Minnesota Lawyer recognizes 10 as ‘Attorneys of the Year’

“Attorneys of the Year” are chosen on an annual basis by the editors of Minnesota Lawyer. Criteria for selection include:

• assuming a position of leadership in the bar;

• demonstrating “good lawyering” skills in an important case;

• involvement in events of major importance to the state’s legal community;

• significant participation in service-related activities; and/or

• advancing the interests of the profession in a significant way.

This year’s honorees will be recognized at an awards dinner to be held on Thursday, Jan. 31, at the Radison Hotel in downtown Minneapolis. The keynote address will be delivered by former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

The recipients of the “Attorney of the Year” honor for 2001 are:

• Attorney Marvin Anderson, Minnesota’s longtime state law librarian who helped organize a national law librarians’ convention in Minneapolis this summer;

• Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, whose office was nationally recognized this summer for its community prosecution initiative;

• Minneapolis attorney Charles Lundberg, a legal malpractice defense lawyer with a strong appellate practice who serves as the chair of Minnesota’s Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board;

• Winona attorney Kent A. Gernander, a former president of the Minnesota State Bar Association who lobbied hard for Legal Aid in its successful effort to get increased funding from the Legislature;

• Mankato attorney James H. Manahan, a former president of the Minnesota Civil Liberties Union who continues to work for the advancement of civil rights and recently received a grant to teach criminal procedure in Chile;

• Minneapolis attorney Brian Melendez, who rose up from the Hennepin County Bar Association’s New Lawyers Section to take the reins as president;

• Minneapolis attorney Kathryn H. Davis Messerich, a medical malpractice defense lawyer who recently became the second woman to serve as president of the Minnesota Defense Lawyers Association (MDLA);

• Cargill counsel Peter M. Reyes, an intellectual property attorney and the president of the Minnesota Hispanic Bar Association (MHBA);

• St. Paul attorney William L. Tilton, who procured for his client — a 44-year-old med-mal plaintiff — a settlement that included the defendant’s agreement to pay his client’s lifetime medical expenses of $53,000 a month; and

• Appleton attorney Brian E. Wojtalewicz, a plaintiffs’ lawyer who: procured a $771,000 verdict for a whistleblower in a qui tam action — and convinced the judge to assess a $1.6 million fine against the defendant; obtained a $3 million settlement in an auto accident case; and received a $400,000 verdict in a medical malpractice case.

Minnesota Lawyer will publish a special section in the Jan. 21 issue that will contain profiles of all of the selected lawyers and discuss their achievements during 2001.

At the Jan. 31 event honoring these “attorneys of the year,” Cuomo will speak on the law’s role in the constitutional distribution of powers. He will touch upon recent attempts at politicizing the courts, the effects of these attempts on the public’s confidence in the courts and on our governance generally and the significance of the role of the lawyer in guarding against deterioration of the law as the bulwark of our constitutional system. Cuomo’s remarks will include references to the litigation surrounding the 2000 presidential election, military tribunals and upcoming appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.

For ticket information, contact Scott Plum, Minnesota Lawyer’s events coordinator, at (612) 584-1544, or by e-mail at [email protected].