By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
By all accounts, there is something special about Richard Kitch, the now 91-year-old co-founder of the Detroit law firm that bears his name.
Over the course of his 66-year career , Kitch has possessed a gravitas that has charmed and won over jurors in hundreds of cases he has tried.
Kitch has stood tall in medical malpractice defense work, representing health care providers, medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and other product manufacturers.
He also has been a force in shaping the legal landscape in matters of tort reform, whether testifying before legislative committees or writing treatises on the hotly debated topic.
And yet, for all his success in and out of the courtroom, Kitch is just as admired for his down-to-earth personality and humble nature, both of which would be seemingly out of character for someone who has attained national legal stature.
“He is a no-frills guy. He enjoys the simple things in life just as much – if not more so – as solving some complex legal problem in which the stakes are high,” said Mona Majzoub, a retired federal magistrate judge who has been married to Kitch for the past 22 years. “He loves his workshop, gardening, working in the yard, having a beer with friends, exploring new places, and the ups and downs of the Red Wings and Tigers.
Those kinds of things make his world go round.”
And Majzoub would know, observing Kitch in action on the legal front for 27 years while she was a trial lawyer for the Detroit firm before accepting an appointment to the federal bench. The couple was married in 1999, several years after Kitch’s late wife, Marci, died of cancer.
“His legal reputation is impeccable,” said Majzoub, the first female member of the Kitch firm. “Even those who have been his legal adversaries would acknowledge that. He’s been a giant in the legal profession.”
U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Suhrheinrich, a partner in the original Kitch firm, was a senior in law school when he came to know the man who would become his lifelong friend.
“He had just made partner at Moll and he took me under his wing, so to speak, and was a real mentor to me,” Suhrheinrich said of Kitch. “I was just a law student, someone trying to find his way, and he took an interest in me, even if I was more or less his ‘go-fer.’”
Upon graduating from the former Detroit College of Law in 1963, Suhrheinrich landed a job with Moll as an associate, a role in which he again worked closely with Kitch. In 1969, Kitch invited Suhrheinrich to join him in setting up a new practice.
“When he came to me with the idea of joining him, I was surprised,” said Suhrheinrich. “I was still just a kid and I told him that I didn’t have any money to put into starting a firm, but he said that he would take care of that end of it. And he did, of course, and was generous enough to make me a 50/50 partner right from the start. It was a real show of faith.”
That faith was quickly repaid when Suhrheinrich pinch-hit for an ailing Kitch at the last minute in a “big case” being tried in federal court.
“Honestly, I was scared to death going into that case, but it turned out well and things grew from there,” Suhrheinrich said. “I was fortunate to be a partner with the best, a truly magnificent lawyer.
“What always struck me about Dick was that he knew everything about the law, whether it was his specialty area or not. He had a unique ability to problem-solve and to educate himself on a topic very quickly.
Whenever I tried a case, I made it a habit of calling him to get his thoughts about my strategy and whether it was the right course of action. If he approved, I felt a lot more secure about my chances.”
A Detroit native, Kitch grew up in a middle-class household near Six Mile and Grand River, attending Redford High School on the city’s west side. His father, Paul, was trained on the job as an engineer at Dodge Truck, while his mother, Anne, worked as a secretary at an insurance company.
Kitch admits that as a youth he had a somewhat “rebellious” nature, testing the patience of his parents. His sister Pat “had his back,” repeatedly coming to the defense of her younger brother.
Such love and loyalty helped Kitch find his way, taking his street smarts to Wayne State University, and an accelerated program that allowed him to enter law school after three years of undergraduate studies.
“Typical of most college students, I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to study or what career I wanted to pursue,” Kitch said. “When I learned that I could bypass my final year of college and go right into law school, then suddenly a legal career started to make sense.”
He graduated second in his class, after receiving multiple academic honors, earning an academic scholarship, and serving as a member of the Law School Student Council. Then, as a newly-minted Wayne Law grad, Kitch was faced with a dilemma.
“All I could think of was ‘What am I going to do now?’ I didn’t know any lawyers and didn’t have any contacts,” Kitch said, recalling his exasperation. “I had a law degree, but not much more than that.”
But he did have gumption, prompting him to make his way down to the Penobscot Building, where the offices of the Detroit Bar Association were located, and where a possible lead for a law clerk opening with a downtown firm awaited him.
“I applied for the job and when asked how much I wanted to be paid, I told them, “Whatever you will pay me,’” Kitch related.
With such open-ended eagerness, Kitch landed a clerkship for the tidy sum of $25 a month in 1954, which even back then bordered on servitude status.
“After a while, when one of the senior partners found out what I was being paid, he quickly raised me to $75 a month, which was a much more livable wage.”
And yet, despite proving his value to the firm early on, Kitch felt as if he were an outsider who didn’t really belong, due to the firm’s unwritten policy of only hiring attorneys with University of Michigan or Harvard Law School pedigrees. He quickly broke through that barrier and distinguished himself by “doing anything and everything I could” for the firm of Moll Desenberg Purdy Glover & Bayer, which principally represented health care providers.
He would spend 14 years there as an associate and then partner, proving to be “indispensable” before deciding to launch his own firm in 1969 with Richard Suhrheinrich, now in his 31st year as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The doors of the firm opened on the day after New Year’s in 1969 in a sublet T-suite with just three attorneys and two secretaries. Its initial clientele included various medical malpractice insurers who wrote hospital coverage, along with a handful of pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers.
In short, it was a long way from the more than 100 attorneys that are part of the Kitch firm today with offices in Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois.
Brian Peters, CEO of the Michigan Health & Hospital Association, credits Kitch with helping “level the playing field” in the area of medical malpractice litigation and for being a “voice of reason” whenever called upon.
“My first exposure to Richard Kitch was 31 years ago when I was an intern for then MHA CEO Spencer Johnson and I was fortunate enough to sit in on a board meeting where Mr. Kitch was making a presentation on medical liability reform,” Peters said. “What impressed me was how knowledgeable he was on the subject and the passion he had for the reform effort. It was clear that his opinion resonated with the board and that they valued his expertise.”
Kitch – and the Kitch firm – has continued to enhance that value even more over the past three decades, Peters indicated.
“Any number of times he and the firm have written amicus briefs on our behalf in appellate cases, while also testifying before various legislative committees dealing with medical liability matters,” Peters added. “What sets him and his firm apart is their commitment to excellence and to relationship building.”
In 2006, Kitch testified before the Michigan House of Representatives Standing Committee on Tort Reform, offering a history lesson from a defense point of view.
“This included the fact that prior to the 1993 medical malpractice tort reform, hospitals in Michigan were paying, on a per bed basis, the highest malpractice premiums in the United States,” Kitch testified. “Further, that at least one hospital found the conditions so deplorable that it moved to another state. Medical malpractice insurance companies, some of whom had been in Michigan for over 50 years, fled the state and refused to write further medical malpractice coverage in Michigan. The issue at that point became not one of cost, but of availability. This situation required that the Michigan Hospital Association form an insurance company to provide Michigan hospitals some partial relief. . . The situation was such that doctors in high-risk specialties, such as obstetricians and neurosurgeons, refused to perform certain procedures.”
At the time, Michigan was “considered one of the worst judicial hell holes in the United States,” according to Kitch, who is known for his candor and unwillingness to sugarcoat bad news.
Michael Schwartz, retired chief operating officer for Sisters of Mercy health care system, said Kitch possessed a “unique ability” to analyze complex topics and to present “workable solutions” to thorny problems.
“He was instrumental in educating all of us – administrators, doctors, and legislators – on what were the best options to bring the malpractice costs under control,” said Schwartz. “He knew the subject inside and out, and could make the case for what needed to be done to keep the costs from killing hospitals all over the state. He deserves tremendous credit for bringing the system back into balance.”
An on-ice incident may have been a hockey ‘double-cross’
By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
Not all is drab, dry, and laced with legalese in the world of law.
In fact, there may be enough real-life legal material in the memory bank of Detroit attorney Richard Kitch to spawn a few programs on Comedy Central, the redacted version.
In one instance, Kitch went to bat for a hockey player from the Boston Bruins who was sued for an alleged on-ice assault of a center from the former Minnesota North Stars, widely known as one of the “tough guys” in the NHL.
The two players already had spent time in the penalty box for an earlier skirmish when they crossed paths again after their respective penalties expired.
The Minnesota player was “a big, burly Native American guy,” who outweighed his Boston counterpart by more than 50 pounds, according to Kitch.
“While trying to make his way out of the penalty box, my client figured that the Minnesota guy was going to take another swipe at him, so he ducks, raises his stick up, and accidentally catches the Minnesota player in his eye socket, fracturing his orbital bone.”
In other words, let the legal proceedings begin.
“The plaintiff alleged that as a result of the incident, he had sustained permanent double vision and could no longer play hockey,” Kitch said, thereby ending the hockey player’s career at age 25.
Complicating matters, the incident happened while play was in full swing at the other end of the ice, far from the eyes of the referee and the two linesmen.
“Nonetheless, the fans all came out of the woodwork and testified to 30 different versions of what happened between the two players,” Kitch recalled.
After further legal wrangling, the case settled for an undisclosed sum and all appeared to end on a satisfactory note for the respective parties, said Kitch.
A day later, the plaintiff would add a footnote to the legal story.
“The very next day, the newspapers printed a story that the same Minnesota player went golfing and got a hole-in-one,” Kitch indicated. “The joke was that there was holy water in the ball washer and his double vision was miraculously cured.”
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