James A Boatman Jr.

Practice Overview:

Mr. Boatman is a commercial litigator with extensive experience in both federal and state courts. He has handled a broad spectrum of matters from "special asset" recovery claims for financial institutions, to construction defect cases, to civil prosecutions for the satellite broadcasting industry, to contract enforcement matters for corporations and private individuals. Though located in Southwest Florida, Mr. Boatman is able to provide his clients with assistance in cases pending throughout the state.

Notable Anti-Satellite Piracy Efforts

In 2002, after assisting DIRECTV with a raid on a pirate device dealer in Central Florida, Mr. Boatman was asked to file the first two test cases in what would become DIRECTV’s national litigation campaign against end-users of signal theft devices. The cases were filed in the Middle and Southern Districts of Florida and named 10-12 defendants each. Given the success of the first two cases, Mr. Boatman was asked by DIRECTV to assist in further developing the national litigation program.

Among other accomplishments, Mr. Boatman developed the database used by all the firms involved in the program nationally to manage the thousands of end-user cases in a virtually paperless environment. Mr. Boatman was also the visionary of an extranet repository for information shared by counsel involved in the end-user program throughout the United States. The database Mr. Boatman created was also designed to be uploaded to the extranet by local counsel to provide visibility to the client regarding the status of cases, individually and collectively.

In the state of Florida, Mr. Boatman personally filed and managed 922 end-user cases (more than any other attorney involved in the DIRECTV program) and managed, with the assistance of a staff of 5 associate attorneys and 25 administrative personnel, another 2000+ cases in Florida. Additionally, Mr. Boatman was asked by DIRECTV to be one of three (3) outside-counsel national litigation managers to supervise local counsel. His territory covered 11 states and accounted for approximately 6000 total end-user cases.

Outside the end-user program, Mr. Boatman assisted with three substantial raids on high-level dealers of pirate access devices which resulted in the recovery of thousands of end-users records and the seizure of substantial other assets. Another of Mr. Boatman’s notable achievements was the successful prosecution of a civil action against O.J. Simpson for satellite theft resulting in a Judgment of over $58,000.