Las Vegas Sun Archives
E.M. “Al” Gunderson, a former chief justice of the state Supreme Court, died Thursday at his home.
Friday, May 14, 2010 | 2:01 a.m.
Then a prominent attorney, Oscar Goodman is seen with E.M. "Al" Gunderson in this undated photo.
When E.M. “Al” Gunderson dropped out of high school at age 16 to join the Army’s 11th Airborne Division as a paratrooper, he completed his secondary education by taking correspondence courses.
But Gunderson was a voracious reader — his favorite author was John Steinbeck — and he parlayed his book knowledge into a law degree that would lead to a long list of national and state honors. He would eventually vault to the Nevada Supreme Court, where he served from 1971 through 1988, including six years as chief justice.
Gunderson, who was one of the most powerful figures on the high court in the 1970s and 1980s, died Thursday at his Las Vegas home. He was 80.
His wife of 45 years, Lupe, remembered him as a loyal, compassionate person who stood behind his convictions.
“He wanted to make sure that everyone got a fair shake,” she said. “He wanted to make sure that the underdog was represented. He was adamant about that.”
During a summer break from college in 1951, Gunderson, a native of Minnesota, visited Las Vegas and ended up dealing blackjack, craps and roulette in downtown casinos, including the Monte Carlo Club. He made $7 a shift.
But he returned to his books, earning a law degree from Creighton University in Nebraska. After a stint as a Federal Trade Commission attorney in Chicago, he returned to Nevada in 1957 to work with prominent attorneys Leo and John McNamee and was admitted to the state bar the following year.
He practiced law from 1958 through 1970, when he was elected to the first of three six-year terms on the Supreme Court. In seeking his second re-election, Gunderson earned the endorsement of Mike O’Callaghan, a two-term Nevada governor and executive editor of the Las Vegas Sun.
“To put it bluntly, Nevada has a man sitting on the high court who is first a human being and secondly an outstanding legal mind,” O’Callaghan said of Gunderson in 1982. “Gunderson not only realizes the necessity of proper legal training on our high courts but has been most active in promoting training sessions for non-attorneys who sit on municipal and justice of the peace benches in our lower courts. He knows that justice at the grass roots is the strength of our entire legal system.”
That praise was based partly on Gunderson’s role in 1971 in creating the Nevada Judges Foundation, which established training sessions for individuals without law degrees who serve as judges in justice and municipal courts.
“It was obvious we were getting cases before the Supreme Court that had flaws in their processing because these judges in courts of limited jurisdiction had not had training,” he told the Sun in 1992.
Las Vegas attorney Laura FitzSimmons, who worked with Gunderson when she was a staff attorney for the high court, credited him for moving it away from the “judicial dark ages.”
“He brought the court away from a traditional conservative elitist court into a court that was more apt to consider issues that everyday men and women sought justice for,” she said. “He faced off against the institutionalized silk-stocking law firms whose clients felt that no matter what the law was that they would prevail.”
On a more personal note, FitzSimmons credited Gunderson with mentoring women in the legal profession at a time when there were few female attorneys in Nevada.
“He was one of the funniest people I ever met with a most original wit,” she said.
Gunderson is remembered as a staunch civil rights advocate who easily made friends with common folk regardless of race or income status.
Evidence of his civil rights record was on full display in May 1987 when Gunderson, who was chief justice at the time, served on the Nevada Pardons Board. Former state archivist Guy Rocha, who had co-authored a book about two radical union members who were convicted of murdering a businessman in Goldfield in 1907, had approached the board about issuing posthumous pardons for the two men, Joseph Smith and Morrie Preston. Rocha argued that they received an unfair trial.
“Al Gunderson was the one who said, ‘I’d like to see this case come before the board,’ ” Rocha said. “On the strength of his authority they did hear the case and pardoned them in a 6 to 1 vote.”
After leaving the Supreme Court, Gunderson was a professor at the Southwestern University School of Law in Los Angeles and also provided legal counsel to companies owned by the Greenspun family, which owns the Sun.
An avid recreational sailor who could also converse in Spanish, Gunderson leaves behind a legacy that included more than 13,000 Supreme Court decisions.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son, Randy, of Los Angeles. The family is holding private services.
