About Erik Lundegaard
Erik Lundegaard has been a senior editor at Super Lawyers since 2005 and its editor in chief since 2013—during which time the magazine has won close to 100 journalism awards around the country. His freelance writing has been published by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, MSNBC.com, The Christian Science Monitor, The Seattle Times and The Believer, among others. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, studied Mandarin Chinese in Taipei, Taiwan, and lives in Seattle, Washington, where he is a long-suffering Seattle Mariners fan. In his spare time, he is working on a book about the movies of James Cagney.
Articles written by Erik Lundegaard
Remembering the St. Louis
Robert Rubin has made protecting civil liberties his life’s workIn March 1993, Robert Rubin, litigation director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, flew in a C-130 cargo plane to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to visit his clients, about 250 HIV-positive Haitian refugees on a hunger strike. He didn’t accomplish what he hoped to accomplish, then got kicked out for doing what he didn’t do. Some might call the trip a failure. Not Rubin. “I’ve never been as emotionally impacted in a case,” he says from his cluttered, …
The Storyteller
Trial legend Gerry Spence on fear, honesty and the value of knowing one’s storyGerry Spence graduated cum laude in 1952 from the University of Wyoming College of Law, passed the Bar in the same year, became a two-term prosecutor, represented insurance companies, then became a criminal defense and plaintiff’s attorney, and, in the process, one of the most famous lawyers in the country. He hasn’t lost a civil case since 1969 and hasn’t lost a criminal defense case ever. He’s represented Imelda Marcos, Randy Weaver and the family of Karen Silkwood. He started the …
Uncle Sam Wanted Him
How Peter Greenspun, a table-pad manufacturer’s son from Philadelphia, wound up representing Caleb Hughes, Marv Albert and John A. MuhammadIn your high-profile cases you’re often the court-appointed attorney. How does this happen? How did you get appointed to, say, the John A. Muhammad case? Judge LeRoy Millette, the trial judge in the Prince William County Circuit Court, who is now on the Virginia Supreme Court, called and asked me. That’s literally how it took place. Mr. Muhammad and [Lee Boyd] Malvo were transported to Virginia from Maryland on a Thursday afternoon. The judge called me at 4 o’clock. I told him I would …
Foreign Service
How Robert Mautino, of Mautino & Mautino, learned nine languages, snuck a Filipino war veteran into the country, and turned a Canadian into an American just by asking a few questionsIs it true you speak nine languages? Everyone seizes on that but they’re not all at the same level. Some of it is “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” If you want to speak Spanish I can speak Spanish now. If you want to speak French I’d need a couple of glasses of wine. If you want to speak German, that’d be “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” Which do you speak best? English. [Laughs] And beyond that? I suppose Spanish and French, then Swedish. The Norwegian—I have to remember the …
In-House at the White House
Cheryl Stanton talks about working as a counsel and special assistant to President George W. BushThe first day Cheryl Stanton walked through the gates of the White House to begin work as associate White House counsel for labor and employment matters, and special assistant to the president, was Monday, Nov. 6, 2006. “It was overwhelming,” she says. “It was stressful, a little surreal, but it felt like an incredible honor.” It was also the day before the 2006 midterm elections that would return Democratic majorities to the House and Senate. Talk about a tough first week. Did she …
Q&A With Gary B. Blum
The time and expense of the Rocky Flats case didn’t lead Gary Blum to consider alternative dispute resolution; he was already a proponentYour firm, Silver & DeBoskey, along with several other firms, represented 12,000 to 13,000 plaintiffs in the Rocky Flats case. When did the firm get involved and when did you get involved? The firm became involved in the summer of 1989. My former partner, Bruce DeBoskey, and current partner, Steve Kelly, had been contacted by a number of people relating to their concerns about the migration of plutonium from the Rocky Flats plant and the June 1989 FBI raid. There were a couple of issues. …
Veteran’s Day in Court
Natalie Brown of Leventhal, Brown & Puga soldiers on for a soldierQuestion: What is your most difficult case? The case involved medical malpractice at the Denver VA hospital. What we found during the six years of litigation, which is still ongoing, was an utter failure of the VA hospital, its physicians and its administration to acknowledge mistakes and to provide appropriate care and treatment to its patient after they injured him. David, my client, was a veteran who was having an elective surgery. After the resident physician and attending physician started …
Defending Goliath
Kenzo Kawanabe of Davis Graham & Stubbs on what ultimately influences jurorsQuestion: What is your most difficult case? I’m not sure that I can point to one case as my most difficult, but two cases I’ve taken to trial stand out because they had unique facts, and, in one of them, potentially deadly consequences. The first case involved a couple who purchased a legal services plan from my client, a New York Stock Exchange company that sold such plans across the country. The couple sought millions of dollars in damages, claiming that a legal services plan law firm …
Q&A With Nagendra “Nick” Setty
How Nagendra Setty dropped out (of med school), turned on (to patent law) and set up Fish & Richardson’s Atlanta officeDoes ‘Nagendra’ mean anything? Yes. My father was a doctor in India when he did his residency in a village, because that’s where you’d have the most acute need for primary care. This is back in the ’60s. One day my mother came into the bedroom—he had been working all night and was sleeping—and she saw a snake below the bed. And she freaked out and ran out and got the servant, who came back with her. En route, as any devout Indian woman might, she said a little prayer for her …
A Bit of a Rebel with a Bit of a Cause
Schuyler Moore’s life would make a great movie; but would he watch it?There are nine framed photos hung in a neat, tic-tac-toe-like square on the wall opposite the 16th-floor window in Schuyler “Sky” Moore’s office overlooking Century City in Los Angeles. Eight of the photos are color photos of the motorcycles Moore owns and rides to work: ’70s-era Triumphs and Ducatis and Nortons. During the day he keeps his riding leathers in a drawer and at night he hangs his suits behind his office door. He’s been riding since age 15. He has never owned a car. The …
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