Joseph D. Magri is a founding shareholder of Merkle & Magri, P.A. He began practicing law in 1977. Mr. Magri is an AV rated attorney by Martindale Hubbell and a member of their preeminent lawyer group.  He is a dedicated trial attorney having handled many complex civil and criminal cases, in Federal and State court, before a jury, judge and on appeal. He has also represented clients in hearings before administrative courts and arbitrators. He has had two cases successfully decided by the highest court in the country for those types of cases.

Mr. Magri has represented clients in a wide range of legal areas, including complex commercial and regulatory litigation on behalf of major corporations in his larger law firm days.  After a period as a federal prosecutor, he represented clients in federal tort claims, insurance coverage, personal injury, products liability, mold, toxic substances, medical malpractice, employment law, discrimination, whistleblowing, civil rights, health and medicine, mobile homes, business and commercial, lender liability, fraud and limited criminal defense. In the course of his legal career, Mr. Magri has obtained significant results for major corporations as well as multiple recoveries for smaller clients of more than one­ million dollars. He has also assisted mobile homeowners in enforcing their legal and constitutional rights when developers attempted to evict them.  Since 2007 Federal Employment law has been his predominant practice area.

Mr. Magri started his career working as an associate for Cummings & Lockwood, LLC in its Stamford, Connecticut office, where his practice focused on commercial and administrative litigation for Fortune 500 companies and other large institutions. After giving a speech about various macro and micro economic effects of President Carter’s Department of Energy Entitlement Program, which was attended by the General Counsel of Texaco, he became primarily responsible for handling Texaco’s upstream crude oil production work under the Department of Energy’s Entitlement Program. A partner in the firm was assigned the downstream refinery issues. Mr. Magri’s accomplishments included handling regulatory matters, hearings and developing the legal theories and approach that: saved his client $120 million in a (downstream) dispute with the Department of Energy; obtained a $70 million settlement of an insurance coverage dispute; and after President Reagan was elected, developed a theory which resulted in legal decisions finding that New York and Connecticut statutes that attempted to regulate energy matters were preempted by the lack of Federal regulations. That case involved many large law firms from Wall Street and Washington, D.C. representing most of the large oil companies which ultimately went to the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals (TECA) which was, at that time, the highest court in the country for energy matters. The preemption theory which prevailed in the District Court, the Second Court of Appeals and at TECA was conceived and developed by Mr. Magri based on the work previously done for Texaco. One of the most highly regarded big firm trial attorneys in New York City handled District Court proceedings. The head of litigation for Mr. Magri’s firm handled the Second Circuit Court of Appeals oral argument. The preparation of briefs was handled by former U.S. Supreme Court clerks with Mr. Magri helping with oral argument preparation and overseeing six attorneys proof reading briefs as they were printed at a New York City printing company. After Mr. Magri left the firm to join the Department of Justice, the case was heard by TECA and another senior lawyer from another firm handled the TECA arguments.  

Prior to leaving this firm, Mr. Magri helped to establish a branch of the firm in Washington, D.C. with Clifford R. Oviatt, Jr.  Mr. Oviatt had a national labor practice. He developed a legal and practical approach which brought together the needs of a business to be efficient and profitable and those of employees to not only be competitively paid, but to be brought into business operations in a way which was beneficial to both. He later joined McGuire Woods Battle & Boothe and was appointed to the National Labor Relations Board by President George H. W. Bush. 

Cummings & Lockwood was founded by Homer Cummings, the Attorney General under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and many attorneys joined the Department of Justice for periods of time. In 1982 Mr. Magri joined the Department of Justice in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida. He initially worked as an Assistant United States Attorney, and became the First Assistant U. S. Attorney, supervising the Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville and Fort Myers’ offices. At one point, Mr. Magri served as the Acting U.S. Attorney. While in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, in addition to his supervisory duties and dealing with other law enforcement components on various issues, Mr. Magri prosecuted criminal cases involving corruption, fraud, narcotics and Medicare fraud. He also obtained a first-degree murder conviction against two defendants in the first mutiny murder case in many decades throughout the United States. In the absence of the U.S. Attorney or on his request, he often served as the office’s media liaison, providing information to local and national media.

During his time, the United States Attorney, Robert W. Merkle, sought and obtained the extradition of Carlos Lehder, the Medellin Cartel’s boss over product delivery into the United States. When Lehder was arrested a few years later, he tried and convicted Lehder.  Mr. Magri dealt with the DOJ and various agencies in Mr. Merkle’s place during this time. Under Mr. Merkle’s leadership the office led many federal, state and local task forces and brought a wide variety of complex and important cases. The office indicted not only many drug organizations, but related individuals and organizations including General Manuel Noriega and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).  Mr. Magri and the First Assistant of the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida which also had indicted General Noriega on charges stemming from its cases, walked these indictments through Main Justice together.  Mr. Magri also dealt with Main Justice on several inter-agency conflicts which arose during the BCCI money laundering investigation and others.  Mr. Magri was also involved in several reported appellate cases and had the honor of having a Supreme Court Justice on the panel hearing argument of the mutiny murder case.

Mr. Magri earned a Juris Doctorate from the University of California, Hastings College of Law in San Francisco (1977). He received a Bachelor of Arts from Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. Mr. Magri has been admitted to practice law in the State of Florida, District of Columbia, and the State of Connecticut. He is, or had been admitted to practice in the United States District Courts for the Middle District of Florida, the Southern District of Florida, the District of Columbia, the Eastern District, Southern District and Western District of New York; the District of Colorado, the Middle District of Tennessee and the District of Connecticut. He has also been admitted to practice in the Second, Fifth, Tenth, Eleventh, District of Columbia, and Federal Circuit Courts of Appeals as well as the United States Supreme Court. He was part of a team that briefed and argued Babb v. Wilkie, 589 U.S. 399 (2020).  The decision in that case, hopefully, may one day be fully recognized as affecting burdens of proof in Federal ADEA and Title VII cases and finally have pattern jury instructions developed. Besides his legal work, Mr. Magri has given presentations and seminars regarding several legal topics.

Robert Merkle started Merkle & Magri in 1988 because of a desire to help those who might not be able to otherwise obtain good legal representation. Mr. Merkle had turned down an opportunity to be appointed as a federal judge while he was the U.S. Attorney, and subsequently unsolicited offers from large law firms. Mr. Magri turned down several unsolicited offers from large law firms and later an opportunity to be appointed to a state court judicial position. Mr. Merkle and Mr. Magri had decided to try to actively help others in ways none of those opportunities would allow them to do.

To get started, they did a wide variety of cases. Many individuals and some corporations sought out Mr. Merkle. Mr. Magri’s former employer referred some complicated matters to them. For example, Merkle & Magri successfully brought an insurance coverage case in California on behalf of a corporation that had purchased a company with manufacturing plants in Texas, California and several other states. Asbestos and silica claims on behalf of several hundreds of plaintiffs were filed against the corporation and 24 other companies in Texas. After establishing coverage, the substantive defense of the case involved litigation in Texas, California, other states and Canada. It was essentially resolved in favor of the corporation after years of litigation. The firm also represented a Michigan based venture capitalist in several litigation matters with over $40 million in dispute in New York, Delaware, Maryland, Florida and related matters in Hong Kong when Hong Kong was still associated with England and the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank still had its major operations there. We not only dealt with large firms in Detroit, Philadelphia, New York, California, Texas and Washington, D.C.; we marveled at posh boutique law firms that did everything rich families might need in beautiful but hardworking settings with shiny carts which came around in the middle of the day with many lunch items you could pick off as they swung by. No need to go out for lunch. If food was left it was given to food pantries or similar places. 

Texaco was a large benefactor of the Metropolitan Opera. At points in his career Mr. Magri experienced the pleasure of musicians for the Metropolitan Opera performing during lunch at Texaco’s world headquarters, and before and after DOJ, going to iconic clubs and restaurants in Houston and Dallas, on the Westcoast and East coast; occasionally staying in hotels with suites typically used by clients, taking time off with other attorneys to golf at Pebble Beach or other famous courses; go to night games at most MLB parks; have special dinners at highly regarded restaurants with high level people. Mr. Merkle had a favorable “60 Minutes” segment done on him and the accomplishments of his office and the attacks on him. Various Sunday magazines had similar stories. He was invited as a special guest to speak at California’s then famous Bohemian Grove. In Hong Kong he had an old-fashioned colonial dinner on the water where he dined with approximately twenty British officials and attorneys who wanted to meet the “firebrand” from America. The next day he deposed Bank officials overseen by a wigged Magistrate and a reporter who chronicled the deposition with a quilled pen; and Mr. Merkle drew out key evidence surrounding a “project mooring” which was important to our case. Mr. Magri was simultaneously deposing officials of a New York Bank in Baltimore, Maryland which tied project mooring to one of our cases. Together that helped defeat the Defendant’s motion for summary judgment and resulted in tens of millions of dollars in settlement in one client’s case. At the request of the U.S. Military, we had dinner with high-ranking individuals in security and intelligence areas from an important country newly freed following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They decided to stay with the Merkle family for a week. 

Given this history, we knew what we would be passing up when we looked back at why we started our firm. Those and many other cases presented challenging and interesting issues and brought us in contact with delightful things and intelligent, committed, admirable and often wealthy or powerful people. However, the basic reason for starting the firm was always a significant part of our practice. Mr. Merkle brought civil rights cases, and after agents and others in the federal government came to us, began to handle federal employee cases which also presented civil rights issues and the added complication of employees, who cannot afford it, battling bureaucracies larger than most major corporations represented by very able counsel, with coordinated countrywide strategies and approaches. Mr. Merkle, who joined the Department of Justice in its honors program out of law school, spent time in foreign countries getting to know terrorists’ homelands to assist in cases he would prosecute. He also worked on significant fraud and complex DOJ cases. When our firm started, he had an extensive federal and state prosecutorial background which included major drug organizations, capital murder cases and murder cases of all degrees. Yet, given what we did, we had no desire to use that or my history simply to make money. Rather Mr. Merkle often accepted calls from parents or spouses of loved ones who they felt were innocent, over charged, or who had rights violated, but also had little, if any, money. When Mr. Merkle died in May 2003, our small firm had provided $4.4 million of free legal services. 

After Mr. Merkle passed away, Mr. Magri handled civil rights cases for as long as the system allowed, and federal employees’ cases. In the early stages of these cases our experience with federal agencies often led to resolutions before extensive litigation. However, soon after there was a distinct change best addressed in Cote v. Shinseki, Case No. 8:07-cv-1524-T-TBM (2007); Gowski v. Peake, 682 F.3d 1299 (11th Cir. 2012) in which there was substantial direct and circumstantial evidence of a plan to destroy the careers and reputations of employees including good, successful, accomplished and concerned employees who not only had a desire to advance in their profession, but strong respect for ethics and a sensitivity to the harm caused by plans to violate important federal laws protecting civil rights, public health and safety, and forbidding fraud, waste and abuse and other conduct covered by federal whistleblowing statutes. As the plan was discovered, there was a wholesale reassignment of government attorneys who after analyzing facts would work out resolutions. They were replaced by attorneys who would not recommend settlement and would fight virtually all cases. This resulted in more fees clients could not pay, but given the purpose for our firm, increasingly drew us into those cases not only in all parts of Florida, but around the country. We do not advertise. Our growth was by word of mouth. We represented clients at virtually every level of several agencies and even the parts of agencies which investigate those agencies. In doing so we received documents that the VA Central Office regularly asked its facilities to provide it with what helped the agency to prevail in cases. As a result, we saw defenses raised using court decisions to develop or shoe-horn approaches which our clients and brave employee witnesses who tried to overcome retaliation faced. Some defenses fell apart because they were so widespread. For example, in the Cote/Gowski cases the facility claimed it was not discriminating or retaliating but rather implementing new efficiencies to better serve the veterans. As a result, the trial court allowed us to put on evidence which showed that this performance was based on virtual calendars, cancellation of clinics, follow-up and even radiologic exams which were harmful to veterans. However, in the years before we provided this evidence the facility received two Carey Awards for high performance improvement. As a result, the practices were spread to other facilities around the country and resulted in death and serious injury to veterans which was not nationally discovered until the Phoenix scandal broke and led to a national investigation by Congress. However, that investigation missed the systematic problems with trying to conduct radiologic exams which was not exposed until employees from Tampa’s James Haley VAMC and another facility complained. Investigation showed over 300,000 such exams nationwide. The OIG investigated but only criticized management in the two facilities where employees came forward. These and related problems continued in many areas and led to legislation giving veterans greater rights. Often Congressional reforms are blamed for old problems. We have come to the belief that the plan to destroy careers and reputations is a major reason this occurs on a widespread basis. Employees at all levels fear disclosing those issues. This was true with colonoscopy, lack of sterilization, and certain indoor environmental cases which failed to protect injured employees or veterans. Therefore, given our purpose we have worked on these cases. We experience tactics, such as delayed and limited document production; dumping 250,000 pages in a Middle District of Tennessee days before twenty-five depositions were set; 40,000 pages in a Tampa case which were given in a way which made them hard to open, and again shortly before depositions; and 10s of thousands of pages in many other cases. We have faced elaborate “independent decision maker processes” including where evidence showed it was created. Countless investigations where longstanding highly rated doctors, nurses and others are detailed for months or years for investigations which are really retaliation and, in any case, should never take that long. The manner of their detail generally involves demeaning duties, if any are given, but always locations where other employees can see the employees in ways which are a form of modern-day pillorying. Exceptional doctors are not only not fully reinstated, but have impediments placed in their way which prevent them from conducting practices needed by veterans. Employees who “win” Disciplinary Appeals Board decisions have often not received the benefits of those decisions. Court decisions criticizing the agency take an incredibly long time and expense and employees are met with new efforts which should be illegal and unconstitutional, but which always involve a financially strapped employee being an example to other employees to stay in line. Decisions on the west coast are avoided by changing a sentence in the action in cases in the southwest or south. 

All of this is a way to control employees. Many famous Presidents have sought to address this, but it is difficult. These tactics are foreign to the principles Dick Oviatt advanced. In reality it makes it more difficult for agencies to accomplish the mission of the agency. It is a by-product of unqualified deference to agencies.

In addition to his work for Merkle & Magri, P.A., Mr. Magri donated his time to local groups regarding issues such as choice in education, low and moderate-income housing, the provision of free medical services, and cooperation between high crime communities and law enforcement to protect those communities from crime and address issues such as reducing recidivism. In addition, he, Mack Hicks, PhD. and Kent Corral, M.D. worked on obtaining school vouchers in Florida beginning in the late 1980s. In the 1990s that effort merged with other efforts led by The Florida Catholic Conference, Larry Keough and Pat Heffernan, Ph.D., who Governor Jeb Bush later selected to head up aspects of Florida’s first voucher programs. Mr. Magri has also been involved in numerous boards and committees involving his Church on a school, parish, diocesan and state level. He was a former president of the Florida Federation of Catholic Parents. In 2013, he received the Pro Ecclesia Et Pontifice award. 

Mr. Magri also handles select pro bono cases and counseling.  Among those was the appellate portion of the Terry Schiavo case which right to life advocates asked him to become involved in after the lower court’s decision. It also included years’ long participation on the Board of Directors of La Clinica Guadalupana, which provided free medical care and was taken over by Catholic Charities in 2024.