By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
Several weeks after marking his 50th anniversary with Plunkett Cooney on June 1, attorney Bill Booth took some time off.
To have his knee replaced.
The elective surgery, which was deemed a success, served to slow down Booth momentarily from a legal schedule that would tax a much younger man. It came on the heels of the Oakland County Bar Association’s annual meeting, at which the 75-year-old Booth received the Professionalism Award, recognizing “his consistent adherence to the highest standards of integrity, fairness and excellence in the practice of law.”
The words have shaped Booth’s career since the Saginaw native joined Plunkett Cooney in 1961 as a summer associate. One of his legal mentors, Bill Cooney, saw a “certain something” in Booth from the day they met in the old Dime Building. Booth, then an honors student at the University of Detroit School of Law, had been invited by Bob Plunkett to interview for a job with the firm.
“Mr. Plunkett taught some classes at U of D and was easing into retirement at the time, so he told me to contact Bill Cooney about getting a job with the firm,” Booth recalled. “Bob was a little guy, no more than 5 feet, 6 inches tall, with real bushy eyebrows.”
Cooney, by contrast, offered a much more physically imposing presence, one that he used to full advantage inside and outside of court, according to Booth.
“I remember that he kept me waiting for a good hour and a half,” said Booth, a strapping 6-foot, 1-inch, 210-pound former football player at the time. “When he finally appeared, he made some comment about my size and I joked that I was ready to take him on, best two out of three falls.”
Cooney liked the young man’s moxie. He liked him even more when Booth, then an editor of the U of D Law Journal, displayed his scholarly side by citing a point of law that he has just written about for the legal publication. Fortunately, or perhaps fortuitously for Booth, the law review article had particular application for a case that Cooney was handling in court the upcoming Monday.
“It was right on the money,” Booth recalled of the law review article. “It immediately gave me a leg up with Mr. Cooney.”
It wouldn’t be long before Booth would make a name for himself with the firm, which counted seven attorneys among its ranks at the time he began his ascension. He was quickly tabbed as the firm’s “Oakland County lawyer,” a designation he further developed through his trial work and involvement with the bar association.
“Bill developed into a top-notch trial attorney with an emphasis on representing design professionals in architecture and engineering,” said Hank Cooney, now managing partner of Plunkett Cooney, a firm with 11 offices spread over three states. “He was very active in both the Oakland County Bar Association and the Michigan Bar Association, and ultimately was elected president of the Oakland County Bar Association in 1996-97 after serving on the board of directors of the OCBA from 1985 through 1997.”
The Oakland Bar, in presenting the Professionalism Award to Booth last month, was effusive in its praise of his character and legal achievements, terming him a “lawyer’s lawyer,” one of the highest compliments that can be paid to an attorney.
“He is a hard-working, no-nonsense, bottom-line litigator who has exemplified the highest form of professionalism and diligence in his service to clients and the system of jurisprudence in the state of Michigan for 50 years,” according to the OCBA award statement. “Mr. Booth exemplifies the highest standards of professional competence; strong moral character; and respect for litigants, opposing counsel, and the justice system in Oakland County. He has given of his time, talent, and treasure throughout his legal career. At his firm he has been a mentor, role model, and friend to both new and seasoned lawyers.”
Booth had an early inkling that he was destined for a career in the law when the president of the Saginaw County Bar Association took an interest in him, later introducing him to the dean of the U of D School of Law, who touted the value of a Jesuit education.
Booth’s father, Ted, once harbored hopes that his son would take a career path into the family business, a successful wood and metal pattern company that traced its roots to the Great Depression.
“My Dad worked incredibly hard, probably 80 hours a week, to build that business into the biggest of its kind in the state,” Booth said. “I worked in my Dad’s shop from the time I was 14, but I think he knew that I was more inclined to go into the law or medicine. The real plan was for my older brother, Bob, to go into the business, but he was killed in an accident in 1944.”
A graduate of Saginaw Arthur Hill High School, Booth played football for the Lumberjacks in the “leather helmet days” of gridiron lore. He enrolled at the University of Michigan, earning his bachelor of arts degree in 1959. His days in Ann Arbor stoked a lifelong love affair with U-M football.
“His picture is probably in the dictionary next to the phrase ‘Michigan booster,’” said attorney Mike Sullivan, Booth’s neighbor and past president of the OCBA and the Oakland County Bar Foundation. “He is a long time fan. He went to every game for decades – still does.”
His interest in U-M isn’t confined to athletics, however. Over the years, Booth has represented the University in a number of high profile cases, including a lawsuit filed by a former player who contended that the Athletic Department failed to provide him academic help. The civil rights complaint, which named U-M Athletic Director H.O. “Fritz” Crisler as one of the lead defendants, was tried in Wayne County Circuit Court. The trial outcome was as lopsided as some of U-M’s gridiron victories in its glory days.
“We were able to show that the plaintiff never went to class, which, of course, accounted for his poor academic performance,” Booth said, noting that U-M officials were understandably delighted with the verdict.
“Mr. Cooney instructed me not to send U-M a bill for our work on the case,” Booth added. “He believed it would be a way to continue to build goodwill with the University.”
Athletic Director Crisler and former U-M football coach Benny Oosterbaan expressed their appreciation in a most tangible way, giving Booth and the firm six season tickets and a parking pass to the football games.
Such perks have helped compensate for the inherent pressure of the job, which has seen Booth involved in such cases as the Port Huron tunnel explosion that killed 22 workers in December 1971 and the 1981 walkway collapse at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, which claimed the lives of 114 people and injured 216 others.
“Those were both tragedies that were beyond description,” Booth said. “Those are cases that really stick with you, especially when you consider how many lives were lost and how many lives were unalterably changed by those two accidents.”
In his early years with the firm, Booth also assisted the elder Cooney in defending product liability claims against General Motors and its Chevrolet Corvair, a car model that consumer advocate Ralph Nader deemed to be among those vehicles that are “unsafe at any speed.”
“I have to admit that it was pretty heady stuff to be involved in cases like the Corvair at that point in my career,” said Booth, who would rise to become managing partner of Plunkett Cooney in the mid-1980s.
The pressures of his workload eventually began to take a toll on his health. He underwent surgery in 1997 for a heart aneurysm.
Over the course of the next 14
years, he would have heart bypass surgery, two knee replacement operations, and a battle with prostate cancer for good measure. He attributes his good fortune in beating the health odds to a “wonderfully supportive family and great friends.” Mike Sullivan, who credits Booth with steering him into rewarding work for the OCBA, echoed the comment.
“Bill knows everyone that matters much,” said Sullivan, a partner with Collins Einhorn in Southfield. “He has cut a wide swath, first through Saginaw, then U-M, U of D Law, and legal and other circles. He has friends in high and low places, and he is glad to have them all.
“Not to mention he has nine lives, and probably will live forever,” Sullivan said with a smile. “It may be that St. Peter doesn’t want to share management duties. When Bill gets there, he will want to be in charge.”
In the meantime, he will defer to his wife of nearly 54 years, Ann. Also a graduate of Saginaw Arthur Hill, she worked as a nurse before the couple began raising their four children.
Their oldest child is Jennifer, a U-M grad who was the director of admissions and career development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard before she joined Johns Hopkins University as director of admissions at its School of Advanced International Studies. Her younger brother, Bill, lives in the Newport Coast area of southern California, where he is involved in commercial real estate projects. His wife is the daughter of former Major League Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth.
The Booths’ younger daughter, Debbie, also a U-M grad, lives with her family in Palo Alto, Calif. Her younger brother, Bob, is an actor and model, appearing in ads as far away as Japan.
The couple’s summer place on Walloon Lake near Petoskey serves as a magnet for their children and grandchildren during the summer. It also might serve as more of draw for Booth to relax this month as he recovers from the knee replacement procedure.
“It’s a great place to be in the summer,” Booth said of their vacation home up north. “I’ll spend as much time as I can there without interfering with the work flow in my case schedule. There is still much to do.”
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