Biography
The following interview on Thursday, July 21, 2005 is with Mike Baker whose work after law school in 1976 revolved around personal injury defense. The interviewer is Dr. Cynthia Devlin.
CD is Cynthia Devlin
MB is Mike Baker
Transcript
CD: It is July 21, 2005 it is Thursday I am Cynthia Devlin and we are in Beaumont at the Federal Courthouse and I am here with Mike Baker and this is for the Court Project interview. And, so if you would tell me about yourself, your educational background and…
MB: Sure, I am Mike Baker. I, uh, went to school; I am from Conroe, TX, originally, and uh, went to school at SMU for undergraduate and law school, and I graduated from undergraduate in '73 and graduated from law school in 1976. Uh, in December of 1976 so I took the February Bar. Uh, got a job with Strong Pitkin, here in Beaumont in the summer of 1977 and started work here July 5th, 1977 and have been in Beaumont and with Strong Pitkin ever since then. My practice has been probably 90% has been focused on personal injury defense. I've had a smattering of other types of cases, probably one of the more important aspects of my history as a lawyer involves my original practice in federal courts in one of the areas that we were required to be involved in was criminal defense because if you practiced in the federal courts in the eastern division in the Beaumont Division anyway, and I think that was true throughout the district, uh, you had to agree to take criminal appointments and I had two or three criminal appointments in my early years. One case was a counterfeiting case that we trialed, another case was a drug smuggling case, it was a pretty involved case that was kind of the tail end of a major investigation that involved a customs agent from this area and maybe a couple of other cases that ended up being pleaded out. So, one of the things that brought variety to my practice was mostly this district because I had to do a little criminal law in my early years. Since then they have gone to a public defender, except, and there is a public defendant for the Eastern District of Texas now, now when there is multiple defendants they still call on,
CD: And assign cases
MB: They assign cases but they don't assign cases to civil lawyers, like they used to. And so there's how you know, I haven't had to be involved in that in many, many years. In terms of when I first started practicing in 1977, all of, or the major personal injury litigation, occurred in federal court, and that was because of Judge Joe Fisher, he you mentioned earlier if there was anything how I could describe the character of the court of the district of the court and there's no question but that he was the character of the federal courts in the Eastern District of Texas for many, many, many years.
CD: The face of the court
MB: He was the face of the court. And um, uh, you know this had been going on before I started practicing. I came in, into this as how, the major litigation started being filed in federal court as opposed to state court in Texas I'm not sure but I'm sure it was due in large part to Judge Fisher. And we would, he was one of the most tireless workers of any Judge I've ever known. In fact for years, in all the years that I knew him, his one of the things that he prided himself on was being able to dispose of more cases than any other federal judge in the United States. We would come down here for a term of court on a Monday and might select, the most that I've ever been involved in, he selected eighteen juries in one day.
CD: Eighteen?
MB: Eighteen juries in one day for cases that would be heard over the next, two or three months, I think, which is what the court term was. And at that time diversity jurisdiction was fairly easy, practicing here was very, was much more informal than it is now,
CD: How so, because just the times, or was it just because Judge Fisher was?
MB: I think it was a combination of the two.
CD: He made you feel really comfortable?
MB: No, I wouldn't, no, no, I wouldn't say that at all.
CD: Not comfortable?
MB: He, informal in the sense that there were not a lot of strict requirements in terms of how you developed your case and what was required in terms of bringing a case to trial
CD: Not tons of motions?
MB: No, not tons of motions at all. I mean you identified your witnesses and you went out and deposed your witnesses and …
CD: You could have a yellow legal pad, ok.
MB: That kind of informal
CD: Less paperwork?
MB: Less paperwork and he was, while he tried many cases he also tried to encourage, probably an understated word, but he tried to encourage settlements as much as possible. He was really good at getting lawyers to come together to get their cases resolved without having to go to trial.
CD: Well, that was good, huh?
MB: Well, generally, it, yeah, was good. Now from the defense side of things; Defendants didn't like it because they felt like they were being railroaded.
CD: You mean, their day in court so to speak?
MB: They weren't getting their day in court so to speak and the plaintiffs liked it because they wanted to settle cases, they didn't want to trial cases. But one of the things that enabled that to occur was the fact that he was such a hard worker, and he really pushed cases along and wouldn't let lawyers waste a lot of time. One of the worse things you could do was waste time in his court. He was very, you know as a young lawyer, I had a lot of respect for him but I also knew that he could, if I did anything wrong, I was gonna get the brunt of his eyre so to speak from the bench. But I always had a good relationship with him; I guess I was fortunate in the regard.
CD: You must have just been well prepared. [Both Laugh]
MB: I don't know about that, but for lawyers who were not well prepared. I don't know that I could give you any stories off the top of my head but there are plenty stories of lawyers going into his courtroom not being prepared, doing, or handling something in a way that he did not feel it should be handled and coming out feeling like their tail ends had been taken away from their body so to speak. [Both Laugh]. So, that's what defined the court for many, many years. At that time, Judge Steger visited from Tyler; Judge Justice visited from time to time from Tyler.
CD: Did you argue cases in front of them?
MB: I had a few cases with Judge Steger I don't think I ever had more than one or two case with Judge Justice. And even by that time Judge Justice was not known for being a judge who was interested in personal injury cases for whatever reason, I mean he had already become recognized as a fairly prominent in the area of civil rights and so. I guess the Texas prisoner case started after I started practice or right after I started practice. But that was one that he was hugely involved in and of course some of the other civil rights things. And, and I guess his reputation in the civil rights had really been made in the 60s before my time.
CD: What about the asbestos?
MB: Well, uh, Judge Fisher, of course. All the asbestos cases that could be filed, I guess all of the asbestos cases were filed in Federal court back in those days. Most of them were handled by Judge Fisher. I don't remember what or if there were any rules about what Judges got which cases, but he had most of them. And again, that was one of the things that enabled the lawyers to move those cases so quickly was the way he handled his court, he managed his court. Now, Judge Parker was appointed several years after I started practicing law and he was from Longview. And assigned to Beaumont to begin with and he, one of his missions was to change the way asbestos cases were tried, for good reason. His motives I think were really good, he wanted to bring some efficiency to trialing asbestos cases and he trialed trialing, he seated five juries one time to trial different aspects of several cases and hopefully out of those five juries he was going to come up with a method to dispose of these issues for many future cases and that I think that was the Miguez case and I'm sure that, I think there were verdicts, I think there was an appeal, I don't remember what the outcome of that was. He tried a couple of other things. The most prominent thing that he did trial, that he developed was the Celeno which was the big class action, I was involved in that case, and of course there was an appeal, uh, during the proceedings which, the first appeal told him he couldn't do what he was trying to do, and then we trialed the case and there was an appeal after the original five class representatives were trialed and a lot of it was reversed. That was, in terms of asbestos litigation, that was kind of the water shift for the Eastern District was the Celeno case. The other thing that Judge Parker did for the Beaumont Division was that he developed a system for integrating schools which for many years; I think there had been a…I'm not the right lawyer to talk to about this, and maybe you have already talked to Tanner Hunt, or someone…
CD: Well, someone mentioned the Ping-Pong.
MB: Yeah, that's what Judge Parker did. What I was, where I was scratching my head about was, I couldn't remember whether the Beaumont Schools had operated under and order from the Justice Department or not. Up until that time, but uh, it had been a problem for many years, again, that pre-existed my moving to Beaumont and starting practicing here. But when Judge Parker got on the bench, uh, some things happened, one of the school boards voted to dissolve itself and…
CD: Well, someone was mentioning one it was called South Park and then there was another district maybe.
MB: Yes, there was South Park; there was a Beaumont Independent School District
CD: That was General Cokinos mentioned those…
MB: There was Forest Park School District, and that, ultimately, what Judge Parker's Ping-Pong system amounted to was a big elaborate busing scheme. And ultimately, that system, we operated under that for four or five years and I don't remember if the fifth circuit undid that or if it just undid itself, because the school districts ultimately reorganized themselves.
CD: Is it one school district now or is it several?
MB: Yes, now, there is one school district,
CD: One School District?
MB: Yes, the Beaumont Independent School District and there are different high schools within the school district now. Back before that occurred each high school was in a different school district and that's what …
CD: Others have said that once Judge Parker issued the order to do this that there really wasn't any trouble here doing the actual integration…
MB: There wasn't, I mean there was a lot of dissatisfaction, a lot of mad people but nothing, there was not any… Devlin: They were just mad.
MB: Just mad yeah…upset with the way things worked, and so…
CD: Yeah, one lawyer was talking about, there was, his name is on the recorder, a black attorney here who is no longer alive who was arguing that case and he was saying that children would ultimately make this decision and they would get along
MB: Yeah, I'm not so sure that the result of all of this has been a success or not because, in many ways the schools have reshaped themselves, after all of this reorganization they've kinda reshaped themselves into the way they were before.
CD: Before…….Yeah, there seems to be so much new construction out towards Lumberton where I drove in from today. New schools, which is maybe typical of a lot of other areas, too; I don't know.
MB: But anyway those are the two things that I think Judge Parker, from my stand point would be most well know for and it was also during, when Judge Parker was doing these things this was about the time that Judge Fisher was considering if not had already gone on to senior status.
CD: What is senior status?
MB: Senior status is when a federal judge uh,
END OF INTERVIEW
[Interviewer stated she needed to start a new folder on recording device]