Who are the Floridians, Florida Trend asked, whose participation in business-related issues stirs up the most heat?

Too persuasive, too skilled or too effective to be dismissed as cranks, they bring uncommon passion and uncommon personality to the issues in which they engage. In some cases, they're people business loves to hate. In other cases, they're businesspeople.

What drives them, and why do those on the other side of an issue (and many on the same side) react so strongly to them?

Tampa: Jim Wilkes, Nursing Home Industry's Most Hated Man

Jim Wilkes is trying to add up the cases he's lost outright since he started suing nursing homes in 1986. Among more than 1,500, he needs only one hand to count the losses. “It's just amazing how awful the care is,” he says. “So if you're able to present the facts, they either settle, or the jury goes against them.”

Presenting facts on bedsores and soiled sheets, malnutrition, falls and worse, Wilkes and his Tampa law firm, Wilkes & McHugh, have gotten rich suing nursing homes for neglect. The firm, which collects an average of 40% of damages, won four of the biggest verdicts ever reached against Florida homes, including $15 million against Tampa's Brian Center for allowing a Korean War veteran to die of starvation and $20 million against St. Petersburg's Colonial Care Center for not feeding a man for a month and not treating his wounds, which developed gangrene.

Wilkes maintains that nursing homes are “inherently evil” and that he —d love to put them all out of business — and himself out of a job. “The concept of warehousing the elderly this way is an anathema of dignity, fairness and courtesy,” he says.

Evil is also the word used by people in the nursing home industry to describe Wilkes; it's fair to say he's the most hated man in the industry nationwide. He's been called “Satan,” “Beelzebub” and the “Antichrist.” The director of the Alabama Nursing Home Association called him “a migratory predator.” The industry charges that Wilkes and his ilk have unfairly demonized nursing homes and are driving them into bankruptcy.

Wilkes takes pride in their hatred. He says the industry's greed speaks for itself, pointing to big severance agreements such as the $55 million negotiated with Robert Elkins, founder and CEO of bankrupt Integrated Health Services. “They shouldn't call their group Protect Our Parents,” Wilkes says of the industry's advocacy organization. “They should call it Protect our Pocketbooks.”

A Florida panel trying to come up with solutions to the state's nursing home crisis voted to make no recommendations last year over a lawsuit-cap proposal that was aimed largely at Wilkes. The industry says lawsuits will eventually sink most nursing homes in the state. Lawyers and many patient advocates argue the cap ignores fundamental reform in care. Perhaps to prove he doesn't mind putting himself out of business, Wilkes says he is pleased with a bill passed by the Legislature that combines limits on judgment awards with stricter care requirements at nursing homes in the state. He says his next goal is pushing alternative care in Florida. “I'm just happy to see the state focusing on elder care,” he says.

Excerpted from the June 2001 Florida Trend.

© 2001 All Rights Reserved