Carlton Fields Adds Three Attorneys in Tampa

Carlton Fields is pleased to announce the addition of three attorneys in its Tampa office: Chandler R. Harris, Katherine Teal Leonard, and William J. Gruitza.

Harris is a member of the firm’s Business Transactions Practice. He counsels clients in a range of securities and corporate matters, and he has significant experience in both debt and equity capital markets offerings. He also has experience in securities regulation, project financing, and lending transactions, and he advises public and private companies on general corporate governance issues.

Harris received his J.D. from Yale Law School where he served as the editor of the Yale Journal on Regulation. He received his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Wyoming. Harris is admitted to practice in New York. (Until admission in Florida, any work on Florida matters supervised in accordance with Rule 4-5.3).

Leonard is a member of the firm’s Intellectual Property Practice. Her practice focuses on patent and trademark prosecution and litigation, due diligence investigations, and technology agreements. She has successfully prosecuted patents before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. She has represented innovator and non-innovator companies in high-stakes litigation. Her experience includes developing pre-litigation strategy, drafting contentions, briefing claim construction, and conducting fact discovery and expert discovery. Leonard’s experience also includes due diligence investigations for mergers and acquisitions, technology licensing and transfer agreements, freedom to operate, and infringement analyses.

Leonard was recognized on the 2019 Capital Pro Bono Honor Roll. She received her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Florida Fredric G. Levin College of Law, and her B.S., cum laude, from Florida International University.

Gruitza is a member of the firm’s Health Care Practice. He is also a certified compliance professional (by the Health Care Compliance Association) with a decade of legal and compliance leadership experience. He has extensive provider-based counsel and compliance and privacy officer experience, particularly in enterprise-level compliance program development, implementation, and management. Additionally, Gruitza provides legal counsel on a wide range of issues, including corporate transactions, federal health care program requirements, physician contracts, value-based care, mergers and acquisitions, health care fraud and abuse, telemedicine, data security, and patient privacy regulations.

Gruitza received his J.D. from Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, and his B.A. from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.