The Commissioner Comes Home

Michael Mena Joins a Local Firm – and the Underdogs

By. J.P. Faber

November 2019

Until this summer, Gables City Commissioner Michael Mena – re-elected unopposed in April – had worked 12 years in litigation for Akerman, the gorilla-sized Miami law firm (700 attorneys). Now Mena works at MSP Recovery, a young Coral Gables law firm that takes on major medical insurance companies accused of dumping their claim payments onto Medicare.

“The idea is to preserve Medicare and force these insurance companies to behave, so that Medicare doesn’t get pillaged,” says Mena, who was lured to his new post by former City Commissioner Frank Quesada, MSP’s chief legal officer.

Besides Mena, MSP has other new muscle, namely financing from a venture capital company for fledgling litigation firms (yes, that’s a thing). This means strong backing for small firms that pursue cases on a contingency basis, where they only get paid if they win. “As we bring these claims against big insurance companies that have big law firms,” says Mena, “we can actually go toe-to-toe with them because we are significantly funded.”