William DeParcq said he “had not put too much strain on his brain” during his grade and high school years. However, the trajectory of his life changed dramatically when he was 18 years old, and an automobile accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. Throughout his life, he managed the difficulties resulting from his disability without complaint. In fact, he often described the difficulties he encountered with non-accessible courtrooms, nearly always on the top floor of a courthouse without elevators, with “considerable hilarity in the retelling.”
DeParcq threw himself into representing the concerns of disabled people in policy changes including the removal of barriers to accessibility and in representing individuals who have been harmed by tortious behavior. On the policy side, DeParcq was invited to participate when a state committee to study architectural barriers was formed. His work, with others, began to take initial steps to correct this problem.
DeParcq also remembered the disabled who came behind him. He was a leader in improving the quality of life for disabled people. Among other things, he helped found the Courage Foundation, Minnesota’s premier organization to serve the needs of the disabled. He spent many years as a board member of Camp Courage, an internationally recognized program to train and rehabilitate disabled persons.
A Premier Trial Lawyer
DeParcq’s attorney in his auto accident claim, Robert M. McDonald, urged DeParcq to go to law school. DeParcq matriculated at St. Paul College of Law, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1930. He began practicing law, opening a practice in Staples, MN, where he often got paid in bushels of corn. With his growing international fame as a personal injury lawyer, DeParcq opened offices in Minneapolis and Chicago.
DeParcq was known for his “lifelong devotion to the art of advocacy” and his extraordinary trial skills. He was particularly famous for representing men and women harmed by injuries in the railroad industry. Ultimately, he became the dean of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers from 1954-55.
DeParcq was counsel in many cases appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but few of them were granted certiorari. Among these cases, DeParcq represented plaintiff M. F. White in White v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Co., 244 S.W.2d 26 (Mo. 1951) in which the Missouri Supreme Court held that when White was injured coupling a tank car to an engine while the train was running, he could sue for violation of the Federal Safety Appliance Act. DeParcq also represented O. R. Chaney, who was injured when he attempted to pull a coupling pin (allegedly part of a defective apparatus) during a track switching operation and was run over by one of the railroad cars (Henwood v. Chaney, 156 F.2d 392 (8th Cir. 1946)). In the Chaney case, the trial judge refused to let the jury consider the issue of defective equipment, and only permitted consideration of whether the railroad was negligent in permitting an oil-and-mud slick at the scene of the accident.
In one case, DeParcq appealed, he represented a Cleveland resident, A. F. Whitney, who claimed to have been libeled in Chicago by a telegram sent by T. M. Madden from International Falls, Minnesota. The defendant was served in Chicago when he was staying in a hotel there, and the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the Illinois trial court’s dismissal order on the grounds of forum non conveniens.
DeParcq found himself in hot water in an unusual case in the Southern District of Iowa when he consulted with Clifford Dean, who had been injured in a 1952 accident on the Great Chicago Northern Railway. After interviewing the client, DeParcq referred the case to local counsel, J. Riley McManus. McManus, out of respect for DeParcq’s having sent him the case, listed DeParcq as “of counsel” even though he had not been notified of the filings or participated in the case in any way. The federal district judge in the Southern District of Iowa, Judge William J. Riley, ordered DeParcq to respond to explain how he could be of counsel when he was not eligible to be admitted to the bar of that district. When DeParcq did not reply (because he was not served with the show cause order), the judge prepared to hold DeParcq in contempt of court. Protesting his innocence, DeParcq filed a writ of prohibition to prevent the contempt order in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Eighth Circuit held that he was not considered an attorney of record for purposes of the admission requirements, but the Court of Appeals dismissed the writ as moot when the trial judge dismissed the client’s claim on the merits.
DeParcq also was elected to the state legislature from House District 51 representing Todd County, and his hometown of Staples, on November 8, 1932. He sat in the House from January 1933 to January 1935, serving on several committees including Appropriations, Commercial Transportation, Crime Prevention, General Legislation, the Judiciary, Reapportionment, and Taxes and Tax Laws. He was a long-term member of the Minnesota Judicial Committee, from 1937-1949.
DeParcq was one of an “inner circle” of Minnesota’s prominent plaintiff’s personal injury attorneys, a circle that included Warren Plunkett, Solly Robins, Robert King, Sr., Charles Hvass, Sr., Norm Perl, and John Norton. By the early 60’s, they became the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Claimants’ Counsel of America, and they founded the Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association on October 25, 1963. One of their projects was to repeal the $25,000 statutory limit on wrongful death cases. MTLA’s first executive director was Cara Lee Neville, (MHSL 1975), later a Hennepin County District Court judge and another MHSL graduate.
DeParcq also participated in numerous professional committees. He was known as a mentor to many lawyers and happy to share his experience. Among others, the Hunegs, LeNeave & Kvas law firm, originally founded by William DeParcq, has represented injured plaintiffs for 70 years; and DeParcq mentored Jim Schwebel, the well-known personal injury lawyer, in his early years of practice. Among DeParcq’s friends was President Franklin Roosevelt. DeParcq was recognized by Law and Politics as 20th in Minnesota’s Legal Hall of Fame in 2007.
Personal Life
William DeParcq was born on March 27, 1905, in New Orleans, Louisiana and grew up in Minneapolis. His father was a hotelier. He graduated from the University of Minnesota.
DeParcq’s mother was a key to his success. After his accident, she re-taught him how to walk using crutches and leg braces. When he was in law school, she came to class and took notes for him, reading the law to him while he took therapeutic walks.
DeParcq was known as a modest man, who often used his sense of humor in self-deprecating ways. A friend, Bill Lehmeyer cited his “compassion, his skill and above all his fortitude in the face of tremendous adversity beyond most people’s comprehension.”
William DeParcq never married or had children. In fact, he spent most of his life working—his clerks and partners suggested that he worked almost all of the time. When he retired from practice in 1973, DeParcq built himself an accessible home in Tucson, Arizona. He died there on April 5, 1988, a week after his 83d birthday. He was an advocate for his alma mater William Mitchell throughout his life, serving on the board of trustees for eight years. He left a $1 million bequest to support the law school. For a time, the law school’s annual leadership dinner was named in his honor.
References
* The quotations in this biography are taken from the references below.
Minnesota’s Legal Hall of Fame, L. & Pols. (Aug./Sept 2007), at 18, 22, https://aja.ncsc.dni.us/news/pdfs/MN_LegalHallofFameAug2007.pdf
Annual Hennepin County Bar Memorial Session, at 13 (April 26, 1989), http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/HC%201989.pdf
Minnesota State Bar Association, For the Record, 150 Years of Law & Lawyers in Minnesota 279 (1999)
100 who Made A Difference (William Mitchell College of Law, 2001)
DeParcq v. U.S. Dist. Ct. for the S. Dist. of Iowa, 235 F.2d 692 (8th Cir. 1956)
Henwood v. Chaney, 156 F.2d 392 (8th Cir. 1946), cert denied, 329 U.S. 760 (1946)
White v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 244 S.W.2d 26 (Mo. 1951), cert. denied, 343 U.S. 915 (1952)
Whitney v. Madden, 79 N.E.2d 593 (Ill 1948)