ABOUT THE LAWYER

Mitchell A. Chester, Esq. is a civil trial lawyer practicing in South Florida. He works in the Florida State
Courts and has been admitted to the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), which focuses on
the preservation of the American Jury Trial. Membership is by peer review. The attorney has received an
AV Rating from Martindale Hubbell. He was named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the ABOTA Fort
Lauderdale Chapter in 2015 and again for 2020.

A graduate of the Ohio State University School of Journalism (1976) and the Nova Southeastern
Shepard Broad College of Law (1979), he has been an attorney for 47 years. His practice is devoted to
motor vehicle accident litigation, insurance coverage disputes, contract controversies, fraudulent real
estate transactions and other forms of fraud disputes, complex commercial litigation, structural defect
litigation, mobile housing representation, and climate and sea level rise litigation. At OSU he took several
classes in national security studies at the Mershon Center.

He was the first House Counsel Manager in the State of Florida, and the third in the nation, when working
at Progressive Insurance for approximately 13 years. There he managed a mid-size staff of attorneys,
paralegals, and legal secretaries in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. Prior to working with Progressive,
Mr. Chester was an associate with the law firm of Carey, Dwyer, Cole, Selwood and Bernard, in Fort
Lauderdale. The attorney opened his own law office after leaving Progressive in 2001. Over the years, he
has trained claims representatives in the insurance industry on legal issues.

He has conducted scores of jury and non-jury trials involving motor vehicle negligence, significant injury
cases, and breach of contract matters. His work also includes cases involving product liability disputes,
both as Plaintiff’s Counsel and in Defense Counsel in different cases. In the 1990's he helped to prove the
concept of expedited jury trials in Southeastern Florida Circuit Courts. He is a member of the Trial
Lawyers Section of the Florida Bar and the American Bar Association.

Mr. Chester has been deeply engaged in developing legal, social, housing, and financial adaptation
solutions for individuals, businesses and communities threatened by swelling oceans due to sea level
rise, other dimensions of climate change, and extreme weather.

Mr. Chester served as President and originator of Climate Monitor Media, Inc., a Florida Social Purpose
Corporation from 2016 to 2019, which offered media products including the Climate Monitor channel on
Roku TV and Amazon Fire TV/Alexa. The streaming TV channel focused on the multiple dimensions of
climate change, including rising seas and was seen in approximately sixty-five nations and territories. The
company operated a website at ClimateMonitor.tv. He produced a podcast entitled "Climate Monitor" on
major podcast platforms, with a focus on potential solutions and trends.

He is the past editor of the Nova Perspective, the first student newspaper at the Sheppard Broad Law
Center at Nova Southeastern University. Over the past two years, Mr. Chester has occasionally been
asked to teach issues concerning Florida Civil Procedure at NSU in the classroom setting.

At the Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio, Mr. Chester served as host of the show Rock and Talk
on student radio station WOSR, and interviewed various guests, from the music industry and politics to
then-current event personalities.

In 1975, Mr. Chester served as an intern to Senator John Glenn, in Washington, D.C. His role was in
radio media work. The next year he became General Manager of WOSR. As part of his journalism
training, he was assigned a science beat at the Ohio State Lantern in Columbus, Ohio, which published
his articles concerning research and development projects at the Battelle Memorial Institute in
Columbus, Ohio. As a summer news intern while in college, he worked at WTVJ Television in Miami,
Florida.

In 1977, he helped establish the Ron Helf Communications Scholarship Fund at the University of
Miami in Coral Gables. Named in honor of Mr. Chester’s best friend, who perished in a 1977 boating

accident, the scholarship is designed, with support from the Helf family, to help communications students
financially in their studies. The Fund is still operational but is now known as the Ron Helf Television
Scholarship.

He earned a bachelor's degree in Broadcast Journalism from Ohio State University in 1976 and a Juris
Doctorate from Nova Southeastern Law School in 1979. In December 1979, he was admitted to the
Florida Bar.

He was the lead Florida trial counsel in Reynolds, et al. v. State of Florida, et al., a lawsuit brought in
Tallahassee, Florida on behalf of a group of Youth based upon alleged violations of Florida constitutional
rights with regard to Climate Change and Sea Level Rise issues affecting the Sunshine State. Mr.
Chester was also perhaps the first attorney in the state to challenge and litigate a major real estate
development based upon the threat of encroaching ocean waters in northern Palm Beach County. In
2022, working with Our Children’s Trust, he advocated for the advance the first Florida Department of
Agriculture and Consumer Services regulation setting goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases in
Florida.

Mr. Chester has served as Editor of: RaisingFields.org (how agriculture can adapt to sea level rise and
increased heat); SLRAmerica.org; (which explores legal and practical financial issues pertaining to sea
level Rise); and FinancialAdaptation.org (monetary tools for sea level rise).

He is a past Board Member of the CLEO Institute, which educates government leaders, students, and
adults in Southeastern Florida about sea level rise and climate issues. Mr. Chester has presented sea
level rise and climate presentations in Florida and Pennsylvania including events at the University of
Miami School of Architecture, the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric
Science, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Florida Levin College of Law, the St. Thomas
University School of Law, the Nova Southeastern University Shepard Broad College of Law,
Miami-Dade College, Barry University, Vizcaya Museum and Gardens, the Miami-Dade Beacon
Council, the Arthur R. Marshall Foundation for the Everglades, the Environmental Coalition for
Miami and the Beaches, the Coral Gables Museum, the Florida Bar Environmental Law Section,
the Florida Bar Real Property, Probate and Trust Section, the American Institute of Architects 2016
National Convention along with other venues. He has been quoted in various media reports concerning
the threat of rising seas.

The attorney has teamed up with former South Miami Mayor Philip Stoddard in an effort to advocate the
development and implementation of Climate Restoration Bonds. (Restoration.org). The purpose is to
allow developers to build ethically without putting the public at risk of paying the clean-up costs imposed
by climate change.

He is a past contributor to TheNatureOfCities.com and has appeared on SiriusXM Radio ("Tell Me
Everything with John Fugelsang”) to speak about financial adaptation issues and climate change. He
published articles on TheInvadingSea.com pertaining to climate change, cooperative relocation, and
mortgages, as well as sea level rise and agricultural greenhouse gas sequestration. Mitch has also
presented with a panel on sea rise issues at the Tower Forum in Fort Lauderdale.

On February 18, 2022, he served on a panel of experts and advocates to discuss sea level rise and
assisted relocation efforts. That webinar was hosted by the Institute For Strategic Policy Solutions of
St. Petersburg College.

Mr. Chester has been involved in various hurricane relief and severe weather recovery efforts in South
Florida. Following Hurricane Andrew, when he helped cook meals for first responders, volunteered at a
Red Cross shelter, and helped deliver supplies to Florida City in Southern Miami-Dade County. He has
worked with a team to send and demonstrate rapidly deployable transitional emergency housing units
from the Better Shelter organization in Sweden and Poland to Bay County and Orlando Florida in the
aftermath Hurricane Michael. The project was ResponsiveShelter.org. For 1.5 years in the aftermath of
the 2010 earthquake, he worked to try to supply unused portable classrooms from Southeastern Florida

to Haiti. While that effort was not successful, he obtained experience to help in the Better Shelter
initiative. He has explored and advocated for options to bring Better Shelter units to the United States for
immediate deployable emergency use in disaster zones.

In January 2016, he was named Trial Lawyer of the Year by the Fort Lauderdale ABOTA Chapter for
2015. In January 2021, he was given that same award. On July 30, 2020, he co-moderated, for ABOTA,
an on-line Clerk of the Courts Candidate Forum for Broward County, Florida candidates.

The attorney was involved in community efforts to relocate a planned IKEA complex from the Town of
Davie, Florida to the City of Sunrise. This helped to resolve significant anticipated traffic issues near the
Town’s public safety complex and three schools.

He also was an organizer and advocate in the re-design of Interstate 595 in Broward County, Florida and
worked to prevent the double decking of that major roadway due to safety and environmental concerns.
Working with a team of experts and residents, that effort stopped plans for an approximate $200 million
bridge over the interstate and helped to promote the widening of the highway as a safer and more
environmentally friendly alternative.

He has advocated for affordable housing in Court proceedings (representing mobile home residents
threatened with displacement) and in 2008 Mr. Chester was Chair of the Town of Davie’s Affordable
Housing Advisory Committee in Broward County, Florida.

Early in his legal career, Mr. Chester served as pro bono counsel in Dinnen v. Pond Apple, a Florida
State Court housing discrimination rights case which helped pave the way for amendments to the Fair
Housing Act. That case was reported by 60 Minutes by journalist Ed Bradley. Along with two colleagues,
he helped fund the first class at the University of Miami School of Architecture designed to collaborate
with the School of Engineering to use tools and design strategies for affordable housing.

Since 1999, the attorney has been an early and proactive voice in integrating technology with the practice
of law in state civil cases. At that time, he started and maintained JudicialCalendar.com, a beta site to
assist the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit with posting hearing and trial dockets on-line. The site was a
precursor to current on-line judicial databases at the state level in Florida.

With the arrival of COVID-19, Mr. Chester worked since March 2020 with the Courts to advance remote
virtual motion calendar and specially set hearings, non-jury trials, and calendar calls. He has also had a
key role in the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit Virtual Jury Trial Initiative and has collaborated with the New
York University Civil Jury Project. His work was published on that project's website in June 2020 and
January 2021. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Chester helped orient lawyers and Judges regarding
their orientation and transition to the Zoom video conferencing platform to enhance the necessary
transition to remote Court appearances. In 2021, he was published by the American Bar Association
Access to Justice Section.

On March 25, 2022, Mr. Chester was a panelist at JCL & PDQ Symposium discussing complex litigation
in the COVID-19 Pandemic, hosted by the St. Thomas College of Law Journal of Complex Litigation
and the St. Thomas University Center for Pandemic, Disaster and Quarantine Research in Miami
Gardens, Florida.

The attorney is the creator, and until recently, was the editor and web designer for the American Board
of Trial Advocates Fort Lauderdale Chapter website. He has also participated in producing two
important videos for the Chapter focused on the 2023 amendments to the Florida Rules of Civil
Procedure.

In 2001 he was the first President of his homeowner's association, in Davie, Florida and worked to
establish procedures and resolve a zoning problem with a neighboring community. In 1980 he worked
with the White House Advance team for three South Florida trips by President Jimmy Carter, including the
President’s visit to Liberty City in the immediate aftermath of civil unrest.

​

He attended Shaker Heights High School near Cleveland, Ohio, and produced the film Prototechnic
Prisms, which was shown in his senior year at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

In January 2023, Mr. Chester was awarded the first annual Mitchell A. Chester Community Service
Award by the American Board of Trial Advocates Fort Lauderdale Chapter for his efforts to assist
residents of Bonita Springs in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian in Southwest Florida.

In July 2023, The Florida Chapters of the American Board of Trial Advocates awarded Mr. Chester the
Joseph Milton Award for Professionalism and Ethics at the state-wide FLABOTA Convention.

In April 2023, Mr. Chester was instrumental in supporting The Pantry of Broward, a community service
non-profit, in the aftermath of historic flooding which adversely impacted the City of Fort Lauderdale. That
effort involved replacing damaged computers.

An avid reader and listener, Mr. Chester focuses on current events, the climate crisis (including the
effects and consequences of sea level rise on the economy and built environment), foreign and military
policy, artificial intelligence, scientific research, and the architectural and structural challenges in
constructing interior vertical farming in a warming world. He has been published in an Op-Ed by the
South Florida Sun Sentinel on rational firearm legislation and was an early voice in the Miami Herald
on adaptation to rising seas.

In 2023 Mr. Chester joined the Tower Forum in Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, Florida. He served
on the Program Planning Committee. The Tower Forum, an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit
organization founded by Broward County business and civic leaders in 1976, hosts thought-provoking
forums featuring national and local experts addressing, debating, and discussing current headline issues
ranging from government, business and the economy to the arts, education and sports.

Since late 2023, he has been deeply immersed in learning how to effectively and ethically use various
artificial intelligence tools, and studies and implements that rapidly developing topic daily in his own
practice. Concerned about the benefits and risks of using artificial intelligence generally and in education,
he also appreciates the productive use of the technology in the practice of law to advance human
intelligence and understanding. He has demonstrated AI to other members of the legal and business
community as it has advanced since 2023.

Regarding AI, the lawyer practices by this formula when appropriate:

 

Human Intelligence (HI) + Artificial Intelligence (AI) + Human Judgment (HJ) = Strategic Intelligence Amplified (SIA)
Human Intelligence (HI) + Artificial Intelligence (AI) + Human Judgment (HJ) = Strategic Intelligence Amplified (SIA)