Duluth attorney Harry Munger passed away peacefully in his home in Port Charlotte, FL on 04/28/2018.
The youngest of five children, Harry was born in Fergus Falls on October 29, 1927, attended the Fergus Falls schools, moved to Duluth at the beginning of WW II, and lived on Raleigh Street. A child of poverty and the Great Depression, Harry valued education and graduated from Denfeld in 1945.
After serving two years in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a weatherman, Harry was determined to go to college. Law school intrigued him. Harry enrolled in the University of Minnesota where he met his longtime partner and close friend, A. Blake MacDonald. But even using the GI Bill, Harry could not afford school. He returned to Duluth and worked on the railroad to earn money for college. He used his savings and the GI Bill to attend UMD. Too undersized to play sports at Denfeld, Harry grew enough during his military service to join the Bulldog football team. While at UMD, Harry lettered in football (as a quarterback and punter) and student-taught at Lincoln Junior, intending to become a teacher. Harry also began courting Barbara Kobe. Harry proposed marriage but Barbara insisted that Harry earn his degree before she’d say “yes”, which meant that Harry was the first Munger to graduate from college!
After marrying Barbara in 1951, Harry entered the St. Paul College of Law. He worked fulltime as an insurance adjuster while attending night school. Son Mark was born in St. Paul and after Harry graduated with his JD in 1956, the Munger family returned to Duluth, settling in Piedmont Heights where son David and daughter Ann joined the family.
Harry was raised by parents who were members of the Farmer-Labor Party. He was steeped in politics from an early age. When Harry’s brother Willard was elected to the Minnesota House in 1954, he lived with Harry and Barbara in St. Paul during the legislative session. This interaction heightened Harry’s passion for Liberal politics. After returning to Duluth, Harry became the St. Louis County Chair of the DFL. He was a delegate to the 1968 National Convention in Chicago where he proudly supported Hubert Humphrey. He was also active in the Presidential Campaigns of ‘76, ‘80, and ’84, supporting his close friend and fishing buddy Walter “Fritz” Mondale as a Vice Presidential and Presidential candidate.
Harry established a personal injury and general practice law firm in Duluth, partnering with Blake MacDonald and Tim Downs and his son Mark to form MacDonald, Munger, Downs, and Munger. He also served as a Special Municipal Court Judge and as a judge on the Minnesota Tax Court. During his legal career, Harry also served as the President of the MTLA, and was active in ATLA, the ABA, the 11th District Bar Assoc., and the DTLA.
An avid outdoorsman, Harry traveled to fish char in the arctic, salmon in Alaska, and saltwater fish in Florida. He hunted grouse, ducks, geese, sharptail, huns, and pheasants in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Harry fished the Knife in Minnesota, the Brule in Wisconsin, and the Betsy in Michigan for steelhead. He instilled in his children and grandchildren a respect for nature and a love of the outdoors. Harry worked tirelessly on conservation issues with his brother Willard, including a failed effort to block the expansion of the Miller Hill Mall because the shopping center’s runoff was degrading Miller Creek, an urban trout stream.
Harry coached youth sports and served as the President of the Skyline Little League. He was a devoted attendee of sporting events, cheering for his sons on the PSS gridiron (mostly for David, a starting offensive lineman), rooting for his kids when they skied competitively, and attending innumerable baseball and softball contests. He also took in many of his grandchildren’s baseball, basketball, softball, soccer, and hockey games.
Harry is survived by his sons Mark (Rene’) and David (Diane), daughter Ann (David) Sarvela, and grandchildren Matthew (Lisa), Dylan (Michelle), Christian (Rachel), Jack, Jonathan, Nichole (Chris) Howard, Crystal (Ryan) Hoyt, Melissa (Megan) Landon, Madeline and Emelia Sarvela, 11 great-grandchildren, his first wife—Barbara Tourville, his second wife—Mary Kay Munger, partner Pauline Liston, and many nieces and nephews including special niece and special nephew, Patricia Lehr and Will Munger.
As Harry’s partner for 12 years, I’ll leave you with two short stories about practicing law with Dad. As a brand new lawyer, freshly returned from US Army Reserve basic training in Ft. Dix, I stepped off the plane in Duluth and was handed my first court trial. The client, Duluth Ready Mix, was an important one to the office so Harry accompanied my to the trial as my “second chair”. Any one who knows Harry understands the impossibility of that label. In any event, we were in front of Judge David Bouchor and our client, Mike Robertson was on the stand. I was examining him but I was having a heck of a time because every time I’d ask Mike a question, Harry leaned over and barked in my ear. I was getting more and more flustered until Judge Bouchor straightened up and said: “Harry, why don’t you let the kid ask the questions? He’s doing a pretty good job without you …” Dad turned red, stood up, picked up his file, and stormed out of the courtroom. Turned out Judge Dave was right: He ruled in my client’s favor but it took weeks before Harry would talk to him again.
The second story involves the case of Minter versus Chrysler. Joey Minter was a young man injured in a motor vehicle crash. He sustained quadriplegia due to what Harry believed to be a defective shoulder harness in the back seat. The driver alleged that a dog or a deer had darted out, causing him to swerve, resulting in the catastrophic crash. But there was a problem. The main police reports didn’t say anything about a deer or a dog. Digging deep into the investigating officer’s notes, Harry discovered a comment about “a roll of sod being in the road”. He placed an ad in the DNT asking if anyone had witnessed a sod truck dropping its load on the day of the crash. A witness came forward and Godden’s Sod was added as a defendant.
As hard as Harry pushed his products case against Chrysler, the auto maker fought harder. Here was a four-person PI firm up against Bowman and Brooke and all its money and power and backing. The case seemingly stalled out on the issue of the design of the shoulder belt that our expert said was defective. Again, as Bob Falsani affectionately noted in a recent email, my pit bull father dug deeper. He found Chrysler literature that tied none other than Lee Iacocca, the head of Chrysler, to the design of the very shoulder harness that failed. This discovery emboldened the old man to do the unthinkable: He subpoened Iacocca for a deposition. Of course, Bowman and Brooke opposed. But they weren’t fighting in federal court: Because Godden Sod was in the case, the case was venued in state court in Duluth. When good old “Let it in” Charlie Barnes heard the motion to quash, he sided with Harry and said: “I’d like to hear what Mr. Iacocca has to say about all this.” Harry took that order, which was affirmed by the Supreme Court, and turned the case into his first seven-figure settlement. That was Harry: no one was too big or too important to fall beyond his scrutiny, including the president of Chrysler Motors or Harry’s son, even if he became a district court judge.
Mark
