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FLORIDA RECORD

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Maitland attorney reprimanded over 2018 attack ad claiming opponent fired his wife after cancer diagnosis

Discipline
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Howard David Friedman | The Florida Bar

TALLAHASSEE — Maitland attorney Howard David Friedman has been publicly reprimanded following a March 5 Florida Supreme Court order over a political attack ad against his opponent in a 2018 race for judge, according to a recent announcement by The Florida Bar.

Friedman's ad mailer appeared to link his wife's cancer diagnosis with her firing by his then opponent in the Orange County Circuit Court race, former prosecutor Jeff Ashton.

"Friedman omitted any reference to the passage of 11 years between Schultz’s cancer diagnosis and her job termination," the state bar's March 19 announcement said.

In its single-page order, the Supreme Court approved the uncontested referee's report filed in the matter before reprimanding Friedman and ordered him to pay a little more than $1,600 in costs.

Florida court orders are not final until time to file a rehearing motion expires. Filing such a motion does not alter the effective date of Friedman's reprimand.

Friedman was admitted to the bar in Florida on Oct. 7, 1987, according to his profile at the state bar website. Friedman had no prior history of discipline, according to the consent judgment reached between Friedman and the state bar.

The consent judgment includes Friedman's conditional guilty plea.

Friedman's political attack ad, which accused Ashton of firing Friedman's wife "after she got sick with cancer," was mailed out a few weeks before the primary in August 2018 primary. The ad included a photograph of Friedman with his clearly ill wife, Annette Schultz, in a hospital bed and accused Ashton of "wrongfully" firing Schultz.

Ashton, who previously served as Orange Osceola State Attorney, said at the time that Schultz, then a 24-year prosecutor in Orange and Osceola counties, lost her job in 2014 because of "poor performance."

The ad did not mention that more than a decade passed between Schultz's cancer diagnosis and her firing, according to the consent judgment.

"Through these omissions, [Friedman] inadvertently created the appearance that [then former] State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton terminated Schultz due to her cancer diagnosis," the consent judgment said.

Schultz, diagnosed with cancer in 2003, subsequently settled a discrimination lawsuit over her firing without trial for $85,000 in 2017, according to various news reports at the time. A local news station that obtained the court document quoted the settlement saying "the employer denies any wrong doing or unlawful acts on the part of the agency’s elected officials" and that Schultz's claims "are not valid ones."

Ashton defeated Friedman, taking 56% of the vote. He is currently assigned to the circuit court's domestic violence bench.

Schultz died in October at age 56.

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