In memory ofAdv. Adam Fish R.I.PJanuary 31, 1957 - December 26, 2014
Passed Away At The Age of 57 while His Cape Yet on His Shoulders
Adam was born in January 1957 to his parents Michael and Isabella Fish, and was raised and educated in Haifa. He invested most of his adult life working and promoting the city of Haifa which he loved so dearly.
At the end of the 1970s Adam moved to Israel's capital, Jerusalem, to study law at the Hebrew University. He returned to Haifa after completing his studies at the Faculty of Law at The Hebrew University in 1981. From the start of his career Adam stood out as an extraordinary person and as an attorney with rare and special professional and human capabilities.
In 1986, Adam was among the first to win a scholarship from the New Israel Fund for jurists practicing the area of human rights. In the framework of the scholarship he attended the American University in Washington, D.C., where he earned his LL.M degree. He returned to Israel to assist in establishing the Haifa branch of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and served as its first legal counsel. During the Center’s first years of legal activity, Adam led, as the Center’s legal counsel, important public struggles on issues of public housing, foreign employees, and the rights of persons with disabilities.
In 1997, Adam founded, together with Adv. Rachel Ben Ari and Adv. Gilat Vizel-Saban, the law firm Ben Ari, Fish, Saban & Co. From the first day of the firm’s founding, Adam's figure and values served as a compass for the firm and charted the way for its development and standing.
Adam was a brilliant jurist , with a broad knowledge in a range of legal areas which he harnessed to promote the firm, to promote the social values in which he believed and in the light of which he acted, and to promote the city of Haifa which was so dear to his heart. Adam was a prominent commercial and civil attorney and an excellent defense attorney. He represented clients in many cases of significant importance, and as a result was involved in cases that concluded with important rulings in the Israeli law.
Adam had a unique attribute that characterized him profoundly - a view that the practice of law is not only a profession but also a mission in the service of social change and assistance to others. Adam believed wholeheartedly that the law is a means for social and community transformation. With this firm belief and outlook, Adam applied himself to public and volunteer professional activity, promoting human rights, social responsibility and justice. In 2013, Adam was awarded the Presidential Award for Volunteerism by the President of Israel. Among the Award Committee's arguments: the legal proceedings in which Adam was involved changed and improved the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens.
Owing to Adam's special personality and ability to provide support and confidence to whomever needed it, Adam was a friend and advisor to many people, some of whom we learned about only after his passing. His special characteristics - wisdom and professionalism, integrity, power harnessed for good, and determination directed at those who cause injustice and use their power arbitrarily, were coupled with endless generosity and compassion towards others, some socially weak, and all at "eye level" and without haughtiness. This combination made Adam a leader, a compass, a lighthouse, and a person appreciated and beloved by all, especially the firm’s employees who looked up to him.
Adam left us suddenly on Friday, December 26, 2014, during a bicycle race in the Negev, in the landscapes and country he loved so dearly, and which he wanted to make a better place.
Adam is engraved in the hearts of each and every one of us, and we are committed to preserving and continuing his legacy.
At the beginning of his professional career, Adam managed many cases concerning individual rights. Some of the claims in those cases were precedential and groundbreaking to the extent that they were ahead of their time. In the 1980s, Adam represented the appellant in the Courtam case, a precedential criminal appeal concerning the possibility of convicting a defendant based on evidence extracted from his body, without his consent to the invasive medical procedure. He argued that the evidence is inadmissible because it was obtained in a way that was tainted by illegality. In the same matter, the Supreme Court was forced to determine that the American "disqualification rule" ("poisoned fruit doctrine") does not apply in Israeli law.
In 2004, Adam represented an ALS patient who petitioned the Haifa District Court for a declaratory order allowing "merciful and compassionate euthanasia", through disconnection from the respiratory system and artificial nutrition to which she was connected to. The special thing about this ruling was that the woman requested that her right to disconnection would not be exercised immediately but when she decided that the time had come, subject to psychiatric approval but without the need to go to court again.
In the 1980s, as part of his work at the Civil Rights Association, Adam represented citizens in a series of proceedings against the practice that was common at the time, of "blocking orders" and "administrative arrests", by virtue of the emergency protection regulations. Later, Adam used to say that all his petitions and many appeals were rejected, but at the end of the day the security services stopped using these practices against civilians.
In the 1980s, Adam filed a petition on behalf of a human rights organization to the High Court of Israel against an order issued by the military government in the West Bank, to prevent telephone services for international communication in the area. He claimed that this is a prohibited collective punishment. The petition was rejected because the petitioners refused to try to get special permission from the military for the purpose of conducting talks, so it was not proven that they had no alternative remedy.
In the 1990s and the early 2000s, Adam represented the association for the quality of life and environment in Nahariya, in a series of proceedings designed to prevent the establishment of the "Children's Nation" project on land contaminated with asbestos waste, and also to clean Nahariya and the Western Galilee from asbestos waste.
This struggle ultimately led to the enactment of the Law for the Prevention of Asbestos Hazards and Harmful Dust, 2011, which, among other things, anchored the environmental principle "the polluter will pay", when it stated that the "Eitanit" company would finance half of the cost of the project to remove asbestos waste from the Western Galilee. Petition against The constitutionality of the law was rejected in one of the guiding judgments in Israel in the field of environmental quality.
Adam was an expert in advising employers and suspects of sexual harassment offenses in the workplaces, and represented such defendants in criminal proceedings, and in suspension and dismissal proceedings, together with the Labor Law Department.
Adam is also known as an expert in election law. During the elections he represented dozens of candidates and lists, both as appellants of the order of the elections and their results, and as respondents to these appeals. In some of the cases he represented in cases where the guiding laws in the area of local government election laws were determined.
