Merhige attended High Point College in North Carolina and received his law degree from University of Richmond’s T.C. He retired in 1998 and joined the law firm of Hunton & Williams in Richmond.īorn in New York, Mr. That case delayed his retirement, although he went into semiretirement in November 1986. in the Dalkon Shield case, in which control of the company would pass to American Home Products in exchange for its willingness to finance a $ 2.475 billion trust fund to compensate the IUD’s victims. He presided over a complex bankruptcy reorganization plan for the A.H. But he also reduced the fine by $5 million after Allied set up an $8 million cleanup fund. He took an active role in getting lawsuits settled, imposing a $13 million fine against Allied Chemical for its pollution of the James River and Chesapeake Bay with the insecticide Kepone. Merhige’s rulings had been reversed less than 5 percent of the time by higher courts, an exceptionally low percentage. Merhige’s decisions tended to hold up on appeal. Douglas.” He was known for his kindness and integrity and for brooking no delays or foolishness in his court, part of the Eastern District of Virginia known as the “rocket docket.” He once ordered a marshal to remove a man who had fallen asleep in the courtroom. Dick Howard once called him “a trial court’s William O. University of Virginia law professor A.E. “I thought people would say, ‘We don’t like the little S.O.B., but he’s following the law,’ “ he said. He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch last year that he was still amazed, disappointed and angry at the public reaction to his rulings. A guest cottage on his property, where his mother-in-law lived, was burned to the ground. Protesters held weekly parades outside his home. Segregationists threatened his family, spat in his face and shot his dog to death after tying its legs. He was widely considered the most hated man in Richmond in the early 1970s and required 24-hour protection by U.S. No decision made him more unpopular than his orders to integrate dozens of Virginia’s school systems. He presided over the trials of Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party members accused of injuring and killing members of the Communist Workers Party in Greensboro, N.C., in 1979. He clarified the rights of pregnant women to keep their jobs. He ordered the University of Virginia to admit women in 1970. Gordon Liddy, Bernard Barker and Eugenio Martinez after they were convicted of breaking into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. He wrote the decision for a three-judge panel that threw out the appeals of Watergate figures G. Merhige’s unusually long tenure on the federal bench - 31 years - brought him many cases of national importance. 18 at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center in Richmond after undergoing open heart surgery Tuesday. District Court judge who ordered Virginia schools desegregated and presided over major corporate litigation cases, died Feb.
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