Jonathan T. Colby

Jonathan T. Colby is a Senior Partner with Leeds Colby Paris Spence Hoffman & Valori. Colby graduated from the University of California in 1979 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology. He received his Juris Doctorate degree in 1983 from the University of Florida College of Law.

He is admitted to practice law by the state bars of Florida, New York and Washington, D.C., and is admitted to the United States District Court Federal Trial Bar and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals.

Colby served as a well-respected Judge in Miami-Dade County for five and a half years. He also served as associate administrative Judge assisting the Chief Judge in the administration of the court system. He was appointed to the bench by the Governor of Florida when he was thirty-two years old – one of the youngest judges ever appointed in the state. Colby handled cases in both criminal and civil court in all of the divisions of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court. He presided over first degree murder/death penalty cases, large medical malpractice trials and all of the Dupont-Benlate cases – a series of complex product liability trials involving over $1 billion in claims.

Colby specializes in catastrophic and complex medical malpractice, personal injury, nursing home negligence and product liability cases. He has obtained a $7.4 million dollar award for a thirty-three year old brain-damaged client injured by an anesthesiologist during childbirth; the largest wrongful death settlement in New Jersey history – a $4.6 million dollar medical malpractice settlement – for the family of a physician who died during an elective gallbladder procedure; the first settlement in the United States of a Fen-Phen diet drug negligence case, as well as many other multi-million dollar settlements and verdicts.

Colby has served for many years on the Editorial Board of the Florida Bar Journal and is author of “Expanding the Role of Jurors in Florida Courts,” Colby is a frequent instructor and lecturer at the Dade County Police Academy and the University of Miami Law School.