Remembering Justice
Herbert Meschke
By Don Negaard
Justice Herbert “Herb” Meschke was born in
1928 and raised in the hardscrabble badlands
of western North Dakota during the worst
drought and depression in the history of
the state. He was one of my mentors at the
firm and was later a partner of mine. Justice
Meschke always asked me to call him Herb,
so I will honor his wishes and his humility
by calling him Herb. I am deeply honored to
be asked to write this memoir.
Herb began his education in a one-room
school house and went on to attend and
graduate from the top-ranked University of
Michigan Law School. He passed away on
May 19 in Minot. Herb’s life spanned a good
share of North Dakota statehood, and his
contributions to the law and the public good
will last long after his lifetime.
Herb began his legal career clerking for
Federal District Judge Charles Vogel in
Fargo. He found a group of lawyers he
wished to practice with in Minot and began
his private practice in the 1950s at what
would become Pringle & Herigstad, P.C.
Herb wore three different hats as a
lawyer; he was a private practitioner,
he was a legislator, and he was
a Justice on the North Dakota
Supreme Court. Unquestionably,
Herb excelled both as a framer
of the law and as a practitioner.
of his spare time studying the law. When
your research was exhausted, Herb could tell
you about a legal principle that might help
and he could tell you where you could find a
case that explained the principle.
What most impressed me about Herb and
the other partners at Pringle & Herigstad
was their ability to practice together even
if they met and disagreed about decisions
related to the practice. They maintained a
healthy professional respect for the skills
their partners possessed and their opinions.
I never did see Herb gloat over a victory
in court. He was more apt to discuss the
positive aspects of the opposing attorney’s
body of work.
Herb was well respected throughout the state
of North Dakota. He had clients from all
over the region who contacted him because
of his well-earned reputation and because
of the body of work and accomplishments
he attained for other clients. He was, in my
opinion, the best cooperative lawyer in North
Dakota. He was well known and respected at
the national level relating to rural
electric and telephone utilities.
This type of law is not
taught in school, but Herb
was a master at it.
With this backdrop, in 1985, Herb was
appointed by Governor Sinner to serve on
the North Dakota Supreme Court. He was
elected to a new term for 10 years in 1990 and
retired in 1994. After retirement, Herb served
in an advisory capacity at his former law
firm and spent many hours writing a history
of the North Dakota Supreme Court. Herb
really loved the law and the reconciliation of
disputes through the legal process.
With that being said, the thing about
Herb that impressed me the most was
his compassion for other people. In the
1960s, Herb and the parents of some
developmentally disabled persons founded a
nonprofit corporation to provide opportunities
for those unable to provide opportunities
for themselves. The reward they received for
sitting on that board of directors was to be
asked to lend money to help the company
meet its payroll. This was years before a
Federal Judge, in a case filed in 1980, ruled
the state of North Dakota was not providing
enough education and opportunity for
disabled persons. Today, the same nonprofit,
through the work of Herb and many others,
is one of the largest private employers in the
Minot area. That legacy, and countless others
to which Herb has contributed, will live on
long past Herb’s death.
Herb served in both the North
Dakota House and Senate in
the 1960s and helped enact laws
that are still widely used today. An
example is the Territorial Integrity
Act, which is still used by our Public
Service Commission and our Courts to
resolve territorial disputes between rural
electric cooperatives and investor owned
electric utilities in North Dakota.
As a legal practitioner, Herb was
instrumental in persuading the North
Dakota Supreme Court on an issue that any
lawyer practicing today takes to be a given;
some forms of governmental tort immunity
in North Dakota were abolished as a result
of the decision in Kitto v. Minot Park
District, 224 NW 2d 795 (N.D. 1974).
Herb was a “lawyer’s lawyer.” He spent much
Pictured L to R: Supreme Court Justices Herbert Meschke, William A. Neumann, Gerald W.
VandeWalle, Dale Sandstrom, and Beryl Levine. Pictured above: Justice Meschke and his wife,
Shirley.
SUMMER 2017
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