Alaska Law Blog

In a recent decision, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, LLC v. Burkhead, the Alaska Supreme Court held that a patient could not assign their personal injury claim for recovery of her medical expenses to her health-care provider.

In Burkhead, a patient received medical services at a hospital after an automobile accident. During her treatment, she signed two “Consent: Authorization, Assignment, and Acknowledgment” forms in which she ostensibly assigned to the hospital “all rights to or claims for payment against third parties” for the reasonable value of medical services rendered. The hospital subsequently attempted to intervene in the patient’s personal injury lawsuit and filed its own suit against the tortfeasor. In both cases, the hospital sought to recover the expenses it incurred in treating the patient from the tortfeasor directly and pursuant to the patient’s purported assignment.

The Alaska Supreme Court held that the patient’s purported assignment of her personal injury claim to the hospital was not valid. The court explained that

the assignment of personal injury claims is socially problematic given the potential for overreaching when injured assignees bargain away some or all of their rights under the equivalent of at least economic, if not physical or mental, duress. Any benefits potentially derived by expanding the remedies available to mandatory providers of emergency services would seem to be outweighed by the risk that the routine collection of such assignments from emergency room patients would increase the potential for duress and decrease the likelihood of a fully informed assignment.

Id. at 5. As such, and because health-care providers had the ability under Alaska law to file a lien against any recovery by the patient from the tortfeasor, the court refused to recognize the assignment of the patient’s personal injury claim to the hospital:

Given that our legislature has provided an effective, albeit limited, lien remedy, the social ramifications of allowing such assignments, and health care providers' continued ability to collect from their own patients as creditors, we think it should be for the legislature to decide whether to recognize assignments of patients' personal injury claims.

The Alaska Supreme Court’s decision may have unintended consequences for the subrogation rights of insurers and health-care providers in Alaska. Litigants may attempt to rely on Burkhead to argue that unless a statute expressly assigns all or part of a personal injury claim to the insurer, employer or other entity, any contractual assignment of that right will not be valid.

The Burkhead ruling may also have an impact in legal malpractice cases. The Alaska Supreme Court has not squarely held that a legal malpractice claim may be assigned. It, however, did not disapprove of the practice in Continental Ins. Co. v. Bayless & Roberts, Inc., 608 P.2d 281, 286 (Alaska 1980) and Bohna v. Hughes, Thorsness, Gantz, Powell & Brundin, 828 P.2d 745, 758 (Alaska 1992) superseded by statute on a different issue as stated in Petrolane Inc. v. Robles, 154 P.3d 1014 (Alaska 2007).

In holding that a patient could not assign her personal injury claim to a health-care provider, the Burkhead court, however, noted that it has “long recognized a ‘general rule of non-assignability of claims for personal injury’ under Alaska law” and that [t]he majority of jurisdictions around the country have similarly declined to recognize the validity of assignments of tort claims for personal injury….” The court’s general disapproval of assignment of personal injury claims could support the argument that the assignment of a legal malpractice claims is not valid, given that a legal malpractice claim is a type of personal injury claim.

Every profession has its toolbox of near essentials. For a lawyer, I think a good craw is just about indispensable. Even though humans don’t actually have “craws” (with the possible exception of Don Rickles), a figurative craw is most useful for the practice of law. You need a place to jam the stuff that just rubs you the wrong way. You’ve got to store the things you just can’t quite digest so that you can pull them out, poke at them a bit, and turn them over as over as you look to make sense of them.

Something that has been stuck in my craw for awhile now has been the Alaska Supreme Court’s decision in Roeland v. Trucano. This came down in late August, and yes, it’s been wedged tightly in my craw ever since.

The facts of the whole dispute are a bit convoluted. Two folks from Belgium held a right of first refusal on a piece of real property located in Juneau. (Belgians in Juneau? Who knew?) The Trucano guys who gave that right of first refusal made a deal to sell a 25% interest in the property to a fellow named Coates. In exchange, Coates was going to give Trucano a 25% interest in the souvenir shop he was going to put on the property, as well as interests in other businesses that he might someday open in the future in Juneau. (I kid you not, the deal was that vague and open-ended.)

Trucano duly sent this off to the Belgians to match if they wanted to under their right of first refusal. The Belgians were confused by the thing, as well they might be, since they didn’t have any plans to put souvenir shops on the property or anywhere else in Juneau. To cloud the matter more, the offer was presented to the Belgians as being the equivalent of $7 million in cash, although it’s not clear at all how one would work the math out on that. The Belgians told Trucano the proposal was not a real deal they had to match.

Trucano went ahead with the transaction and transferred the property to a new LLC to complete the development. Trucano held onto 75% of the new LLC. But instead of giving 25% to Coates -- as he told the Belgians was going to happen -- he gave only 12.5% to Coates. The other 12.5% went to a Ketchikan couple named Jethani. How and when the Jethanis came into the picture is unclear; all the opinion says about these folks is that “Jethani is a business partner with Coates in Ketchikan.”

The Belgians challenged the deal and lost. On appeal to the Supreme Court, they lost again. The Supremies said the offer passed to the Belgians was sufficiently definite and detailed and that the transfer into the new LLC did not change things. Trucano still kept control with his 75% interest, just as he said he would, he just did so in the LLC context. But when it came to the Jethanis – whom the Belgians had apparently never heard anything about -- the Supremes just glided right over it. Even though it was clear the Belgians were never offered the 12.5% interest in the property that ended up with the Jethanis for whatever amounts the Jethanis paid, the Great Ones just let that inconvenient fact float away in a bubble. The fact that Trucano kept 75% as originally proposed, and that Coates somehow stayed in there as well, seemed to be close enough. In essence what the Courtus Maximus decided was that the 25% interest Coates was supposedly getting could be divvied up any which way and it did not matter. (Yet, both the trial court and the appellate court characterized the LLC creation as an integral part of the original offer itself, which one would have thought was supposed to have been given to the Belgians.)

The Biggie Court went on to point out that the Belgians still retained their right of first refusal as to Trucano 75% interest. So that when and if Trucano wants to sell out to someone else, the Belgians will have the privilege of getting into a business partnership with a bunch of folks they’ve never met, either Coates and the Jethanis and whoever picks up their interest in the future.

I find this outcome a mite hard to square with the way rights of first refusal are usually understood to work, which is why I’ve got a irritated craw at the moment. Regardless of the oddball nature of the offer transmitted to the Belgians at the start, I can’t see how you can change the participants to add the Jethanis to the deal without allowing the Belgians the chance to buy that same interest for the same amount. Also, one of the functions of rights of first refusal is to keep a lid on who you get into business with, and the Bigs pushed that completely off the rails in this deal.

Anyway, the lesson I take away from the case is that you don’t want the Alaska Supreme Court writing your business deal for you. They just might twist it up in one way or another that you don’t like. It is far better to put more of an effort into writing your deal at the front end. Spell out in the agreement what sort offer you have to match on the property. Set out in unmistakeable English that you can ignore stuff in any offer that an accountant applying usual accounting methods cannot translate into actual dollars and cents. Be explicit that any change in the proposal, including even a change in a minority interest, requires a re-tender to the holder of the right of first refusal. Maybe if you do all that, you will stand a fighting chance of having the deal play out the way you expect.

Now, where did I put that craw floss I had around here?

It has happened without anyone much noticing. The year end has snuck up on us here at the worldwide headquarters of the Alaska Law Blog, and we are completely unprepared. It might be that we have been too busy actually practicing law these days to spend any time blogging about it. Or it might be that we’ve frittered away too much time staring out the window at Russia over the way there. (No wait! That might actually be the Mat Su Valley across the Inlet. Does Vladimir Putin even wear Carhartts?)

But regardless of the cause for our lassitude (and no, I don’t mean a collie dog with a chip on its shoulder), we have been unable to compile our annual list of Alaska law highlights for the year. (OK, so we only actually did that once.) Since Gov. Palin resigned there hasn’t been all that much of note going on anyway. The replacement unit, Gov. Parnell, has conducted himself in a much more level-headed manner, albeit a tad on the boring side. It’s probably just a coincidence that the replacement unit is a lawyer himself.

So we have to confess that the Features Desk here at the Alaska Law Blog has fallen down on the job and cannot produce the annual list. To make amends to our reader out there, I’ve compiled a list of other people’s law-related lists. Hey, I know it’s filching. But in the law business this is an accepted practice. Original thinking usually means your motion will be denied or your case dismissed.

Besides the only real Alaska law highlight that occurred this year was the passing of Überlitigant Daniel DeNardo. Mr. DeNardo was a fixture in the Anchorage law library and he always good for at least five lawsuits every year, sometimes as many as ten or twelve. More often than not, the judge who last threw out one of his cases would be named as a defendant in the next one, as a part of an ever broadening consipiracy in Mr. DeNardo’s view. (It was kind of like a reverse Ponzi scheme.) Mr. DeNardo’s death has no doubt freed up a large amount of judicial resources in the Alaska Court System. So perhaps one of the trial court judges might be joining the unemployment line. (Shocked at the possibility? Don’t be, it’s happened elsewhere.)

Anyway, if you want to be entertained by year end lists, here are handful to check out:

The Weirdest Legal Cases of 2009 (Heavy emphasis on sex and lizard poo.)

The 10 Most Infamous Lawyers of 2009 (Heavy emphasis on -- what else -- Ponzi schemes and other violations of the securities laws.)

8 Outrageous Lawsuits (Personal favorite: the Hooters waitress who sued because she thought she had won a car in a sales contest at work. The prize turned out to be a Star Wars action figure: a toy Yoda. Her lawyer got her a good settlement.)

Beautiful Massachusetts Lawyers of 2009 (Proof that lawyers are good for more than just starting an argument.)

25 Reasons Hollywood Needed Lawyers In 2009 (Celebrities!)

The 16 Most Entertaining Law Blogs (This list is actually from earlier this year. The reason I like it is that several of the blawgs listed are now canceled or are no longer updated. So perhaps there's hope the Alaska Law Blog can make this list next year.)

The Alaska Law Blog is completely apolitical. We withhold our campaign contributions from the left and the right in equal measure. We have no agenda, save that which advances the cause of unmuddied legal thinking in the Last Frontier.

But sometimes, . . . sometimes the political circus overwhelms our studied apathy. The announcement yesterday on former Governor Sarah Palin's new book, Going Rogue: An American Life, and the frenzy thereby unleashed, have overtopped the restraints we have erected. The book hasn't even been released for the public to read yet and still every media outlet and blog is abuzz over it.

At the risk of being labeled partisan, we offer the following recycled poetry for your consideration:

Yesterday, broadcast out on the air,
I met the Governor who isn't there.
She isn't there again today,
I wish, I wish she'd stay away.

(Apologies to the late Hughes Mearns.)

But wait, you say. This blog post is not only politically charged, it has nothing to do with the law. It should not be allowed to sully the revered pages of the Alaska Law Blog!

You are wrong my friend. This book by the Governor-Who-Is-Not-There has yielded its co-author a handsome monetary advance. The upwelling tizzy over it will sell a great many copies and lead to a gutpile of royalties. (The book is already tops on Amazon's bestseller list.) With these earnings, the Governor-Who-Is-Not-There will be able to now pay a very large outstanding bill that she owes to the fine Alaska attorneys who successfully fended off the ethics complaints made against her. So there is a connection to the law after all.

And, even though the hullabaloo over this book is going to get very tiresome, anything that provides for the payment of large outstanding legal bills is, as a general rule, something that we at the Alaska Law Blog favor.

Under Alaska Civil Rule 68, a litigant who beats their offer of judgment at trial can recover additional attorney’s fees and costs. On Friday, September 25, 2009, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that an offer of judgment must be reasonable and good faith in both timing and amount before the penal provisions of Civil Rule 68 can be imposed. In Beal v. McGuire
, an offer of judgment for $1 was held to not be a bona fide attempt to settle the case because of its small amount and timing. The offer of judgment was served thirty days after the litigation was started.

The Alaska Supreme Court’s ruling will limit the utility of offers of judgment, and will cause greater uncertainty, and litigation, over the effectiveness of offers of judgment. For example, is an offer of judgment for defense costs a bona fide effort of settlement? When is an offer of judgment made in good faith, and how is that good faith to be determined? Those issues will now have to be decided by the courts, apparently on a case by case basis.

Most troubling about the Supreme Court’s decision is that it apparently requires that some meaningful amount of money must be offered in order for an offer of judgment to be valid. No longer can offers of judgment for $1 or likely even $100 be made. Thus, even in cases where a claim has no validity, and which will be summarily dismissed, an offer of judgment will be valid only if a meaningful amount of money for a worthless claim is offered. This may have the perverse effect of promoting additional litigation, rather than reducing it, as litigants will no longer be faced with the risk of an award of enhanced fees and costs under Civil Rule 68.

Atkinson, Conway & Gagnon, Inc. is pleased to announce that seven of its attorneys have been named to the 2010 edition of Best Lawyers In America. Best Lawyers In America is the oldest peer-reviewed publication in the legal profession.

Bruce E. Gagnon was named as a Best Lawyer in the areas of alternative dispute resolution, bet-the-company litigation, commercial litigation, corporate law, professional malpractice law, real estate law, and securities law. Mr. Gagnon has been listed as a Best Lawyer since 1983.

Robert J. Dickson was named as a Best Lawyer in the area of health care law. Mr. Dickson is among only a very small handful of Alaska lawyers (three, to be exact) who are named in this area. He has been on the Best Lawyer list since 1995.

Patrick B. Gilmore was named as a Best Lawyer in the areas of appellate law, bankruptcy and creditor-debtor rights law, bet-the-company litigation, and commercial litigation. Mr. Gilmore has been named as a Best Lawyer since 2005.

Jerome H. Juday was named as a Best Lawyer in the area of corporate law. He has been a Best Lawyer since 2007.

In the area of personal injury law, W. Michael Moody, Richard E. Vollertsen, and Neil T. O'Donnell were all named as Best Lawyers. Mr. Moody also was designated as a Best Lawyer in the area of product liability litigation.

Atkinson, Conway & Gagnon is tied for first among Alaska and Anchorage law firms for having the most lawyers (7) on the Best Lawyers list. For full details on the Best Lawyers listings, go to the Best Lawyers website or the book itself.

Best Lawyers In America was first published in 1983. The listings in Best Lawyers are based on an annual peer-review survey. According to Best Lawyers itself, inclusion in the listing is considered "a singular honor" because of the rigorous and transparent methodology used and because lawyers are not required or allowed to pay a fee to be listed.

The Alaska Supreme Court recently issued an opinion in Asher v. Alkan Shelter, LLC, which is a case involving an employee’s embezzlement of funds from his employer. The Alaska Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s ruling that the employee and his girlfriend were jointly and severally liable to the employer for the stolen funds, holding that AS 09.17.080, Alaska’s allocation of fault statute, required the court to allocate fault and liability between the employee and his girlfriend.

Significantly, the court ruled that the trial court should not simply determine the total damages suffered by the employer and allocate fault for those damages between the employee and his girlfriend. Instead, the court ruled that the trial court should only allocate fault on those damages it found had been caused by both the employee and the girlfriend. The effect of the court’s ruling is that if a defendant is responsible for a part of, but not all of, a plaintiff’s damages, trial courts and juries must separate the plaintiff’s damages into their divisible parts and make separate allocations of fault for each category of damages.

Asher, however, is perhaps more significant in that it effectively ruled that comparative fault will not apply to fraud claims where the plaintiff proves he justifiably relied on a defendant’s misrepresentations. In Asher, the court held that the justifiable reliance element of the plaintiff’s fraudulent misrepresentation claim precluded an allocation of fault to the plaintiff. The court reasoned that if the plaintiff was at fault for relying on the defendant’s misrepresentation, he would not have been justified in relying on those misrepresentations. A priori, if the plaintiff was justified in relying on those misrepresentations, he was not at fault and no fault could be allocated to him.

The practical effect of Asher is to eliminate comparative fault from fraudulent misrepresentation claims. If a plaintiff prevails on a fraudulent misrepresentation claim, 100% of the fault must be allocated to the defendant(s) and no fault, as a matter of law, can be allocated to the plaintiff. It is unclear how Asher will apply in the context of the Alaska Supreme Court’s prior holdings that, in real estate transactions, a buyer is justified in relying on the seller’s misrepresentations unless it was utterly unreasonable for the buyer to do so.

In a recent decision, Lockhart v. Draper, the Alaska Supreme Court held that punitive damages could be awarded based on an equitable claim if (1) the plaintiff sought equitable relief independent from its claim for punitive damages, (2) the equitable relief was intended to make the plaintiff whole, (3) the plaintiff suffered “substantial damage” and (4) the requirements Alaska’s punitive damages statute, AS 09.17.020, were met. The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the imposition of punitive damages in Lockhart because the plaintiff sought equitable relief independent of his punitive damages claim, voiding of a fraudulent conveyance, and the fraudulent transfer caused the plaintiff “substantial damage.”

Lockhart is significant in that it permits an award of punitive damages even where no compensatory damages are awarded or sought. While the Alaska Supreme Court recognized that a plaintiff would still have to establish that they suffered “substantial damage” before obtaining punitive damages, those damages do not have to be established to the degree of certainty that would permit an award of compensatory damages. Lockhart thus expands the availability of punitive damages into the realm of equitable claims, and continues the destruction of barrier between equitable claims and legal claims.

In the interest of truth in advertising, I will no longer describe these posts as "weekly" summaries of Alaska Supreme Court opinions. Nonetheless, here is a selection of some relevant and interesting opinions issued by the Alaska Supreme Court over the past month.

May 8, 2009

In Cragle v. Gray, a granddaughter claimed that her grandmother orally promised to leave her house to her if she would care for her until she died. The grandmother’s will left the house to her daughter, and not the granddaughter. The court reversed the trial court’s denial of a motion for partial summary judgment, holding that the oral promise was a succession contract and unenforceable under AS 13.12.514.

Municipality of Anchorage v. Regulatory Commission of Alaska held that the Regulatory Commission had no reasonable basis for denying approval of rate increases requested by the Anchorage Water and Wastewater Utility. The rate increases were necessary because of new regulations adopted by the Municipality regarding payment in lieu of property taxes.

April 24, 2009

E.P. v. Alaska Psychiatric Institute contains a good discussion of Alaska’s involuntary committee laws. The opinion affirms the commitment of a mentally ill individual on three consecutive occasions. The court found that the individual had suffered organic brain injury as a result of his substance abuse, and was a danger to himself and others.

Smith v. Kofstad addressed the time limit for executing on a judgment, and the effect passage of property by operation of law to the judgment debtor’s spouse had the judgment creditor’s effort to executive on the judgment – the property could not be executed on.

April 10, 2009

Ruest v. Alaska Petroleum Contractors addressed the State’s 50% share of any punitive damage award, and held that the parties to a case in which punitive damages are awarded cannot enter into a settlement post-verdict to avoid the State receiving its share of punitive damages. Consequently, the State’s interest in 50% of any punitive damage award attaches at the time the verdict is published, and not at final judgment.

April 3, 2009

In Gibson v. Nye Frontier Ford, Inc., the Alaska Supreme Court reaffirmed that it will do much to preserve an arbitration clause in a contract. Although it found that part of an arbitration provision was unconscionable, it also held that the unconscionable provision was severable, leaving the remainder of the arbitration agreement enforceable. The court did hold that requiring an employee to pay arbitration costs was not permitted by the Alaska Wage and Hour Act. As such, the employer could require arbitration of the employee’s claims only if the employer agreed to pay the arbitration costs.

We’ve hit a “perfect storm” of sorts for guns and the law.

First, we had heavily armed attorney Wayne Anthony Ross rejected for the post of Alaska Attorney General. This one made you catch your breath for a second since it’s the first time in state history a cabinet-level nominee has gone down in flames. But at least WAR accepted his fate and retired from the scene with as much dignity as he could muster. I think it significant that WAR did not strap on a Peacemaker and invite Hollis French (Anchorage Democratic Senator and fellow lawyer) to meet him out on 4th Street at high noon. (“Go ahead, Hollis. Make my day.”)

Next, the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings came up. This one made you catch your breath for a minute because of the awful memory of the senseless attack. It was particularly disconcerting to find out that all the motivations we had been lead to believe lay behind the tragedy were bogus. According to the myth busters, the shooters were not actually bullied, did not set out for revenge against the jocks, and were never part of the Trench Coat Mafia. Instead, the reasons for the terrible killings were just that Eric Harris was a maniacal psychopath and Dylan Klebold was not very good at picking his friends. Not real comforting for the fans of an ordered society who like explanations for what went wrong. Even Oprah was discouraged by it.

Now, we’ve got the Ninth Circuit jumping into the fray with both barrels blazing. On April 20, 2009, the Nines issued an important ruling in Nordyke v. King about the Second Amendment to the Constitution. This one made you hold your breath for a full half hour while sorting through the Scalia-esque twists and turns of constitutional law that are set out in the hefty opinion.

The Nordyke case arose because Alameda County, California denied some folks a permit to hold a gun show at the County Fairgrounds. The County based its decision on an ordinance it had adopted that made it a misdemeanor to pack a gun or ammo on County property. The Nordyke plaintiffs took exception to this, claiming in essence that the Second Amendment gave them the right to take a gun or ammo wherever they wanted to go.

The remarkable part of the opinion is that the Nines had to wrestle with the fundamental question of whether the Second Amendment even applied to the States at all. Apparently there was some doubt about the issue and other courts had rejected the notion. But rest assured gun advocates. The Ninth Circuit, in spite of its reputation as a den of liberality, found the Second Amendment applied to the States through the black art of "selective incorporation" under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Yet the application of the Second Amendment to the State of California and its counties did not mean the Nordyke plaintiffs won their case. Instead, the Nines held the ordinance prohibiting guns and ammo on County property did not really infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. The Nordyke plaintiffs could keep their guns and pass them around amongst themselves all they wanted, just not on this particular spot. So in spite of the lofty constitutional issues involved, it was a half-a-loaf deal in the final analysis.

Here in Alaska, the fundamental question the Ninth Circuit confronted is a non-starter since the Constitution of the State of Alaska contains its own version of the Second Amendment. Section 19 of Article I to the Alaska Constitution even says the “individual right to keep and bear arms shall not be denied or infringed by the State or a political subdivision of the State.” This “individual right” phrase differs from the words of the federal Constitution. The unique Alaska language saved us the bother of having to pay much attention at all to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Still, I commend the Nordyke decision to your reading list. It’s a mini-course in constitutional law and it even brings up some old law school chestnuts that are perhaps better off forgotten, such as the Slaughter-House Cases.

Nordyke also has a short concurring opinion that’s worth reading. In the concurrence, Judge Gould feels compelled to point out that "[a]ll weapons are not ‘arms’ within the meaning of the Second Amendment, so, for example, no individual could sensibly argue that the Second Amendment gives them a right to have nuclear weapons or chemical weapons in their home for self-defense.” I’m thinking about highlighting this segment of the decision and sending it over to WAR. You know, just in case he might be getting any ideas about responding to the Alaska Legislature.

Folks who ought to know are saying that Justice Robert Eastaugh is retiring from the Alaska Supreme Court. My information is that Justice Eastaugh is going to be hanging up the black robe in early November 2009.

Justice Eastaugh has served on the Court for the last 15 years. He was appointed by Governor Wally Hickel. You can access Justice Eastaugh's biographical information on the Court System's website.

Given the last go-round between Govenor Palin's supporters and the Judicial Council over Justice Morgan Christen's appointment, it will be interesting to see how this upcoming vacancy on the State's highest court is handled.

(I haven't seen this item reported in the media or elsewhere yet. So now you can't ever say that the Alaska Law Blog is always way behind the current news cycle.)

4/15 UPDATE: Justice Eastaugh's retirement is now confirmed on the Alaska Judicial Council's website.

It is with heavy hearts that we report the death of John M. Conway, one of this firm’s founding members and its guiding hand for many decades.

John suffered a stroke while at his second home on the island of Molokai in Hawaii. He was taken to the hospital where he passed away on March 31. John was 72 years old.

John Conway was born in Juneau, Alaska in 1936. He grew up in Sitka where his father, J. J. Conway, ran a commercial dock and other business enterprises. John received an undergraduate degree from the University of Washington in 1958, and a law degree from the same university in 1961.

After law school, John came to Anchorage and started practicing law, initially as an associate in the office of John Hellenthal. Shortly thereafter, in 1962, John joined with Jerry Wade to form the law firm of Wade & Conway, which became Atkinson, Wade & Conway once Ken Atkinson joined them in 1965. The firm prospered and grew and is today Atkinson, Conway & Gagnon, Inc. John served as the firm’s de facto managing partner from the beginning through the 1990s.

Starting out on everything from divorce cases to admiralty claims, John established himself as a gifted trial attorney. He had a true talent for getting right to the heart of any dispute. John’s no-nonsense approach and frankness gave him a real courtroom presence and won him the respect of the judges and jurors before whom he tried cases.

As his reputation grew, John was sought out by many of the biggest clients to handle many of the biggest civil cases in Alaska. He represented Providence Hospital for decades and served on its advisory board. He handled many litigation matters for the National Bank of Alaska. Perhaps John’s most famous case was the impeachment trial of his friend and client, Governor Bill Sheffield. John organized the Governor’s defense and handled the impeachment hearing as co-counsel with Philip Lacovara. The Governor, of course, was acquitted.

In later years, John focused his legal efforts on defending complex products liability cases, including cases involving firearms. He won some remarkable defense verdicts for his clients in these cases, proving yet again his great talent as a trial advocate.

John was preceded in death by his wife, Sally. He is survived by his longtime companion, Ruthann Hansen, and by his four daughters, Shannon, Lael, Maribeth and Molly, sons-in-law, and a fine future jury pool of grandchildren.