Mark Kolber spent most of his professional life as a trial lawyer although he spent 10 years in-house doing transactional work. He has been admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Colorado and North Carolina, as well as a variety Federal courts. In 2012 Mark and Jan, his wife for almost 40 years, moved from Denver, Colorado to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He now describes himself as “90% retired.”
Mark spent his early professional years engaged in criminal defense and business litigation – sometimes at the same time. His later years were focused on financial institution regulation, commercial litigation, aviation regulation, litigation and enforcement, and software and technology law. His “10%” retirement law practice involves aviation and, as a volunteer for North Carolina Legal Aid, criminal record expunctions.
Mark is also a commercial pilot and certified flight instructor with single-engine and instrument ratings. He continues to actively flight instruct, mostly transition and recurrent training.
Mark has been a regular speaker and writer for the legal, banking and aviation communities and has previously spoken before the LPBA on a variety of subjects.
Jared M. Allen is the senior attorney of AOPA’s Legal Services Plan based in Frederick, Maryland, which provides consultation and representation to participating AOPA members in the event of an aviation-related legal matter. Established in 1983, the plan currently has over 66,000 participants and fields more than 4,500 calls each year.
Jared has worked extensively in matters involving FAA enforcement and compliance actions, aircraft accidents, aircraft transactions, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, and FAA medical certification. Jared also provides legal support to AOPA’s General Counsel.
He has written and lectured on legal topics relating to the Federal Aviation Regulations, including the FAA’s Compliance Philosophy and the reform of FAA medical certification regulations. He is a member of the Lawyer-Pilots Bar Association and the International Air & Transportation Safety Bar Association.
Jared is admitted to practice in Florida, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. He is also an instrument-rated private pilot.
Current Evidence-Based Strategies in Common Emergency Conditions; What to expect during your ER visit
Brady W. Allen, M.D.
Brady W. Allen, M.D. attended medical school at The University of Virginia School of Medicine and completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at The University of Virginia Health Sciences Center. He is board certified in Emergency Medicine and is a fellow of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine. He currently serves as an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Tennessee College of Medicine. He has practiced full time as an attending physician and instructor within the Acension St. Thomas Health System for the last 12 years. He has been privileged to serve as the Chief of Staff of St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital, the Chief of the Department of Emergency Medicine, local and regional Ascension St. Thomas Hospital Board member, Chairman of Patient Safety and Quality, and as a member of numerous other hospital committees. He was honored by his physician colleagues as the St. Thomas Rutherford “Physician of the Year,” in 2017, and by his emergency medicine residents as “Role Model of the Year,” in both 2018 and 2019. Outside the hospital he serves as owner and managing partner of Physicians’ Urgent Care PLLC (an urgent care chain), and works as a consultant with the NFL. He resides in the Nashville area with his high school sweetheart, Holly, and their four children.
Gary A. Cusano, Partner CusanoSmith PLLC, has over 34 years of litigation experience. He has litigated high exposure tort and commercial transaction cases involving automobiles, construction site accidents, products liability, multi-party large-scale property damage cases, breach of contract, toxic tort and dental malpractice. He also litigates insurance coverage and contract matters. He represents victims in serious personal injury and wrongful death cases. Prior to establishing the firm he held the position of Managing Trial Attorney of CNA Insurance Company's staff counsel program in Tarrytown, New York.
Gary received his J.D. from Brooklyn Law School in 1985 and is admitted to practice in both New York state and federal courts. He is a former Chairman of the Torts, Insurance and Compensation Law Section of the NYS Bar Association; He is a past member of the New York State Bar Association’s House of Delegates; Member of the Panel of Arbitrators on Insurance Coverage for A.A.A.; Certified CLE lecturer for the New York State Bar Association; he is a member of the New York State Bar Association and the Westchester County Bar Association.
Gary is an accomplished trial attorney who has successfully litigated multi-million dollar matters at both the Federal and State court levels. He has extensive experience in handling complex, high exposure cases.
He currently resides in Westchester County with his wife Adrienne and children Alexandra and Gregory.
Gary W. Allen is an attorney and consultant specializing in aviation matters. He retired in September, 2005 after serving for 20 years as Director of the 50-person Aviation & Admiralty Litigation staff of the Torts Branch, Civil Division of the Department of Justice with responsibility for the prosecution and defense of all aviation and admiralty tort litigation brought by or against the United States and its departments and agencies. He is an active member of the Virginia Bar and recently represented EAA in two matters there, obtaining dismissals in both. He has served as a Special Master for discovery issues in a putative class action against an air carrier in Texas, as a Neutral in a hull-loss insurance dispute in Missouri, and worked abroad on a private aviation arbitration matter in London.
A District of Columbia native, Mr. Allen graduated Phi Beta Kappa from The Ohio State University in 1969, where he worked as a flight instructor and was active in student political organizations, and received his Juris Doctor in 1972 from The Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. After working for a summer and during his third year in the FAA Chief Counsel's Office, he was accepted into the DOT Honors Program and did rotations in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, the National Transportation Safety Board, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the FAA Litigation Division, where he stayed at the completion of the Honors Program, becoming a supervisory FAA litigation attorney in 1976. He moved to the Department of Justice Civil Division in 1980 as the Assistant Director for Aviation Litigation, and was promoted to the Torts Branch Director of Aviation & Admiralty in 1985, where for the next 20 years he managed the handling, trial or settlement of all aviation tort litigation involving the United States, including Delta/DFW, Aeromexico/Cerritos, the C5A Babylift, KAL/Guam, American/Little Rock and USAir/Skywest LAX. He has personally tried many complex aviation cases throughout the United States and is three circuits short of having argued in every US Court of Appeals. He successfully defended the first case attempting to use TCAS activation as a basis for liability against FAA controllers and counseled NASA following the losses of Shuttles COLUMBIA and CHALLENGER.
Mr. Allen has been Editor of the quarterly Journal of the Lawyer-Pilots Bar Association since 1997, has served as Chair of the ABA Tort and Insurance Practice Section's Aviation & Space Law Committee and as a Governing Committee Member of the ABA Forum on Air and Space Law, and is currently Program Committee Co-Chair of the annual Aviation Law & Insurance Symposium in Orlando. He has spoken on aviation litigation over 70 times in venues from Boston to Bangkok.
Mr. Allen started flying in 1961 and holds a Commercial pilot certificate with single and multi-engine and instrument ratings, and is a flight instructor in single and multi-engine aircraft. These days he mostly flies a 40-foot Phaeton diesel pusher motorhome and performs with The Three Jolly Coachmen, a Kingston Trio tribute group. He and his wife Marie live in Williamsburg, Virginia when they're not traveling to see their three children and four grandchildren in Nashville, Chicago and Los Angeles.
EDUCATION: EDUCATION: Dr. Ronald L. Herold is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University where he received BOTH a Bachelor’s and a PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering. He also is a graduate of Rutgers University where he received a Master’s degree in Computer Science.
AVIATION EDUCATION:
AVIATION APPRAISAL EXPERIENCE: Dr. Herold has appraised aircraft ranging in size from a Boeing 767 to a World War I Sopwith Camel. He appraises aircraft in every configuration from business jets to small, single engine production aircraft to homebuilt aircraft and helicopters. He has testified as a legal expert in matters related to estates, divorce and the United States Bankruptcy Court. His expertise has also been used in support of Diminution of Value claims. In addition to originating appraisals, Dr. Herold has performed appraisal review on behalf of the Internal Revenue Service.
AICRAFT NEGOTIATION: Dr. Herold is frequently requested to act as a buyer-agent on behalf of aircraft acquisitions. He appraises for buyers, sellers, clubs and lenders in support of financial transactions. He arranges inspections of aircraft for potential purchaser’s and follows up with the repair facility to ensure that any work required is compliant with FAA standards as well as industry standards.
DONATIONS: Dr. Herold is one of the few appraisers that can appraise aircraft for donation and then sign the IRS 8283 tax form on behalf of the donor. The Smithsonian is the beneficiary of 3 such appraisals including a Ryan PT-22A, Fleet Model 2 and Tuskegee Airman Stearman. Dr. Herold appraised a Piper Vagabond (PA15) and Comanche (PA24-400) for the Piper Aircraft Museum as well as the donations of the Grumman C1A-Trader and Russian YAK-3 to the Pacific Coast Air Museum as well as other donation aircraft including a T-33.
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Mr. Hadley grew up in aviation as the son of a corporate pilot. Within months of passing the Tennessee and Alabama bars in 1994, he began flying lessons earning his private pilot license and instrument rating. He currently flies a Cirrus SR22. He serves as a panel attorney for the AOPA Legal Services Plan, and his aviation practice includes representing aviators, aircraft owners, and fixed base operators from across the U.S and other countries in a wide range of matters including purchase/sale transactions, aircraft leasing, formation of LLCs and other entities to own aircraft, sales tax and other tax related issues, regulatory matters, accident litigation, and FAA actions. Mr. Hadley has litigated civil matters in trial and appellate level, State and Federal Courts. He has nearly two decades of courtroom and jury trial experience, including business tort litigation, commercial disputes, and medical malpractice defense.
The students and staff of McGavock High School have something very unique, a whole career pathway dedicated to Aviation that is one of the top 5 high school aviation programs in the country. Students in this pathways explore many different career pathways within Aviation, from mechanics, to flight, to meteorology.
Aviation Flight is taught by Mr. Derek Rowe, a helicopter pilot and former EMT. Mr. Rowe is a man that loves every day of teaching, even the hard ones. This is evident in the progress that the program has made in the last five years. In fact, Mr. Rowe was just recently awarded $50,000 from the Harbor Freight Tools for Schools Prize for Teaching Excellence. This honor recently earned Mr. Rowe a write up in the Tennessean, as well as a feature in the ACTE National Newsletter. We are so proud of his work and dedication to students, and couldn’t pass up a moment to highlight some of the steps he has made to create this fantastic program over the last several years.
The flying bug bit Mr. Haber early as he began pursuing his passion for aviation at the age of 16. His first experience with openly navigating the skies was when he jumped off a garage roof holding the four corners of a bed sheet. Not being satisfied with the results of that adventure, he chose to pursue his first formal flying lesson later that year at that same age, with a $10 Introductory flight.
But alas, time passed, and his draft number was low. Thus, his choice was to be drafted into the Vietnam war theatre as a side gunner on a Huey or join some less risky branch of service. The U.S. Navy was the logical choice as his thoughts turned to the unlikely event that Viet Cong Gorillas were not likely swim to a ship, armed with knives gripped tightly between their jaws in order to overcome 5,000 sailors. And so, it was done.
The Navy recognized his passion for aviation and determined in their misguided wisdom that Mr. Haber was fit for flight training whereupon he was taught to fly, ultimately being attached to VAH-123, a heavy attack squadron of A-3D Skywarrior twin engine jets.
Subsequent to completion of military service, the market was flooded with unemployed aviators seeking airline positions that were difficult to obtain. Upon consultation with a higher source (mom) he was told that a choice was necessary: “Either fly your own plane or fly someone else’s plane. With these words of wisdom, Mr. Haber pursued his Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University followed by attending the University of Miami School of Law (1986).
Currently as President of his own law firm, Mr. Haber practices principally in the areas of title and lien related legal matters as well as Real Estate Law, Aviation litigation and aircraft acquisition and sale, Commercial, Corporate, Construction, and Business litigation. Before its breakup, Mr. Haber was the Managing Partner with the law firm of Lieberman, Cobrin, Burke, Haber & Roth P.A., of Miami.
A member of the NBAA, AOPA, EAA, AAA and Costco, Mr. Haber has published several articles covering such issues as Corporate vail piercing, creditor rights against both solvent and insolvent corporations and questionable characters. Additionally, Mr. Haber has owned several aircraft and is licensed and current to fly one engine, two engine and no engine aircraft and can fly IFR in IMC in all but the no engine aircraft. He currently serves as Member of the Florida Bar Aviation Law Committee and is a former Director and founding member of the Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association (COPA). He continues to serve as Trustee for COPA and its Safety and Education Foundation. Over the last 20 years he has had published articles appear in a variety of aviation publications and magazines. His Av8Lawyer Facebook page has more followers that any other focused aviation law page, numbering over 3,500 subscribers.
More recently, Mr. Haber was recognized by the FAA for his exemplary flying record when he was awarded the coveted FAA MASTER PILOT AWARD for 50+ years of accident violation free flying.
