Legal News

Law Blog Obituary: S. Hazard Gillespie

By Ashby Jones

We can say without much equivocation that you don’t read many lawyer obituaries as interesting as the one belonging to S. Hazard Gillespie, who died Monday at age 100.

Gillespie was the first summer associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell, and while he officially retired from the firm in 1980, he stayed closely affiliated with the firm until his death. Davis Polk’s internal announcement, circulated Tuesday, said “Hazard’s impact on this firm over the course of his more than 75-year career here cannot be overstated.”

Click here for the NYT obituary; here for a 2010 article from the New York Bar Association on Gillespie; here for a 2008 LB Q&A with Gillespie.

We strongly suggest reading both pieces — it’ll be worth your time.

Some quick highlights:

• Gillespie, who became the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1959, learned the craft of trial lawyering from John W. Davis, who led the Democratic ticket in the 1924 presidential election, losing to Calvin Coolidge.

• As U.S. attorney, he “reluctantly . . . pressed the government's ultimately unsuccessful case to prevent ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover’ from being shipped through the mail on the grounds of obscenity,” according to the NYT story.

• Shortly after joining Davis Polk permanently, he worked on a little case called Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, which all of you will remember from your civil procedure classes as the case that established that federal courts must apply the law of the state in which they are situated. Erie v. Tompkins came down in 1938.

• During World War II, according to the NYT: “Gillespie was chief of operational research for the Second Division of the Eighth Air Force, based in England. In an effort to reduce the number of downed airplanes, he cross-examined pilots after their bombing runs and verified his suspicion that they were flying in patterns that German pilots and antiaircraft gunners were picking up on. Countermeasures greatly reduced losses.”

• Gillespie was later named by Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York to lead a huge investigation of the state’s welfare system.

• He came close to going to the 1936 Olympics in downhill skiing.

• He is survived by, among others, eight great-grandchildren. Eight.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 09, 2011 (boomark / email).