Baine Kerr
Retired
Experience
Baine Kerr has focused on civil litigation for plaintiffs for thirty-one years at the firm. Cases he has won for firm clients include both the largest auto accident jury verdict and the largest medical malpractice jury verdict in Boulder County, the largest medical malpractice verdict in Colorado in 2003, and the largest breast cancer verdict in Colorado. Cases he has worked on have resulted in three of the five largest collected jury verdicts in Boulder County. He was lead counsel for the largest civil rights settlement in the country for three abused children.
Baine has focused on breast cancer litigation for patients for twenty years. He has published about breast cancer in the Professional Negligence Law Reporter and for the American Cancer Society, and has spoken on breast cancer topics to the American Trial Lawyers Association and the American College of Radiology.
Baine has also achieved dozens of multi-million dollar settlements for patients for misdiagnosed pulmonary embolism, maternal death after childbirth, negligent surgery, and in pharmaceutical and medical device and many other medical and hospital liability cases. He has handled landmark non-medical cases in civil rights, Title IX, civil litigation for crime victims, consumer fraud and product liability. Baine has been selected for both Colorado Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America.
For 12 years Baine has specialized in title IX litigation. He and John Clune are lead counsel in the high profile Title IX case involving Florida State University and Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston. Baine, Kim Hult and Chris Ford won a $2.5 million settlement in 2007 from the University of Colorado for sexual assaults by football recruits in the high-profile Simpson case that led to national athletic reforms. In 2008 Baine and Kim won a $850,000 settlement for rape by a football player in J.K. v. Arizona State University. In what is becoming a model across the country, both settlements required the creation of five year Title IX and student safety positions. Baine has argued and won precedent-setting Title IX opinions by the Tenth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals and by the United States District Court for Arizona that have advanced Title IX protections at campuses everywhere. He has been honored by Moving to End Sexual Assault and at Harvard Law School for this work.
Education
University of Denver School of Law, J.D., 1979; Senior Editor, Denver Law Journal
University of Denver, M.A., 1976
Stanford University, B.A., 1968
Representative Cases and Transactions
Smith v. Hillcrest Glass - auto accident, spine injuries, jury verdict September 2004 of $1.9 million plus interest; settlement of $2.1 million.
Grundstrom v. Leibovitz and Jensen - breast cancer, medical negligence, jury verdict August 2003 of $2.1 million plus interest.
Prescott v. Burlington Northern - (as junior member of four lawyer, two firm litigation team) railroad grade crossing accident, 1986, $23.5 million jury verdict ($18 million punitive damages).
Ducharmes v. Star Expansion - wrongful death from nail gun, product liability, jury verdict, 1989, of $540,000 plus interest.
McClure v. Hostetter - soft tissue injuries to bicyclist, jury verdict, 1985, of $800,000 including interest.
Simpson v. CU - $2.5 million settlement in Title IX football sexual assault case.
Bar Admissions / Clerkships
Colorado, 1979
U.S. District Court, District of Colorado, 1979
U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit, 1979
Publications and Presentations
Baine Kerr, All Roads Lead to Denver: Centura Health Venue Breakthrough, Trial Talk, June/July 2010
Baine Kerr, The World Belongs to the Living, The Docket, January 1999.
Baine Kerr, Legal Claims for Late Diagnosis of Breast Cancer, American Cancer Society Newsletter, Winter 1998.
Baine Kerr, Cell Proliferation: A New Key to the Cancer Causation Puzzle, Professional Negligence Law Reporter, March 1998.
Presenter, North American Society for the Sociology of Sport, 2008
Lecturer, Title IX law, Harvard Law School, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013
Memberships / Awards
Outside his practice, Baine's principal interest is fiction writing. He has published a book of short stories, Jumping-Off Place, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, the University Press of Colorado, and elsewhere. He was one of 100 authors selected nationwide by the National Endowment for the Arts for a 1983 fellowship in fiction, and was, with Lewis Thomas, M.D., the co-recipient of the 1992 Editor's Award of The Missouri Review. His best-selling novels, which have been published by Scribner/Simon and Schuster, and, in paperback, by Berkeley/Jove, are Harmful Intent, 1999 and 2000, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award, and Wrongful Death, 2002 and 2003, which drew on his sabbatical-year experiences as an elections supervisor in Bosnia and a war crimes journalist in The Hague.
Baine has lectured on legal and literary topics at the Rocky Mountain Survivors' Center, the Texas Book Festival, the Colorado Book Festival, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Literacy, Industrial Light and Magic in San Rafael, California, the Colorado Lawyers' Committee, the North American Society for Sociology of Sport, Moving to End Sexual Assault, the American College of Radiology, and the DU, CU and Harvard law schools. Baine has made numerous appearances on public radio in Denver, Boulder, and Houston; on commercial television in Houston and Colorado Springs; on public television in Denver and Houston; and on commercial radio in Denver, Colorado Springs, Houston, Tucson, and San Francisco. His novels have received over 100 favorable book reviews.