Vermont Bar Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2 Summer 2015, Vol 41, No. 2 | Page 25

KK: You mentioned earlier about precedent and, within Vermont, I can’t find any workers’ compensation precedents prior to 1977 at the department level. There are the Supreme Court decisions back to the early Twenties, but at the department level the precedents that I am able to put my hands on start about 1977 with this book by Fox Publishing. Then the department started keeping records in binders in 1981 and you became commissioner in 1984. What kind of precedents did you rely upon? JB: The hearing officers would keep binders and they indexed them by subject matter. We had a bit of a digest, a homegrown digest, there. I remember looking up permanent disability. You try an index word to find where this might have been addressed before. Sometimes you would find it and sometimes you would not. KK: And not using a computerized word search. JB: No, we had no computers, of course. As I said, we were still relying on 3x5 cards. I would often go back to the staff that was responsible for reviewing these things and say, “Have you ever seen a case where blah, blah, blah happened?” and every now they would say, “Oh, yes, I remember Louis Lavigne [you know he was a former commissioner] had a case and he went in this direction.” Then we would try to find that case. Or we ask, “Do you know if Burt [Louis’s deputy, like a half generation before me] ever had a case involving X or Y?” And they would say, “I think he did,” and we would try to find it. KK: You would have to pull the file? JB: No, we would try to get an idea. Sometimes these people would remember the names, if not the clamant they’d remember the name of the employer. We’d just try to track it down. It wasn’t always successful. Sometimes you would find it and you would say to yourself, “What? How did they reach this result?” So we would not go in that direction. But, yeah, precedents could be hard, more of an oral tradition. www.vtbar.org KK: So you were commissioner for about a little over a year? JB: I was the deputy for about a year and commissioner for about a year. Interview with Justice Brian Burgess tell me when you are ready and I will guarantee the hearing in sixty days, but if you ask for a continuance you go to the end of the list. Suddenly the requests for hearings dropped. The focus then went to “mediation” as I called it. You have a conference in front of the deputy and sort of lay out the lay of the land and try to formulate a settlement. Then, if it could not be resolved and they did want a hearing, I could guarantee them a hearing in sixty days. The governor liked that the backlog disappeared within six months. I think the practitioners liked it, too. KK: And then you followed Chief Justice Amestoy to the Attorney General’s Office? JB: Yes, he asked me to be his deputy there and I went with him for eight years. KK: What kinds of things did you do at the AG’s office? JB: I did environmental crimes, corruption, white color stuff, plus administration. Bill Griffin was kind of the chief financial/ personnel guy and I would share personnel responsibilities with Bill. Just trying to restructure the office to make it operate the way Amestoy wanted it as opposed to the way it had been in the past. Every attorney general has a different style and different priorities. So, we were getting warrants for midnight dumpers and taking their trucks. These guys from Boston, Brooklyn, and Connecticut. Take their bulldozers and hide them. We had a warrant for it, but that would get their attention. We did the Bennington School scandal case with a bunch of folks down there. Dave Sontag was our criminal chief and we would all take a case. I tried to keep my hands in litigation. I didn’t have very much street crime experience so I stuck to the white collar stuff and frauds, corruption, and then the environmental stuff. KK: Then in 1992 Governor Dean appointed you to the district court. JB: Yes. in Newport, one in St. Johnsbury. I saw more comp cases in the Supreme Court then I did on the trial bench. KK: Was that mostly in northern Vermont or did you travel much for that job? JB: For the most part, I was in the northern tier. I think I was in every court north of Montpelier. So Chittenden, Grand Isle, Newport, St. Johnsbury. I did a term in Essex, Hyde Park, occasionally in Barre. I tried not to sit in my home county. KK: What I found interesting was that Democratic Governor Dean appointed you to the district court, but Governor Douglas, who is a Republican, appointed you to the Supreme Court in 2005. JB: That’s true. KK: So you could avoid friends and neighbors. JB: Friends, neighbors, and their kids. And I always liked going up to Newport. I didn’t mind making those drives. Then when I was chief judge sometimes I would wind up, well even before that, I would go down and cover Bennington and Brattleboro. I don’t think there is a court I have not sat in, but I was mostly in the northern half. KK: When you were sitting as a trial court judge, do you remember doing any workers’ compensation appeals at that