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Battery Case Dropped Against Injury Lawyer
Published August 10, 1995

By DAVID LYONS, Staff Writer

Less than a week after millionaire personal injury lawyer J. B. Spence and his wife, Maryann, were granted a divorce, prosecutors have decided not to pursue a battery case against the well-known Miami attorney. They had accused him of hitting his wife in the head with a brass planter. “Based on all of the circumstances of the case – the court rulings that precluded a lot of evidence, and the fact that the victim wanted this case closed – we just dropped the case,” State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundell said Wednesday.

Defense attorney Joel Hirschhorn branded the wife as the instigator. He called the state’s case “a waste of taxpayer money,” and asserted that his client acted in self-defense. He said that if the case had gone to trial, the jury would have been told that his client was in bed when he was attacked by his wife while she was under the influence of alcohol and anti-anxiety pills.

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