Sam Funt joins the Henning Mediation panel of neutrals

Henning Mediation & Arbitration has added partner Samantha J. Funt to its panel of neutrals, together with the Atlanta trial lawyer Halsey G. Knapp, Jr. She takes mediation appointments there in person or by video.

Ms. Funt mediates the matters she has spent her career trying: personal and catastrophic injury, wrongful death, medical negligence, federal civil rights and government liability, and business and commercial disputes. She spent five years defending personal injury, premises liability, negligent security, products liability, and construction cases at a national firm before moving to the plaintiff side, and she began as an assistant public defender in Miami-Dade County, where she tried more than twenty-five felony jury trials as lead counsel.

That history is the reason the appointment makes sense. A mediator who has valued the same case from both sides of the v. can tell a party something more useful than what the case is worth in the abstract, which is where the friction in a negotiation usually sits.

Mr. Knapp joins the panel at the same time. By Henning’s account he brings more than four decades of Atlanta trial practice and business litigation, with a focus on business divorces, C-suite departures, legal ethics and malpractice, and real estate disputes. Chambers USA has recognized him for more than fifteen years, and he served five years on the State Bar of Georgia’s Disciplinary Review Board, including as Vice Chair.