The DIAL Clinic remains committed to providing guardian advocacy services to parents with adult children with developmental and intellectual disabilities. These types of cases are an essential and excellent pedagogical tool for educating law students on the skills and professional values needed for the successful practice of law. Representing families in Guardian Advocacy cases exposes students to critical interviewing and counseling skills and requires them to carefully describe the ramifications of guardianship and offer other lesser restrictive alternatives to families.
In the Summer of 2023, the DIAL Clinic held a workshop at the law school where over fifty volunteer lawyers and law students worked to prepare 45 families on how to determine whether guardian advocacy is the appropriate option for their family member with a disability or if some less restrictive (or more restrictive) option is appropriate. On this day, Professor Talhia Rangel conducted three one-hour lectures for participants and pro-bono attorneys and with military precision, Jennifer Gordon ensured that the volunteers and the participants were assigned to rooms, trained, and received services.
On April 26, 2023, DIAL clinical student Claudia DeSalvo argued on behalf of Dylan Campbell before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Ms. DeSalvo argued as good as the seasoned U.S. Department of Justice attorney that argued as our amici on behalf of the United States’ interest. Ms. DeSalvo vehemently argued that the ADA states that eligibility factors are required to be based on real risks and not merely speculation. It is extremely rare for a certified legal intern to argue before a federal appeals court, especially for a case of first impression in the United States. Ms. DeSalvo spent two months preparing to argue this appeal and knew the record of the case as well as the trial attorney in the District Court. The NSU law community rose to assist Ms. DeSalvo and participated in endless rounds of moot court sessions to ensure that she would feel comfortable in representing Mr. Campbell’s case. Ms. DeSalvo and her client prevailed.
(WSVN) – She left college to help care for her grandparents, but it caused problems with their housing community. Now the association has decided to evict them, but legally, can they do that? It’s why they contacted Help Me Howard with Patrick Fraser.
Ironically, it was his weakening condition that would launch Karantsalis on what would prove a Herculean task — a one-man battle against his own city to improve disability access. He lost the legal battle but also won the bigger war, if at a cost….
But there were obstacles to getting to the pool. It was difficult to navigate the sidewalk and curb in front of his house, which fronts a busy street that leads to Miami Springs Senior High School. He noticed the absence of handicap parking spaces at the pool complex, a city tennis facility and other public places, as well as on the main street in front of city hall, the public works department and a police substation….
Undeterred, Karantsalis reached out to a longtime friend, ADA advocate Matthew Dietz, a professor at the disability law clinic at the Nova Southeastern University College of Law. Thanks to Dietz, his ADA lawsuit regained traction in 2021 when a federal appeals court found that the statute of limitations had not yet expired in the case. It was set for trial in Miami federal court.
BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND OMAR RODRÍGUEZ ORTIZ – OCTOBER 06, 2022
On July 4, Independence Day, Alejandro Suarez packed his laptop, camera and some clothes into a book bag. He placed a handwritten note in the glove box of his blue Honda Civic and left the car in the parking lot of a Kendall church. He then hopped a Greyhound bus to Chicago to begin a new life. “I refuse to be helpless,” he wrote. “Be assured I am safe.” Odalys Heredia, the 20-year-old’s mother, wanted him back. She filed a report with Miami-Dade police saying Suarez was missing and endangered. She told news reporters Suarez functions at the level of a small child due to a diagnosis of autism in his childhood. And that he was friendless, and largely helpless. To authorities, she and her sister, Suarez’s aunt, offered a more outlandish sounding theory: that he may have been abducted by a dangerous band of transgender individuals seeking to harvest and sell his body organs.
If you’re looking for a crusader for justice when it comes to disability and accessibility, NSU Professor Matthew Dietz has the credentials. Since 2022, Dietz has been the clinical director of the Disability Inclusion and Advocacy Law Clinic in NSU’s Shepard Broad College of Law. His commitment to defending those with disabilities runs deep.
Throughout his life, Dietz has struggled with his own disability: a stutter.
“Because of my stutter, I was relentlessly teased, even by family,” he said. “I was embarrassed and tried to hide it as best I could. I carried over my own feelings about myself and my own disability to how I felt and how I treated others.”
Dietz defied opinion when he was told he couldn’t do certain things because of his speech impediment. He used the words of naysayers to motivate him to become a trial lawyer.
While he was studying at Brooklyn Law School, Dietz said, he was told there was no way he could ever become a trial attorney. Undeterred, Dietz was eventually selected for the school’s moot court team.
“It was one of my proudest achievements,” he said. “At that time, my wife Debbie bought me a framed poster with a dog seated at a table, eating a fancy dinner with a glass of red wine. The caption reads, ‘Every dog has his day.’ It hangs in my office at the clinic today.”
The Norman Rockwell that hangs in his office
Another inspirational piece of artwork that hangs in his office Norman Rockwell’s “Golden Rule.” The print depicts people from various cultures, religions and ethnicities who infuse the golden rule in their beliefs. “Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You,” it reads.
Dietz arrived at NSU in summer 2022, after two friends working at the clinic invited him to visit. Since coming to the campus and working with students here, Dietz says the opportunity has been so enjoyable he doesn’t mind his long drive from his home in Miami. He works with a legal clinic’s contingent of 10 students, but he is hoping to grow that number in the future.
Among their activities, he and his students work on discrimination cases, work with families on guardian advocacy matters and form collaborations with other colleges and divisions within NSU.
“My overarching goal of the clinic is to ensure that the college produces students who are competent to practice on day one,” he said. “My hope is that the connection between pure lecture classes and practice with actual clients ‘click’ and students can apply the law to real-life facts.”
Dietz began his career in the 1990s as an insurance defense lawyer, where he received his first exposure to inaccessibility claims and disability law, which was in its infancy as a law practice area. While handling a case, Dietz was referred to noted Miami attorney Edward Resnick. Resnick, a quadriplegic who contracted polio in 1954, grew frustrated with a lifetime of barriers to everyday access and forced businesses to adhere to the Americans with Disabilities Act when it became enforceable in the 1990s.
NBC 6 investigative reporter Tony Pipitone interviews Professor Dietz for a story on medically fragile children.
“Resnick opened my eyes to how others see a world that is inequitable by design and how disability rights laws were developed to create equity,” Dietz said. “When I went out on my own in 2001, I became more involved in the disability community in South Florida and discovered for myself the wide range of issues and inequity that people with disabilities deal with daily.”
In 2001, Dietz immersed himself in the Florida Bar’s efforts for diversity and inclusion and pressed to include disability into the definition of diversity. Eventually, he and his wife formed Disability Independence Group, a non-profit dedicated to advocating for increased opportunities for people with disabilities, primarily in the legal system.
Over the past 25 years, Dietz has handled hundreds of cases and been involved in more than 350 decisions. During that time, his disdain for civil rights indignities has grown.
“Most civil rights cases involving persons with disabilities are the result of carelessness, ignorance, indifference or thoughtlessness,” he said. “Once you see the inequity, you can’t ‘unsee it.’ I can’t go into a bathroom and not look at the grab bars in the accessible toilet stall or the fixtures on the sink. I scoff when I go to a large presentation and there is not a closed captioning on a screen.”
WPLG 10 investigative reporter Jeff Weinsier interviews Professor Dietz on a story involving a person illegally selling handicapped car tags.
Among Dietz’s most notable cases:
From 2012 to 2016, he represented several families and children who were medically fragile and were in nursing homes or at risk of being placed in nursing homes. The U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against the state of Florida, and in 2023 received a judgment requiring the state to provide adequate services to medically fragile children.
About 20 years ago, he forged an agreement in which all of Carnival Corporation’s vessels had to become physically accessible to persons with disabilities.
In a series of cases, he represented Deaf patients against hospitals that denied ASL interpreters to develop the standard of “effective communication” in which is required for medical personnel to provide to Deaf patients.
Dietz notes that in addition to working with “eager and smart students,” the biggest benefit of coming to NSU is the opportunity to be in a college of law that is part of a larger university that provides interdisciplinary opportunities.
“Being a lawyer is not an end unto itself, it is a means to an end,” he said. “We live in a society where those who serve people with disabilities need to have an understanding of the law and the remedies that ensure jobs, housing, education or other benefits. Lawyers play a crucial role of facilitating that understanding and ensuring that these benefits are carried out.”
Winter 2023 DIAL students and professors with our client, Alejandro Lutin
WSVN News Help Me Howard segment came to the DIAL clinic when it could not assist Mr. Lutin, who is a paraplegic and uses a wheelchair for mobility, when his condominium association was going to turn off the elevator for several weeks. This would have trapped Mr. Lutin in his home. The DIAL clinic snatched loitering VLC student Alexander Lumley and he and Professor Talhia Rangel drafted a complaint and preliminary injunction to file in federal court. The proposed complaint and injunction were sent to the association’s lawyers, and they agreed to delay any modification until the end of Mr. Lutin’s lease. The story was on the Help Me Howard segment on March 17, 2023.
