In 1994, during registration for my last semester of law school at South Texas College of Law, I just happened to notice a flyer tacked to the Bulletin Board outside of the law library. The flyer had large print at the top stating that “People Living With HIV and AIDS Need Your Help”. That was followed by smaller print stating that a new course called “HIV and the Law” was being offered in the next semester that would teach State and Federal Statutes and other laws that were in place to prevent discrimination against persons living with HIV and AIDS, including discrimination in housing and employment. That course was being taught by Law School Adjunct Professor, Mitchell Katine. Since I went to law school for the specific purpose of learning how to help disadvantaged people that needed others to fight for their legal rights, I thought what a great course. I could think of no group at that time (early to mid 1990s) that was being any more discriminated against than people living with HIV and AIDS. Back then, if your employer, or landlord became aware that you had HIV/AIDS, there was a good chance that they would come up with some pretextual (false)reason to fire you from your job, or kick you out of your home.
Taking the HIV and the Law course eventually resulted in interviewing for a job and being hired in 1995 at the prestigious litigation and real estate law firm where Mitchell was a partner (Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP). I spent the next 27 years at Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, including 22 years as a partner.
During my tenure with Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, I was proud to provide pro bono legal services to Montrose Clinic, and represent many people living with HIV/AIDS by sending demand letters and pursuing various lawsuits, including suits in the employment, landlord/tenant and medical service areas. I even successfully represented a person living with AIDS in a medical negligence lawsuit against one of the largest chains of pharmacies in America for incorrectly dispensing a prescription for Norvir (the drug of choice at that time for treatment of persons with HIV) with Neoral (an immunosuppressant-the exact opposite of what an HIV patient needs). To this day I am still haunted by one of the defense attorneys telling me “so what, your client had AIDS, he was going to die anyway”.
Thankfully, much of the discriminatory bad behavior was forcibly rooted out of society over the next decade through outreach programs educating the public, new and expanded laws, and lawsuits against the bad actors.
In the next 20 years of my career at Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, I very actively prosecuted and defended numerous personal injury and medical malpractice cases on behalf of clients with catastrophic injuries, as well as complex real estate lawsuits. In the mid 2000s, there was a mortgage fraud crisis in the nation (and specifically in Houston) pertaining to the over valuation of property, fraudulent loan applications, and fraudulent property appraisals. During this time there were many criminal and civil suits filed against numerous vendors of services in the real estate industry. In my experience; the culprits were often greedy, unethical, and fraudulent mortgage brokers and property appraisers, greedy and negligent lenders, fraudulent buyers, and greedy sellers. Title companies that were completely innocent of any wrongful acts were often named as defendants in the civil suits. I successfully defended various title companies that were unjustly caught up in numerous lawsuits, including some very significant mass action lawsuits (suits with anywhere from 50 to 500 plaintiffs)
during this period.
My practice is now almost exclusively limited to representing buyers and sellers of real estate, real estate agents and brokers, and title companies in real estate transactional work.
After almost 50 years in business, we closed Williams, Birnberg & Andersen, LLP, and the remaining partners and employees joined Mitchell at his new law firm, Katine Nechman McLauren LLP. I am currently an “Of Counsel” at Mitchell’s firm.
I have been married to the same special person for 37 wonderful years. I enjoy watching wildlife, riding my Harley Davidson, repairing broken equipment/stuff, working out, doing yoga and sharing my home with furry family members (currently 2 Rhodesian Ridgebacks and 2 English Bulldogs).