Family Law

• Divorce
• Child Custody and Visitation
  Upon graduation, Grant returned to Miami and enrolled at Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad Law Center to pursue a juris doctor degree with a concentration in international law. During the course of his studies Grant spent several months in Africa, working at the Tanzanian Women and Children Welfare Center in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, handling divorce and child custody cases. In 2012, Grant was awarded a J.D. degree with a concentration in International Legal Practice and was admitted to the Florida Bar that same year.

Criminal Law

• Theft
• Drug Crimes
  In the ’80s and ’90s the State was growing rapidly from being a relatively sleepy Southern backwater towards its current position as the third most populous, ahead of New York and behind only California and Texas. Development was burgeoning in downtown Miami, south along Brickell Avenue, westward into The Everglades, and eastward to South Beach, as well as along all the available oceanfront in South Florida. This was driven largely by Latin American and European private investment, the majority from completely legitimate sources, but also, significantly, in the process of laundering the proceeds of drug crime. Craig found the international aspects of his own litigation practice correspondingly ever-deepening. He became increasingly exposed to the typical off-shore trust and corporate structures used as the vehicles to hold such investments and transmit the wealth inter-generationally. The same vehicles were often also used by money-launderers and fraudsters to camouflage the source and destination of illegal funds. His developing understanding of the use of such structures was to prove invaluable for his growing involvement in actions against fraudsters and the tracing and recovery of assets.
• Money Laundering
  Mr. Milne represented a group of Peruvian businessmen on “innocent ownership” claims in the six largest forfeiture cases resulting from one of the federal government’s earliest “sting” operation against money-launderers. These and many other cases were filed in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu, Hawaii. The cases involved bank accounts implicated in drug-money laundering through the currency exchanges in the parallel markets of Peru.

Business and Corporate Law

• Mergers and Acquisitions
  For the next two years, Grant S. Smith served as the sole Director of the Miami office, where his prime focus was on aggregating talent to help represent a wide array of Latin American entrepreneurs and multi-generational family businesses, either entering the U.S. market or involved in litigation in North America. In that position he was involved in a broad range of legal issues, often working with lawyers from other jurisdictions. Such issues included mergers and acquisitions, corporate start-ups, international asset protection, offshore incorporation, international asset tracing, commercial litigation, and procuring evidence for foreign proceedings under 28 U.S.C. §1782.
• Business Transactions
  Moderator: “Cross-Border Investment in Real Estate: Is There Another Bubble Waiting to Pop?” 2013 International Business Transactions Conference & 11th International Litigation and Arbitration Conference, March 1, 2013.
• Trade Secrets
• Intellectual Property
  Matthew R.D. Deblinger focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation and international law. He has a particular interest in international fraud, intellectual property disputes, and multi-state complex commercial litigation.
• Antitrust

Employment Law

• Employment Litigation

Property Law

• Construction Litigation
  Mr. Milne was coverage counsel to Fremont Indemnity in Miami construction litigation where bad faith failure to settle by prior trial counsel had exposed the insurer to $40 million in claims above its $2 million policy limits. He appointed and supervised successor trial counsel and formulated the strategy which confined the eventual settlement to policy limits, and then pursued subsequent recoupment actions for the enormous expense caused by many years of unnecessary litigation against the entities creating the exposure. In doing so he established the rule in Florida that the 2-year statute of limitations is tolled in litigation malpractice cases until the underlying action is concluded. The series of decisions on the latter point began in the U.S. District Court, was appealed to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, certified as a question of public importance to the Florida Supreme Court, returned to the 11
• Real Estate Transactions
• Land Use and Zoning
  By extension, Craig also came to represent private developers in disputes involving land use and zoning, environmental impacts and mitigation, and disputes with contractors and municipalities. His deepening involvement in real estate issues eventually further extended to the handling of disputes between commercial landlords and tenants (from both sides) and the interpretation of condominium association documents and rules, and he eventually became qualified to write title insurance for insurance companies in Florida.

Health Law

• Disability Discrimination
  Renee is a member of the Firm’s litigation practice where she focuses on complex commercial litigation in state and federal courts in Florida and around the United States, and arbitration matters in the U.S. and abroad, with a particular emphasis on multi-jurisdictional and international cases. She has had experience in a wide range of substantive areas, including international family property disputes, riparian rights actions, trademark litigation, labor and employment claims, disability discrimination, jurisdictional disputes, foreign judgment domestication and collection, international fraud cases, interpleader work, and preliminary injunctions.

Trusts and Estates

• Estate Planning
  AMK is an international law boutique with its offices in Downtown Miami, Florida, U.S.A., focusing on international tax, trusts, transactions, estate planning, wealth and asset protection, and the resolution of disputes worldwide.
• Trusts
  Stephanie A. Diaz is an attorney practicing tax, trusts and estates.  Stephanie focuses her practice on U.S. federal estate tax planning for international, high-net worth families.  She concentrates on individual investment planning, pre-immigration planning and international transactional matters as well as U.S. federal tax compliance.  Stephanie also has experience with domestic trust and estate planning including spousal lifetime access trusts.
• Probate

Finance Law

• Bankruptcy
• Foreclosure
  Given the overwhelming mass of S&L cases, as a very junior lawyer Craig found himself personally handling dozens of complex commercial foreclosures, beginning to end, frequently in the face of counterclaims advancing the then-nascent concept of “lender liability.” In his early years of practice, Craig successfully tried a number of multi-million dollar cases to judgment as “first chair” in federal courts in towns and cities around South Florida, from Palm Beach down to Key West, and from Fort Lauderdale across to Naples. The deficiencies that often resulted spawned satellite recovery litigation against bank directors and officers, law firms, appraisers, accountants, and other professional complicit in the usually negligent and sometimes fraudulent underwriting of the loans – with the defense often financed and guided by several tiers of insurers. This latter element led to Craig’s developing substantial skill in judging and exploiting the leverage available to pressure settlement contributions from the various tiers of coverage, through statutory and common law “bad faith” insurance doctrines, through direct negotiation and formal mediation.
• Tax Law
  Giselle Carratala focuses her practice on international taxation matters. As a member of the firm’s tax, estate, and corporate practice group, she advises international high net worth families on international tax planning, trusts, pre-immigration planning and international transactional matters.