CSU’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law inducts 2020 class
Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law announced its 2020 alumni hall of fame honorees.
They will be honored at a celebration at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 6, which most likely will be held off-campus or virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, instead of in the law school’s Moot Court Room.
For more information, visit law.csuohio.edu/alumnigiving/hof.
Ann-Marie Ahern
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Ann-Marie Ahern, who graduated in 1998, is a principal at McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman, Co. LPA. Ahern is head of her firm’s employment law practice. She litigates employment disputes and tries jury cases involving age discrimination, sex discrimination and harassment, race discrimination, disability discrimination/failure to accommodate, wrongful discharge and illegal retaliation.
Linda L. Ammons
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Linda L. Ammons is dean emeritus at Widener University. She served as counsel to the president of Widener for legal education, after retiring as associate provost and dean of the law school in 2014. Ammons was the first woman and the first African American to lead the two-campus, two-state, Widener University School of Law, and was the first senior African American female dean in the nation when she stepped down after serving eight years. She previously served as associate dean and professor of law at CSU Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
Hyman Cohen
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Hyman Cohen was a long-time faculty member, and interim dean, at CSU Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He joined the Cleveland-Marshall faculty in 1967, teaching torts, administrative law, labor law, labor law in the public sector and labor arbitration. He served as interim dean for two years, when he encouraged the school’s faculty to persevere in the research, academic programs, and other activities in which they were engaged. Cohen was also a labor arbitrator and member of the National Academy of Arbitrators.
Tim Collins
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Tim Collins, who graduated in 1985, joined Thrasher, Dinsmore & Dolan as principal in 2019 after a litigation career spanning over 30 years in a variety of industries. He has acted as first chair in numerous jury trials to conclusion, bench trials and arbitration proceedings in an array of commercial and business law cases. Collins has represented class representatives and opt-out plaintiffs in federal antitrust class action cases in Ohio and California.
Colleen Cotter
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Colleen Cotter has been executive director of The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland since 2005. Legal Aid is a nonprofit law firm serving the needs of people with low income, securing safety, shelter and economic security. Cotter also serves on many boards including the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law board of visitors.
Justice Michael P. Donnelly
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Justice Michael P. Donnelly, who graduated in 1991, is the 160th justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. Prior to joining the state court, he served as a judge on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, General Division from 2005 to 2018. Before serving as a member of the local judiciary, Justice Donnelly was an assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor from 1992 until 1997. He then went on to practice civil litigation for seven years, representing plaintiffs and injured workers in asbestos litigation, personal injury lawsuits and workers’ compensation claims.
Georgia A. Froelich
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Georgia A. Froelich, who graduated in 1984, recently retired as senior vice president at Hawthorn, PNC, serving high-net-worth individuals in financial services. Prior to that, Froelich worked at Sterling Trust, a premium wealth management service company, a division of National City Corporation, as vice president and senior fiduciary officer.
M. Colette Gibbons
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M. Colette Gibbons, who graduated in 1976, is of counsel at McDonald Hopkins LLC, focusing her practice on insolvency work at the state and federal level: foreclosures, bankruptcies, receiverships and out of court workouts. She has served as a receiver, a Chapter 11 Trustee and is recently appointed by the Office of the U.S. Trustee as a Sub Chapter V Trustee for small businesses.
David H. Gunning, II
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David H. Gunning II, who graduated in 1994, is co-chair of the national real estate practice at McDonald Hopkins LLC. He is experienced in real estate, commercial finance, construction, public finance, economic incentives, and general corporate law and includes real estate acquisition and dispositions, joint venture agreements, complex loan and finance documentation, negotiations/contracts, economic incentive transactions, and fund development. Gunning has represented national lenders and other financial institutions; borrowers; national, regional and local developers; institutional and corporate owners; national retailers, and privately held businesses.
Judge Leo A. Jackson
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The late Judge Leo A. Jackson, who graduated in 1950, pursued his J.D. at Cleveland-Marshall while working full-time at the Veteran’s Administration, graduating as the top student in trusts. He declined admittance to Harvard Law when he discovered he could not live on campus. When he applied to transfer to University of Georgia Law, they instead gave him a scholarship to study in Cleveland to avoid admitting him to the all-white school. Judge Jackson became Ward 24’s (Glenville) first Black city council member (1957). He received extensive media attention due to his frequent condemnation of inadequate police response and poor city services in his ward. During his second term, Governor Michael DiSalle offered him appointment to Cleveland Municipal Court. His commitment to unresolved community issues led him to turn down the appointment, prompting a 1961 cover story in Ebony Magazine. He remained councilman for 14 years. When Judge Jackson finally left council and ran for the Eighth District Court of Appeals (1970), he was elected by a wide margin countywide, becoming the first African-American to serve in this court.
Judge Nathaniel R. Jones
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The late Judge Nathaniel R. Jones served with the United States Army Air Corps near the end of World War II. He used the GI Bill to enter Youngstown College where he received his B.A., and Youngstown University where he earned his law degree. He studied law at night while serving as director of Fair Employment Practices Commission in Youngstown. With his Bachelor of Laws degree, he entered private practice. In 1962, after Attorney General Robert Kennedy appointed him, Judge Jones because the first African-American Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. Five years later, he was appointed as Assistant General Counsel to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission). Judge Jones then served as the General Counsel to the NAACP, where he directed all NAACP litigation for nine years, arguing some of the most important civil rights cases in the United States. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed Judge Jones to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He served as a judge until 1995, then as a senior judge until his retirement in 2002.
Max I. Kohrman
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The late Max I. Kohrman graduated in 1918 from the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin-Wallace College, a predecessor to Cleveland-Marshall College of Law when the school merged with the John Marshall School of Law. Following graduation, Kohrman partnered with his brother Joseph Kohrman to establish Kohrman & Kohrman during the final months of World War I in 1918. Kohrman & Kohrman focused on serving the local small businesses of Cleveland’s Central neighborhood.
Brent W. Larkin
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Brent W. Larkin graduated from Brush High School in 1965, and in 1969 received a degree in journalism from Ohio University. He attended Cleveland Marshall at night, while a columnist at the Plain Dealer. Larkin joined the Cleveland Press as a reporter in 1970. A year later he began covering Cleveland city government and in 1976 was named the newspaper’s politics editor. Larkin moved to the Plain Dealer in 1981, covering politics and later writing the column for the paper’s Metro section. In 1991, Larkin was named to head the Plain Dealer’s opinion pages. In 2002, he was inducted into the Cleveland Press Club Hall of Fame. Since retiring, Larkin has written a weekly column for Cleveland.com and the Plain Dealer.
Steven B. Lesser
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Steven B. Lesser, who graduated in 1979, is a shareholder and chair of Becker & Poliakoff’s construction law and litigation practice based in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He has dedicated his practice exclusively to construction law and litigation, representing a variety of clients in large-scale, high-profile commercial, multifamily, and specialty projects such as museums, country club communities, health care facilities, and sports complexes.
James A. Lowe
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James A. Lowe, who graduated in 1972, is a trial lawyer in product liability, automobile product safety and other complex cases. He is the author of multiple texts and treatises, and frequent national and international lecturer on products liability and motor vehicle defect cases. Lowe has tried cases in state and federal courts throughout the country, resulting in numerous million-dollar verdicts, and has recovered over $100 million in verdicts and settlements for his clients.
Judge Richard M. Markus
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Judge Richard M. Markus served as an appellate attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and as a litigation partner at three Cleveland law firms prior to his distinguished career as a judge. He served as a judge in both the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas and Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals and a visiting judge for the Ohio Supreme Court, six Ohio appellate courts, and 40 common pleas courts in Ohio. He authored over 1,000 appellate court opinions.
Alan Jay Rom
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Alan Jay Rom graduated in 1972. His legal career took him from representing migrant farm workers in Southern New Jersey and the Connecticut-Massachusetts “tobacco valley” for five years to becoming staff counsel to the Boston Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights for 18 years, where he specialized in voting rights, employment law and education. He worked in a small law firm handling wage and overtime claims for seven years, became executive director of Massachusetts Appleseed Center for Law and Justice for six years, joined the Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General’s Office for three years, and then established his own law firm, Rom Law P.C. in 2011.
Barbara K. Roman
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Barbara K. Roman, who graduated in 1977, has been a partner in the law firm of Meyers Roman Friedberg & Lewis for the past 23 years serving as chair of the family law department. She is a past president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, having served on the committee to unite the CMBA and the Cuyahoga County Bar Association.
Basil M. Russo
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Basil M. Russo, who graduated in 1972, was a founder, and served as managing partner of the law firm of Russo, Rosalina & Co., L.P.A. until his retirement in 2014. He has served as judge of the Ohio Court of Appeals, judge of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, and majority leader of the Cleveland City Council. He currently serves as National President of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, one of the largest Italian American Fraternal Associations in America, and serves on the executive committee of the National Italian American Foundation in Washington, D.C.
Judge Brendan J. Sheehan
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Judge Brendan J. Sheehan, who graduated in 1993, has served on the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court since January 2008. He was elected to serve as the administrative and presiding judge effective January 2020. Prior to assuming the bench, Judge Sheehan practiced as a civil and criminal litigator for 14 years. As a prosecutor in the major trial division of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, he served as the chairman of the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the chairman of the legal committee for the national Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
David C. Weiner
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David C. Weiner came to Cleveland in 1969, joining Hahn, Loeser, Freedheim, Dean and Wellman, where he practiced large case litigation for over 30 years. He served as the firm’s managing partner until joining Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in 2003, where he continued his litigation practice until retiring in 2010. Since then he was of-counsel to several firms, hanging up his active career in 2019.
F. Scott Wilson
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F. Scott Wilson, who graduated in 1981, devoted most of his career to aviation, particularly aircraft finance, working in the corporate legal departments of British Aerospace and then Pratt & Whitney for 36 years before retiring in 2017 and founding his own consulting company. He was involved in several legal reform efforts, especially as an advisor to the US delegation in the development of the Cape Town Convention, which sought to standardize aircraft financing worldwide and which came into force in 2006.
Sonia Winner
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Sonia Winner, president and CEO of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, became the 10th director of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in July 2018. Prior to this appointment, Winner was acting director of the museum beginning in December 2017 after serving as the chief development officer. She has also held roles in academia.
Margaret W. Wong
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Margaret W. Wong and her sister came to America in 1969. Margaret has built her immigration law practice into one of the top immigration law firms in the United States, with offices in Cleveland, Columbus, New York City, Nashville, Chicago, Memphis, Raleigh, Atlanta and Minneapolis.
Xenophon “Xen” Zapis
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The late Xenophon “Xen” Zapis was drafted into the U.S. Army after high school and served until he received an honorable discharge in 1947. When he returned to Cleveland, he enrolled in Fenn College and soon after graduating, explored an opportunity to produce and host his own Greek radio program. As he continued to host and produce the Greek radio program, Zapis attended night classes at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Following graduation from Cleveland-Marshall, he built his law practice and continued to co-host the Greek radio program on various stations in Cleveland.
Leader on the rise: Kimberly Kendall Corral
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Kimberly Kendall Corral, who graduated in 2012, is a senior associate at Patituce & Associates. She represents clients in complex criminal matters, whether it’s a capital homicide trial or a wrongful conviction. From indictment and pretrial motions to trial, appeals, and post-conviction, Corral handles all levels of criminal justice advocacy.
