'Ballet in the water'

Sarasota attorney Michael Taaffe knew a tough battle brewed when he took on Merrill Lynch in 2010, not long after Bank of America bought the brokerage firm in a $50 billion deal.

What he didn't expect was the paper — or at least so much of it. Taaffe, with the Sarasota office of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, says opposing counsel, firms from New York and Washington, D.C., dumped at least 1.3 million documents on him and his colleagues. He recalls sitting one night in a hotel room after a hearing in New York with papers upon papers spread over the bed.

“Some big firms thought they could out manpower us,” says Taaffe. “They thought we were just some little old firm from Sarasota and they could push us around.”

Taaffe and his team of attorneys and colleagues pushed back. The firm won multiple cases in 2012 representing former Merrill brokers who claimed they were denied deferred compensation when they left the firm after the BofA deal. Some brokers were awarded millions of dollars and Taaffe and his 14-person team of attorneys, paralegals and assistants won some large fees. The team also helped negotiate settlements for more than 1,000 brokers.

Taaffe, who heads up the firm's broker-dealer litigation practice, has another passion besides this niche side of business law. That passion is for rowing and crew, a sport that has occupied his wife and four kids for a large part of the past 30 years. Taaffe, in an interview with the Business Observer, recently chatted about the sport and his family's devotion to it.

Try out: Taaffe, who grew up in Rhode Island and north New Jersey, intended to play football in college. Boston College was among the schools that recruited him. But a neck injury his senior year of high school ended his football dreams. He tried rowing for the crew team at the University of Rhode Island, basically on a whim, and he loved it. He rowed competitively at the college, and later, in law school, with the New York Athletic Club. “I was hooked,” he says.

Joint effort: One of Taaffe's favorite aspects of the sport is the teamwork component. Taaffe says unlike some team sports, where an individual performance of greatness can sometimes win the day, rowing is all about solidarity. “It's the purest team sport,” he says. “You are only as good as the weakest guy in the boat. It's like ballet in the water.”

Stay strong: Another favorite part of rowing for Taaffe is the athletic side because all parts of the body must work in concert. Arms, legs, back and, of course, the mental side, are all essential in a crew race. Says Taaffe: “It's probably one of the toughest endurance sports out there, besides cross-country skiing.” It also has a low barrier to entry athletically, at least in the early going, because unlike say baseball or football, hand-eye coordination isn't a requirement for success.

All in: All of Taaffe's four children have picked up rowing. They have taken it to high levels of competition, both in college and with junior national teams. One son, Brandon, rowed for Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; another son, Alex, rowed for Princeton and in junior national meets; a third son, Travis, a high school senior, plans to row at Harvard in the fall; and a daughter, McKayla, rowed for national teams and now rows at Stanford.

Interested observer: Watching four kids compete in hundreds of races, sometimes against each other, isn't always easy for a Type A attorney like Taaffe. Wins are nice, he says, but he remembers his children's losses on the water even more. “It's somewhat heartbreaking when you see something untoward happen,” Taaffe adds.

Costly competitors: Rowing can get expensive. An eight-person boat, for example, can cost from $35,000 to $45,000. A single-person boat — the Taaffe family has five — runs about $10,000 each. There are also oars, digital timing systems for the boats and special shoes. Most of the gear is provided for young rowers at the club level.

Now rowing: Taaffe is the lead volunteer announcer for rowing events and races at the new rowing and aquatic sports center at Nathan Benderson Park in north Sarasota County. Taaffe was also on the committee that helped organize and build the park. Since many people in the Sarasota-Bradenton community are new to the sport, Taaffe's aim is to make it less intimidating. “We want to make it user-friendly and spectator-friendly,” says Taaffe. “We explain what's going in the boat.”