Chair August Pfluger of Texas, the prime sponsor of a companion bill in the lower chamber. Rep. Aaron Bean, a Fernandina Beach Republican, co-sponsored that bill.
Florida is home to more consumers who buy plans through the Affordable Care Act than any other state, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Within the state’s Republican House delegation, there has been a hunger to find a plan to send to Trump.
Rep. Vern Buchanan, a Republican co-Chair of the Florida congressional delegation, said, for his part, that Trump is pushing in the right direction. He heralded the Great Healthcare Plan released last week by the White House. That includes health care savings accounts and premium cuts on plans currently in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.
“Lowering health care costs and increasing transparency are essential to a system that works for patients. President Trump’s announcement of the Great Healthcare Plan reflects Republican efforts to reduce patient costs and improve transparency, and I will continue working with the administration on these issues,” Buchanan said.
“The House Ways and Means Committee has already advanced patient-first reforms to lower costs, expand access to care and promote transparency. As Health Subcommittee Chairman, I look forward to continuing this work while advancing Republicans’ agenda to ensure savings reach patients and families.”
Florida’s finest
Moody recognized two Tampa police officers for saving a Florida senior from serious injury.
Moody, a Plant City Republican, honored Officers Jason Sikoski and Kaleb Girard in a speech on the Senate floor after they saved an 86-year-old man from falling off a 30-foot roof.
“This senior had gotten on his roof to clear foliage, lost his balance and had inched his way with no success in trying to climb back up to the edge of the roof. The officers, when they found him, he was already dangling and was almost falling off the roof,” she said.
“You can imagine the quick response from Tampa police officers Sikoski and Girard, along with Tampa Fire Rescue, who showed up. They acted timely without hesitation, and they were able to save this Florida man from falling. It was obvious from the situation that they found, had they not shown up, had they not responded swiftly and acted quickly, that Floridian would have fallen 30 feet to the ground and no doubt this story would have ended with a very tragic conclusion.”
Moody awarded the officers with the Florida’s Finest Award in recognition of their service, with a copy placed in the Congressional Record.
Freezing ICE out
Following the deadly shooting of a Minnesota woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, Rep. Maxwell Frost said he won’t support funding the agency. That includes a vote this week on the Homeland Security budget.
“This administration wants us all to believe that what they’re doing is just, but the people know better,” Frost said. “The people know that we have rights, and I want to be very clear, making sure that we don’t fund an agency that is tear-gassing our people in the streets.”
At an Apopka news conference, the Orlando Democrat joined immigration activists opposed to the establishment of an ICE facility in Central Florida. Frost referenced the killing of Renee Good, a death that Homeland Security Kristi Noem has repeatedly defended. Noem confirmed that ICE Agent Jonathan Ross’ actions were under review by the agency.
“We don’t fund an agency that has shot and killed a U.S. citizen, a human, a person who is following their directions, shot her in the face,” Frost said, before quoting the expletive Ross reportedly used to describe Good after the shooting.
He also attacked ICE for trying to establish more ICE centers across the country.
“They want to be like an Amazon Prime for humans,” Frost said. “Sounds a little familiar.”
Fact-checking nutrition labels
Two members of Florida’s congressional delegation joined forces in pursuing better nutrition across the country.
Reps. Darren Soto, a Kissimmee Democrat, and Greg Steube, a Sarasota Republican, just filed the Ensuring Consistency in Nutrition Labels Act, which would strengthen labeling requirements for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) by lowering the allowable deviation in reporting facts to 5%.
“Americans have a right to accurate information about the food products they buy at the grocery store,” Steube said. “While families are making healthier choices about the food they eat, it is unacceptable that food manufacturers are allowed a 20% margin of error for the nutrition labels on their products.”
The Honest Food Council is among the entities supporting the change. The FDA currently allows food labels to deviate by up to 20% from the true amounts of ingredients, including sugar and sodium.
“Misbranded nutritional content can lead to serious effects for people who are diabetic or have sugar-sodium sensitivities, as food companies often take advantage of relaxed regulations,” Soto said. “This bill will reduce the deviation threshold to promote consistency and build consumer trust.”
The need for accurate information about food is essential to families across political parties, Steube said.
“Making America healthy again starts with accurate reporting on nutrition labels so that families can make informed decisions when filling out their grocery lists,” he said.
Clearing retailers
Copycat companies face consequences for violating patents. But should store owners?
Rep. Laurel Lee, a Thonotosassa Republican, introduced the Customer Legal Ease and Relief (CLEAR) Act, a bipartisan bill to establish standard rules protecting retailers from lawsuits for selling or even using products where patents are in dispute.
“Increasingly, local businesses are being dragged into complex patent disputes over products they did not create and do not control,” Lee said. “The CLEAR Act is a commonsense, targeted reform that ensures patent disputes are litigated against the right party — the manufacturer — while protecting Main Street businesses in Florida’s 15th Congressional District and across the country from predatory lawsuits.”
Lee’s office said the issue has been particularly problematic regarding devices employed by stores, such as wireless routers and point-of-sale systems. The National Retail Federation has lobbied for protections, noting that companies often seek quick settlements even when patent claims aren’t deemed legitimate.
“For too long, retailers have been caught in the crossfire of patent disputes that have nothing to do with our business operations,” said Stephanie Martz, General Counsel for the National Retail Federation.
“We simply use and sell products manufactured by others. The CLEAR Act recognizes this reality and ensures that patent disputes are resolved where they belong — with the manufacturers who designed and created the products. This legislation will save countless small retailers from being driven out of business by litigation costs alone.”
Lee filed the bill with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat.
Airing concerns
Concerns about the use of commercial airspace in Palm Beach County became a central point of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Rep. Lois Frankel, a West Palm Beach Democrat, raised concerns from constituents affected by new rules restricting flight paths around Mar-a-Lago.
“Residents are reporting constant noise, increased air pollution, declining property values, and growing concerns about delays and flight safety at Palm Beach International Airport. In just a short period of time, the county airport has received hundreds of complaints,” Frankel said.
While the House Democrat counts America’s most prominent Republican as a constituent, she said the concerns of voters in her district were less about who was President and more about why restrictions persist even when Trump is nowhere near the Palm Beach County estate.
“In Florida, people live their lives outdoors. Because these restrictions are now in place year-round, thousands of residents are living with disruption every single day,” she said.
“We know that protecting the President is essential. No one disputes that. The question is, do security and quality of life have to be mutually exclusive? My community is hoping that there is room to explore alternatives that maintain strong security while reducing the impact on surrounding areas.”
VA layoffs
As the Veterans Affairs Administration (VA) lays off thousands of doctors and nurses, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz wants answers on how this will impact patients.
The Weston Democrat, in a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins, asked what the consequences would be of eliminating 35,000 positions.
“Indiscriminately eliminating these positions from your HR system without analysis is unacceptable, and in contradiction of your repeated assurances that veterans would not be impacted by staff cuts,” Wasserman Schultz wrote. “I am concerned that these cuts will add further strain on a workforce that has been understaffed for years, especially as I continue to hear from VA doctors and nurses that workloads are unmanageable, leading to delayed or insufficient care of our veterans.”
As Ranking Democrat on the House Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee, she called for a list of all impacted positions and the rationale for eliminating them, as well as an explanation why the layoffs would occur when Congress funded the requested amount in the administration-proposed budget.
Collins, for his part, has said the agency has been working more efficiently since he came on board.
“Nearly a year into the second Trump administration, backlogs are way down, claims are faster, and more improvements are on the way,” he recently told Real America’s Voice.
Nicaragua on notice
While news from Venezuela has dominated national headlines (and Cuba has made plenty in Florida), Salazar wants the regime in Nicaragua to know Congress still has an eye on the nation.
Salazar, the House Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Chair, just introduced the Restoring Sovereignty and Human Rights in Nicaragua Act. The Coral Gables Republican filed the sanctions bill with Rep. Chris Smith, a Virginia Republican.
“Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo are ruthless dictators who have hijacked Nicaragua and terrorized their own people,” Salazar said. “They jail political opponents, silence the Church, crush free speech and destroy democracy.”
She said the legislation will “impose real consequences, stand with Nicaragua’s political prisoners and people of faith, and send a clear message: the United States will never legitimize tyranny in our hemisphere.”
The bill would amend federal law, including the Salazar-championed Reinforcing Nicaragua’s Adherence to Conditions for Electoral Reform Act, signed in 2021, that imposed restrictions on Nicaragua’s leaders while aiding exiles.
“Our bill outlines serious economic penalties that can be leveraged to hold the corrupt Nicaraguan government to account and bring swift justice and relief to the people of Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan people — including people of faith, opposition party members and leaders, and other political prisoners — have suffered for far too long under the oppressive rule of the Ortega-Murillo regime,” Smith said.
Praising resolve
A resolution filed by Giménez offers praise to military and Justice Department officials who executed the arrest of Venezuelans President Nicolás Maduro.
His resolution (HRes 998) praises Trump and everyone involved in Operation Absolute Resolve, the mission to apprehend the South American leader wanted on narcoterrorism charges.
“This resolution recognizes President Trump’s extraordinary political courage in authorizing ‘Operation Absolute Resolve,’ an operation that dismantled a criminal narco-terrorist regime and upheld the rule of law,” Giménez said
“As someone who lived under communism, I know firsthand how devastating these dictatorships are to human dignity and freedom. This resolution affirms America’s commitment to freedom and holds authoritarian leaders accountable. The Venezuelan people deserve democratic self-determination free from tyranny.”
The bill was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Brian Mast, a Stuart Republican.
On this day
Jan. 20, 1937 — “First inauguration after ‘Lame Duck Amendment’” via U.S. House of Representatives — Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn into office at the U.S. Capitol for a second term as President. The inauguration of Roosevelt and Vice President John Nance Garner was the first to occur after the passage of the 20th Amendment. Nicknamed the “Lame Duck Amendment,” it moved the inauguration date from March 4 to Jan. 20. The Amendment also changed the opening date of a new Congress to Jan. 3, thereby eliminating extended lame duck congressional sessions. Nearly 250 Representatives from the 75th Congress — the first new Congress assembled in January — met in the House Chamber before Roosevelt arrived at the Capitol.
Jan. 20, 1980 — “Iran hostage crisis ends” via History.com — Minutes after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as the 40th President of the United States, the 52 U.S. captives held at the U.S. embassy in Teheran, Iran, are released, ending the 444-day Iran Hostage Crisis. In 1979, the crisis began when militant Iranian students, outraged that the U.S. government allowed the ousted Shah of Iran to travel to New York City for medical treatment, seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s political and religious leader, took over the hostage situation, refusing all appeals to release the hostages, even after the U.N. Security Council demanded an end to the crisis in a unanimous vote.
___
Peter Schorsch publishes Delegation, compiled by Jacob Ogles, edited and assembled by Phil Ammann and Ryan Nicol.
Ma de La Luz Mejia Rosas died last month after the 70-year-old suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm on Universal’s Revenge of the Mummy ride, according to a newly released Medical Examiner’s report.
Rosas became unresponsive on Nov. 25 on the indoor roller coaster then passed away two weeks later Dec. 9 at Orlando Regional Medical Center, records showed.
“Mrs. Rosas went to the park to enjoy time with her children and grandchildren, expecting a safe and joyful experience,” lawyer Ben Crump, who is representing her family, said in a statement.
“Instead, her family is now left grieving and searching for answers. They deserve a full understanding of what happened before, during, and after this ride. We intend to thoroughly investigate the circumstances surrounding this tragedy and ensure her family’s voice is heard.”
Crump said he is asking for information about the ride’s operations, safety protocols, maintenance history and data on other incidents.
Universal did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Rosas’ death was publicly disclosed on a statewide theme park injury report last week.
Florida’s major theme parks are required to self-disclose all visitors’ injuries on rides if the guests were hospitalized for at least 24 hours. The report is publicly released by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, though it contains limited information on what went wrong and about visitors’ condition.
The theme park injury report showed 16 people had been hurt on Revenge of the Mummy since it opened in 2004. Most recently, a 32-year-old woman felt “neck pain/motion sickness” last year. A 60-year-old woman had a seizure in 2017. Other guests reported chest pain, light headedness, feeling nauseous or passing out.
Crump was previously representing the family of a man with disabilities who died in September after riding a roller coaster at Universal’s Epic Universe theme park.
The family and Universal settled out of court in a confidential settlement.
Millions of people visit Orlando’s theme parks every year, and a handful of tragedies occur.
Earlier this month, a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against The Boathouse restaurant after a man died from choking on a steak at Disney Springs last year.
The 9 most disruptive deals of Trump’s first year back in the White House
President Trump Gets Slapped With F Bomb by Danish Politician, on Video
Represent x Puma in collab return with on- and off-court basketball line
-
Politics8 years agoCongress rolls out ‘Better Deal,’ new economic agenda
-
Entertainment9 years ago
New Season 8 Walking Dead trailer flashes forward in time
-
Politics9 years ago
Poll: Virginia governor’s race in dead heat
-
Politics8 years ago
Illinois’ financial crisis could bring the state to a halt
-
Entertainment8 years ago
The final 6 ‘Game of Thrones’ episodes might feel like a full season
-
Entertainment9 years ago
Meet Superman’s grandfather in new trailer for Krypton
-
Business9 years ago
6 Stunning new co-working spaces around the globe
-
Tech8 years ago
Hulu hires Google marketing veteran Kelly Campbell as CMO