A Philadelphia lawyer with 26 years of experience as trial attorney and a passion for humanitarian work in his native Cuba will take leadership of the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association later this month.
Ruben Honik, a founding partner of Golomb & Honik in Philadelphia, will be sworn in as president at the association’s board of governors meeting July 9.
A graduate of Rutgers School of Law in Camden, Honik has practiced in Philadelphia since 1980. For the last ten years Honik has worked with Richard M. Golomb in their boutique personal injury firm specializing in toxic tort and environmental cases.
A resident of the Philadelphia area since 1977, Honik moved to the city to attend law school after graduating from Syracuse University.
“I just love it,” he said “It was just a very agreeable place for a New York kid to have big city thrills.”
Honik raised his daughters Sophie, a senior at George Washington University; and Grace, a sophomore at Friends Central School in Wynnewood, Pa., in Philadelphia.
“My kids are as Philadelphian as Philadelphia could be,” he said.
Honik said when he takes the presidency he’ll continue the associations’s work to preserve the rights and access of Pennsylvania residents to the judicial system, but he also hopes to continue an effort to improve the range of services the organization provide its members.
Foremost in that effort is the job of appointing a new executive director for PATLA.
Nancy Malloy Bonn, executive director of the association for more than a decade left the post last year.
“We certainly lost the continuity and leadership she brought to the association,” Honik said. “The level of professionalism Nancy brought was unparalleled.”
PATLA President elect Steven E. Riley, Jr., of Conner Riley & Fryling in Erie, said he’s looking forward to working with Honik on his initiatives. He agrees that restructuring the associatioin to improve the benefits for members is important.
The days when professionals joined an association of peers because it was the thing to do have passed, said Riley, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh law school.
“You must give the impression that they get a benefit,” he said.
Riley, who became friends with Honik through PATLA, said Honik has a reputation as a diplomat and realist.
“He has the ability to take a difficult concept that has been debated by 20 or 30 people with sizable egos and synthesize consensus,” Riley said.
Golomb agreed leadership is one of Honik’s best traits.
“I see just a quiet leadership ability, the ability to communicate whether is’s a small group or a larger group,” he said.
Honik’s work with PATLA and other bar organizations has been joined since the early 1990s with another type of volunteer work.
Golomb said few people know of his partner’s work in Cuba. Honik has traveled there extensively since the mid-1990s on missions to build solidarity with the island’s Jewish population.
Honik is a president of the Northeastern U.S. Chapter of Jewish Solidarity, an organization that received the American Jewish Committee’s annual Award for Advancing Human Rights.
Honik said his visits to Cuba since the Soviet Empire crumbled and restrictions on access to the island nation eased have been an awakening for him. The son of parents who emigrated to Cuba from Eastern Europe in the 1920s, Honik was raised there during the 1950s.
“I dare say I would still be living there if not for the revolution that ensued there in 1959,” he said.
His family settled in New York in 1960, and after the Soviet collapse, Honik returned with a group reaching out to Cuba’s Jewish communities.
“When I finally got to go back it was highly emotional and a transformative experience,” he said.
The suspension of progress and change was immediately apparent. Returning to the apartment where he grew up, he came upon the very same dining room set where he sat for breakfast and dinner every day during the 1950s, Honik recalled.
“I’ve taken a lot of people there to experience the island and to learn what it’s all about and to try and engage the people of Cuba,” he said.
