Judge honors trial lawyers with unique medallion

BANGOR – Lawyer P. Matthew Darby left U.S. District Court earlier this year with a positive feeling in spite of the fact that his client won a much smaller award than he’d sought in a civil jury trial.

What lifted Darby’s spirits as he headed home to Baltimore was the medallion U.S. District Court Judge D. Brock Hornby had given him and opposing counsel Glen Porter of Bangor after the verdict was announced.

“I thought it was a wonderful and very considerate gesture on behalf of a judge,” he said in a phone interview earlier this year. “It was already a pleasure to appear before him because he’s considerate and decisive. As lawyers, all we can ask for is a clear direction in terms of his rulings.”

In January, Hornby began presenting the medal to lawyers who participate in jury trials before him. The judge designed it with suggestions from his wife, Helaine, and judicial assistant, Deann Hervie.

About the size of a silver dollar, the medal bears the seal of the United States surrounded by the words United State District Court. The other side has the scales of justice superimposed on a silhouette of the state of Maine. It is made of a brownish metal that looks like faded bronze.

Hornby said Monday that he created the medal to recognize the hard work lawyers put into jury trials.

“Jury trials take a great amount of time in preparation before and during the trial,” he said. “They are all stressful and intense. I wanted to recognize what an accomplishment it is to complete a jury trail.

“One lawyer always loses. Sometimes in a civil trial, a lawyer might not get paid if he or she doesn’t prevail and in criminal cases, they don’t get paid enough. It’s a way to remember a special event.”

The medallion also is a way to honor Maine’s special place in the U.S. Court system. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the first federal court when Maine was still a part of Massachusetts. Today, the First District in the U.S. Court system includes the New England states and Puerto Rico.

After finding a firm to manufacture the medals, Hornby awarded the first to Gov. John Baldacci in January when the new governor spoke at a swearing-in ceremony for new citizens. Since then, the judge has given away 48 more to lawyers in Maine, Puerto Rico and Thailand.

Hornby pointed out that the medallion is not the first “gift” he’s given from the bench. When schoolchildren visit his courtroom, he gives them pencils shaped like gavels as a memento. The medallion, however, honors the jury trial – one of the fundamental tenets of American law.

“One of the great joys of my life is presiding at jury trials,” Hornby said Monday.

Darby agreed that in the professional life of a lawyer, jury trials are “a great blessing.”

“Then to have it memorialized by a gesture like Judge Hornby’s is very unusual,” said Darby.

A native of Manitoba, Canada, Hornby, 59, is a naturalized citizen who joined the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 1988.

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1969 and served as a clerk to U.S. Circuit Judge John Minor Wisdom in New Orleans before teaching law at the University of Virginia in the early 1970s.

Hornby then became a partner in the Portland law firm of Perkins, Thompson, Hinckley & Keddy, serving as a part-time instructor at the University of Maine School of Law in 1981 and 1983.

In December 1982, Hornby became the first U.S. Magistrate Judge for Maine.