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Lawyer, ex-lawmaker Quiat had 'very Marshall' way

Mary Voelz Chandler, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 30, 2006 at midnight

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It's very Marshall.

If June Bourrillion said it once, talking about the man she had worked for and then worked with, she said it half a dozen times. Any anecdote about Marshall Quiat - attorney, former judge, former legislator, winner of the Purple Heart, ski nut and avid ham-radio activist - more likely than not would end with "It was very Marshall."

That's because Mr. Quiat, who died Oct. 15 in his Denver home at age 84, had a way of doing what he wanted if he thought it was the right thing to do. That played out throughout his life in the way he chose clients and rendered decisions. And it played out as his life came to an end: After being in Rose Medical Center for two weeks with pneumonia, he asked that he be allowed to go home.

Then there was the incident when he was in the Statehouse, from 1949 through 1951.

"He said that two Republicans stole the only copy of a bill and locked it in the lieutenant governor's office," said Bourrillion, who went to work for Mr. Quiat 13 years ago part time, then earned her law degree at the University of Denver in 2002 and became half of Quiat & Bourrillion.

"He crawled out on a ledge to see if he could get in the window and get the bill."

And did he? "I think they slammed the window on him," she said.

"It's very Marshall."

Mr. Quiat, who was born in Denver on March 10, 1922, to state senator Ira Quiat and the former Esther Greenblatt, was bitten by both the legal bug and the political bug at an early age.

After he served in the Army field artillery from 1941 to 1946, in the Mediterranean and European theaters, he returned to Colorado to finish his bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in 1947 and earned his law degree a year later. He served as a judge in the Gilpin County Court from 1956 to 1959, then became a district judge in the first judicial district in Jefferson County from 1959 to 1960. He was in private practice from 1949 until 2005.

"I liken him to an old-fashioned lawyer, a gentlemanly lawyer," Bourrillion said. "He said you didn't need to start out nasty, you can get nasty later. He'd say there has to be a civil way to handle it."

That included his insistence on fairness, said Mr. Quiat's brother.

"He was a strong believer in the principle of how to treat people," said Gerald Quiat.

Over the years, Mr. Quiat was involved in cases that involved many issues: fighting for ham-radio operators' ability to erect transmission towers in their yards (he was long active in the American Radio Relay League); defending a woman who drove through the Eisenhower Tunnel before it was officially open; ruling on whether the Colorado Highway Department could tear down trees in City Park to widen Colorado Boulevard; and representing a woman found guilty of conspiracy to kill her daughter in a strange Arapahoe County case involving a custody dispute.

It was all about the law.

"Nothing set him off more than injustice," said Bob Drake, who clerked for Mr. Quiat after earning his law degree from DU in the 1970s. (Drake later joined with Paul Talmey to form Talmey Drake Research.) "He was like this one-man public defender and legal aid society rolled into one."

No matter the species. In one instance, Drake found himself in "dog court" in Arvada and asked Mr. Quiat, "Is this why I went to law school, to go to dog court?" The response was simple, Drake recalled. "Look, every dog and cat needs good representation."

Both of Mr. Quiat's wives, Ruth Saunders Quiat and Jane Quiat, preceded him in death, as did stepdaughter Susan Marshall. He is survived by his brother, Gerald Quiat, and sister, Carole Q. Leight, of Denver; his son, Matthew Quiat, of Denver; and stepchildren Stephen Lodholm and S. Lorraine McCullough, both of Denver, and Linda Holt, of Hawaii.

A memorial service is set for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Grant-Humphreys Mansion, 770 Pennsylvania St. The family has asked that in lieu of flowers, memorials be made to Colorado Public Radio.

or 303-954-2677.