 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Hey, we're back. We're live at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. We're happy doing life in the law today. We're going to examine the practice life, professional life of Dick Sutton, who is with Sakai Iwanaga Sutton Law Group right here at BlockAway. Welcome to the show, Dick. Well, I'm glad to be here this morning. We met, we know each other for years and years. In fact, I remember attending your house up in Uwano. Your dad was the president of the Federal Bar Association. Then he invited all the federal, I was a federal lawyer at the time. He invited a fellow named Maro, who was the Coast Guard commander of the district. And I don't know why, but I always remember that meeting in your house. Well, that's where I grew up, up in Uwano. That's right. Yeah. But somewhere along the line in Uwano, you decided that you wanted to go to Stanford. And ultimately, I'm sorry, Princeton, then Stanford, okay? Princeton is not easy. It's a special experience. Some say it's a lifelong fundraising experience. How did you decide to do that and how did you do that? Well, I mean, it was kind of a decision that got done in high school, of course. My father had been both a Stanford undergrad and Stanford lawyer. And so I was sort of headed in that direction to begin with. But then we, at Punahou, there were a number of recent Princeton grads who taught us courses, and they were trying to attract us to apply to Princeton. And so I said, I'll go ahead and apply. So when I got in, they said, oh, you got to go. And I said, well, you got to talk to my dad. So eventually, I was able to convince them to go there. And I thought it would be a more exciting experience to go all the way to the east coast than to the west coast, which I visited several times. And it would turn out to be a pretty challenging experience. Oh, yeah. It was a great school. It's a world-class school. But you know what? I read recently that Princeton has changed. Princeton is now more open. It's more diverse. Have you seen that? Yes. Well, when I went there, it was still an all-male school. So it didn't turn coed until 1970. I graduated in 67. So coed was a big step to begin with. And then, of course, after that, there has been an extreme effort to have diversity there. And so when we go back there for reunions now, when you see the more recent classes, they look more like high schools in Hawaii than they do in the US. That's great. And they give scholarships to minorities? They give scholarships need-based. Actually, they don't give athletic scholarships, and they don't give merit scholarships. It's all need. And if you have the need, they can pay. And so they don't have loans. They have grants. So essentially, you establish a need, and they'll take care of it. I remember now. I think it was on 60 Minutes. One of those news shows on television where there was an article, a feature story about how the current president of Princeton had really opened the place up. It's been a process over a number of years. And they have been making a special effort. Out here, just one of the results we had. We got our first student in from Farrington that we ever got a couple years ago. We tried to get students in from different islands and all different backgrounds and stuff. It's hard to kind of find those nuggets so they will apply. That's the big part. You're part of the recruiting effort. Yes. You're connected with the school. They don't let you go so easily. Well, we interview every applicant. And so I've been interviewing applicants to Princeton since I got back here in the early 70s. So it's good fun. And they reach out to you for contributions because I know other Princeton graduates and they are regular contributors. Well actually, one of the main features about Princeton in the U.S. News and World Report about giving is the percentage of alumni that give every year. Not the amount, the percentage. And it's 67 percent. And the next highest one is like 40 percent. And so that's – it isn't – yeah, so I mean you make a point of trying to give something every year. I mean what they do is have you contribute to your class based on the numeral of your class. So mine is 67. So they want me to give at least $67. And of course anything else is better. And then of course when you have a big reunion year, which you have every five years, you know they want you to give more. Of course. So you went from there to Stanford. I mean these are both great schools. Stanford is the harbor of the West Coast. Some say it's the harbor, period. It's a very good school. Why that one? Did you enjoy it? Anybody ever enjoys law school? Well I mean the interesting thing was my father went to Stanford Law School following World War II. He was a Navy officer. And so he went back and he went there from 40, 1947 to 50 and I was born in 45. So he started out with two kids and ended up with three. So he bought a little house near Stanford and he kept that place. And so when it was coming time for me to decide on law schools and I knew that there was this place I could stay at in Stanford off campus, you know that was a big draw. That's great. Yeah. So I stayed there for the three years at Law School. Oh that's great. That's an incentive for sure. Yeah. I mean you know living on campus would have been, well it would have been a different experience. So tell us about how you decided and at what point you decided, what reasons you decided you wanted to focus on litigation here in these islands? Well I mean I started out in law school you know not knowing exactly what area I would practice in. Stanford isn't a school that necessarily trains any people for any particular specialty other than the way I look at it is they think once you graduate you're going to then sit on the spring court. That's a nice thought. So there's a quick jump from one school right up to that highest level. But since I had an ROTC obligation following college I knew I was going to go back in the military. Those are the days of the drafts, wasn't it? Well I... And getting home. Yeah. I was able to get commissioned as an officer at Princeton and then they let me go through law school and I practiced for a year. But what I had...was unsure of is whether a law firm would take me back after I went into the service. So I applied to law firms in Honolulu and went to work for my first...after my second year in the summer for a firm called Ben Henshaw Conroy and Hamilton. I remember that for him. I remember you being there. Yeah. So I went there and I thought I was going to become a condominium lawyer because Dwight Rush was the senior condominium lawyer in town or one of them. And I had done a study in law school about the financing of condominiums as I thought well I can fit into this. But then I met up with the litigators in the law firm. And it was Wayne Sakai, Mike McCarthy with the main ones. And they just had a barrel of fun. So it was something that kind of appealed to me. Okay, right. This is going to be a final exam. Litigation can be fun. So you worked your way into that. I mean I became a specialty after a while. Then you developed sub-specialties within litigation. Well I mean one of the things that...well we got really involved in trying cases right away because we didn't have no fault then. So we went to trial over $1,000 dispute on an auto... Defense. Defense. Yeah, I did almost exclusively defense work. And so we went to trial and you got a lot of experience with jury trials by trying those cases. And so then I got more into specializing into malpractice cases. I did aviation litigation defense and I guess commercial litigation. Of all varieties. That's an interesting array of things. So I mean aviation. Take aviation. It's a very exotic field because there aren't that many issues around aviation I guess and you don't have that many crashes for example. And so is it because you decide one morning that you want to read up on aviation litigation law? Or is it because somebody comes in and says, Dick, you know I have a case and I'd like you to steep yourself in aviation law. Well we had I guess Willie Moore in the firm had been doing some aircraft litigation and the big breakthrough for me was when they had the LOHA incident on the plane that was flying from the big island of Maui. Half the plane came off. And the flight attendant was lost. So what happened is the insurance company out of New York contacted our firm and so I was put in contact with that person and so I ended up defending LOHA airlines that not the passengers claims but the dispute that was potential between LOHA airlines and Boeing. Again defense. Yes. I mean all that matter got resolved without ever going to court but it was very interesting. Well that's the best thing certainly for the airline. Because a jury might not be sympathetic. Well there was a big effort by the bar to try to prevent any of the plaintiffs lawyers from trying to not look towards resolving the cases. Somebody that the chief justice even got involved and got all the lawyers to get together and so we got it resolved. That's great. Well it's sort of a civility thing or let's make peace. Maybe it's a Hawaii culture point. A lot of this is driven by Hawaii culture isn't it. Yes I mean there's a big difference between the cordiality of Hawaii lawyers both plaintiff in defense than there is in the big cities on the mainland. The big cities on the mainland they figure they will never come across the lawyer who's opposite them again so they will try everything they can to offend destroy and you know scorched earth scorched earth and but the lawyers in Hawaii still have a cordiality. So it's still fun. I'm not doing it as much now because I'm sort of easing out of practice. But it was fun because it was sort of like an athletic event. Well you know speaking of athletic events we're going to take a moment for a break and we're going to come back and we're going to talk about athletic events and how that all relates to your professional career. Good. That's Dick Sutton we'll be right back. Okay. This is Think Tech Hawaii raising public awareness. 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Okay we're back with Dick Sutton he's I guess he's a litigation lawyer but he's got another side to his life and this all this all kind of emerged out of the stress of litigation maybe because somewhere along the line you got into athletic activity running specifically and I remember years and years I used to see you run even in the days when I ran a long time ago so talk about it. Well when I when I came back from law school the running boom was just starting this was in the early 70s and I went down and watched my first Honolulu marathon back at about 74 so this 12 year old kid do a two hours and 54 minute marathon thinking wow that's that must be really easy if a kid can run a marathon like that so I joined up the Honolulu marathon clinic and I ran and went through all the pains you go through in adjusting your body to running and so I ran my first marathon in 75 and I think it did about a three and a half hour one and then I found out that running was really good when you're practicing law because you could run in the morning in the evening you didn't have to go schedule tennis court or golf course or anything like that you could go run so I started running more and I got better and better at it so eventually I got down to two hours and 46 minute marathon in about 1980 and then I got off world class actually well I would have finished 20th in this year's marathon wow so it was you know it was good yeah I was sort of thinking like maybe I could stop practicing law and just run all the time but that's real thought but there were too many other people out of money no no there are a lot of other people ahead of me so I got involved through the Honolulu marathon because I was running it with the people who were involved with it actually our law firm at the time had been involved they were the ones who did the documents for the original marathon and some of them I guess guy named Bill Strickland and Sue Strickland who were involved and then I became the lawyer for the marathon back in the early 80s and still fill that role and so I deal with everything from insurance or matters where people get injured or dealings with sponsors or other kinds of matters like that. Can you talk for a minute about the evolution of the Honolulu marathon? Yes I mean the Honolulu marathon was something that Frank Fosse actually was spearheaded he saw that there were marathons developing elsewhere and they wanted Honolulu to be at the forefront so he did all the permitting assisted with the permitting and I think initially he had the police officers work for the marathon without getting compensated by the marathon it would be by the city and so the first marathon got put on I think it was about 1973 and so we just had our 46 Honolulu marathon and so it was the kind of thing that kind of became popular among the local runners to begin with and of course the big jump was when Dr. Jim Barrahall got involved and through his ingenuity got the support of Japan Airlines and other people in Japan who then developed a lot of interest in coming to Hawaii to run the marathon. There was another doctor too. Dr. Skafe. Dr. Skafe. He sat in that seat a year or two ago about his experience his health is not that good. No well he was he was involved for a while and then there was a break and I was I wasn't involved when Dr. Skafe was involved I got involved after that so there was a sort of a break off but he certainly was quite instrumental in I guess the the main thing as I remember going to the clinics that he would have a lot of his patients who were cardiac patients involved and so the idea was that running was good for you although when I'm talking to my running friends now I mean they break down just like anybody else so it doesn't necessarily cure everything. No well it helps you it helps you in stress it gives you endorphins or something it makes your life a little better just psychologically no. Yeah I mean it it really does relax you better than going out and having a drink or certainly or some other sources. I guess the thing I found most interesting in addition to building up the ability to you know endure all the stress of trial work was a lot of my running friends were non-lawyers and so you had an opportunity to try your theories out with these other guys before you did it in front of a jury. It's really helpful isn't it? Yeah because essentially if you talk to other lawyers about your theories they'll have their theories but I sort of figured out lawyers had all the common sense trained out of them. You want to talk to John Q every man again and get his feedback on it. Yeah so it's very helpful with my the guys I'd be running with and sort of explain the case to them and explain my point of view and and sort of ask them what they thought of it. So it gives you a good feedback without having to have a mock jury. Yeah that's great. So you've been running all these years. Well I ran pretty much regularly until about 19 or until about 2007 about 10 years ago when I was out jogging one Sunday I fell and put my arms out and braced myself with my right knee hip and cracked my right knee cap so I had to have that wired up and that sort of you know kept me from running for quite a while and so when I started again I didn't have quite the same determination. Yeah pain. Not the pain so much it's just that it's really hard to get back into good competitive running shape just if you take time off. Yeah and you don't want to hurt yourself again. No but one other part I got involved with running is with track and field. I wasn't ever a runner in high school or college but my kids got involved and I got involved in administering and coaching their club and then I got involved with USA Track and Field which is the governing body for Track and Field and so I was president of the organization for about 20 years. On the mainland. Over here I was president of the local association and then I got into officiating and so now I'm the head official or chief official for the state of Hawaii and it's sort of like being a judge you know but so you have rules and you have to figure out what the how to apply the rules and what is the result and so that's kind of fun too. Yeah it's a whole it's a continuum you run yourself you get committed to that you know you help your own life that way and then you help other people and become officials and official in these organizations and then you're helping a lot of people and and you're actually bringing the community together around these activities. This is a great contribution you've made and you're still making. Yeah it's and it's it works both ways I mean it does and because I have to work with officials on all the islands you know you get to meet all these nice people on the other islands and we get to go to those islands for for meets and you know get work with them so yeah I mean it's a very rewarding thing. The hard part is though is to get more people who are interested in in becoming officials so if anybody out there is interested in becoming official you can contact me. Yeah well that's great what a great way to spend time what a great way to help kids actually but what about running in general you know there are activities that you and I used to see like for example music and orchestras and all that the arts that are not as popular because other things like take our time and they take the time of the kids and regular people and so I'm wondering is running as popular as it was in the 70s when the marathon was sort of gaining gaining speed gaining force gaining you know being a magnet for everybody in all places in the world or is it on the decline. Well I think you know the amount of people coming into marathoning is going down I mean we really have seen a lot less competitiveness at the top levels among non-elite athletes. There's a lot of competitiveness among elite but what we've done with the marathon was we have two other events now that are shorter one is a 10k which is of course 10 kilometers 6.2 miles and the other is a half marathon which is 13.1 miles and so we have tried to reach out for people who may not want to do the marathon or do you know another event so that's become more popular. So you're still running I mean I know not competitively but yeah I go out and run or jog with my friends a couple times a week and try to keep myself moving that's the main thing. Well that sounds central to your you know your life actually I mean the thing about it what I get here is that it started you were lucky to connect up to it and find solace and nourishment in it you know and and it has more and more defined your life and it had taken you know more of your effort more of your dedication all the time and now you're you know approaching retirement I guess maybe that's on a slow bell but you're approaching retirement and this fits neatly in your life. Yes there's no limit on the age that you can officiate there's no limit on the age that you can still run. I mean this past marathon is past Sunday and an 88 year old from Japan finished in 17 hours. So that's real determination and it really sets a goal for saying you know you shouldn't sort of just stop because you're aging. Are you traveling around running I need to go to other math rounds elsewhere do you officiate elsewhere. I do mostly officiating I just got back from the USA track track and field annual meeting in Columbus Ohio and then I'm lining up a couple of meets on the mainland to go officiate this summer. I've officiated at I guess junior Olympic national championships world masters championships and some other open competition on the mainland. And how did the marathon go just last Sunday. It went very well I mean we had first we had sort of a combination of three events on Saturday we had a mile race in Waikiki which had about 2000 competitors warm up kind of race well I mean those milers are really specialized they don't they run a mile fast they don't want to go out and do a full marathon and then Sunday in come in concert with a hello marathon we also had what we call start to park which is a 10k this goes from the start of the marathon to copy on the park so some people don't want to full run the full marathon they can do that so we had about I guess maybe over 30,000 total registrants well that's huge yeah that's is that that's top I mean yeah I think we're the fourth largest marathon in the U.S. I mean we've had more people run or register in the past but we're quite pleased that we're still having big numbers come out here I think it's an important part of Hawaii's image you know that we so many people come that we do it so well we organize it so well everybody has a good experience this is this is the kind of image we want to put out well definitely and I guess the the interesting thing is that this has been done by the sort of same group of of people for a long time and it doesn't we don't have government involvement or assistance and so you know we've been able to work well with a very streamlined group what are your challenges in putting it together our weather is including temperature I mean it's we had one year was really hot we had rain at times those are some of the big challenges another big challenge we face is that since we have to since we have wheelchairs in the race along with runners we have to accommodate it to make sure the wheelchairs and runners don't run into each other and over Diamondhead which I had been handling we have to separate the two lanes of road with like 200 people standing in the middle of the road holding a caution tape so the runners stay on one side and the wheelchairs and the elite runners and their vehicles come back on the other but that's a challenge complex and I guess once in a while you have injuries you have accidents once in a while you have serious yes I mean it's just like any other small city you know 30,000 people except there these people are moving around we have a lot of medical support we have become more advanced in in the medical care of the people who are injured right away and so I mean this past weekend was nice because the temperature wasn't so high as to give people a lot of heat exhaustion and it didn't rain no it didn't rain it rained a lot on Saturday but it's got clear for Sunday so we really inspired so as general council I'm really curious you know because general council has to field a lot of balls how what kind of experience is it to be general council what kind of matters come up that you have to handle well one of the first ones that came up that resulted in this accommodation of wheelchairs was the same day of the race was way back I guess in the in the mid 80s when we used to have a wheelchair and any wheeled vehicle on Saturday so they had their whole course themselves and separate so the the wheelchair people though went to the Department of Justice and said ah Americans with disability oh no I said this is a place of a public accommodation that's a challenge and so the city came to us and said you know we're going to we're going to lose federal funding unless you let the wheelchairs in so we had to deal with uh then the corporation council and we worked out something that became out the way you know the way it is now including the separate lanes separate lanes and uh so that was one of the biggest deals I mean there's there's um things um that involve you know when somebody gets injured of one year we had it and another thing I was thinking about that we had we used to have a pasta feeding party a carboloading party I remember that I'm a Saturday night before the marathon yeah well one time the the salad got contaminated with salmonella no so the next day we had a lot of people who came weren't feeling so good they couldn't do a good race no and so there were a number of claims that came from that and so we had to deal with that and that that sort of was helpful that I was already a defense attorney so I knew I didn't handle the defense I always turned it over to the insurance company who had somebody else handle it yeah but we were able to kind of keep that moving along yeah yeah well I mean there was a synergy here I mean to be a lawyer a defense lawyer especially and to be involved in the marathon that really helps you to you know aside from the legal issues per se it's just that the kind of level of understanding about how this kind of thing works illegally will help a lot yeah I mean a marathon is a business it also has you know certain well it's governed by the USA track and field long distance running rules which I'm also familiar with so you know it it isn't like it just makes up its own rules there's rules that apply to marathons so we're almost out of time I want to ask you to try to have some influence on those kids out there who might want to go to law school or not and also those kids is sort of a combined question if you don't mind also those kids who who might want to run I mean who aren't in it now or who do run and want to go further and become an official who knows what you know in organizing running events well um actually running in high school including I guess intermediate school in Hawaii is that has the most number of participants of any sport I mean when we run cross-country meets in the fall we may have in each of six events we may have 200 kids running in each of the six events so we get a lot of kids running and that's a good way to get started because running really is is a sort of a non-cut sport not until you get right up to the championships you know do they start to cut the people so you can get involved that way anticipate a long time and once you get started in high school and do it then you can do it in college you can do it beyond that there's programs for masters a competition and then these long road race road racing things anybody can go participate in those so the idea is to get started that way the other thing I sort of find from my position uh as a running in running and officiating is a lot of smart kids run very you know the ones who aren't very athletic but they're smart because running is is something that they can do so that's a recruiting ground for me for looking for kids who might apply to the schools I look at mostly you compete against yourself it's your own experience right and so mostly it's not winning or losing it's just finishing and yeah I'm just getting the satisfaction of having done something and participating in something being an athlete yeah it's wonderful to be an athlete and yeah and it's something that's really now schools have really looked at as being part of education is athletic education through athletics is one of the models they have so it's running in in the schools here in white is running part of PE or is it sort of extracurricular the competition is extracurricular when you when you join a cross-country team or become part of a track team and specialize in event that's that's uh competitive PE has different types of activities that involve running but it isn't just track related so how do you see yourself uh I do want to come back to the advice to kids about going to law school and all that but how do you see yourself evolving in this are you gonna spend more time in the organizational sense um how do you see your years to come well um yeah I mean I see that I could will continue to work with officials and try to keep it organized I guess the important thing I'm always looking out for is a successor because the guy I took over with from that was what he always told me train your successor you know find somebody willing to advise kind of take over don't don't try to oppose him you know if you find one of those guys encourage them yeah enable them find one yet no I not somebody who's you know maybe somebody to take over some of the specific disciplines but you know the whole big picture is kind of tough yeah but um so if you think you could qualify to be Dick Sutton's successor contact it yeah it's easy to find he's in the book and uh yeah I mean it's uh and it's actually um something you can continue to do you know until you get your health problems get in the way that's true I know a lawyer out of Gibson Dunn an old buddy of mine for ever and when he stopped practicing he he was he went into soccer and he's an official now and you know the AYSO and he's been you know active in the national soccer organizations for years that's how he's dedicated his time well in addition to going to the mainland or other places to officiate I go see these big international meets I've been to about the last five world championships I went to the Olympics in Beijing and I've signed up to go to the one in Tokyo all a spectator no I don't get to officiate and I don't get to participate but because of your I mean you know act your your participation in other ways when you go to a running event it must be really a great experience oh yeah I mean it's it's like you try to you know most of the people who are going to be competing in it you know their backgrounds you get all the information on it and uh and then I bring my stopwatches all my oh my rules all my books who is that guy with the stopwatch my camera and uh and so it's uh yeah so it's a real involved kind of an event when you attend one of those yeah that's great so back to my earlier question that is what's your advice to kids who might be considering law school you know certainly it's changed since you graduated Stanford certainly and practiced here that was the early 70s lord knows the practice of law has changed dramatically in these years what's your advice to the aspiring lawyer uh and well I guess um the I guess one of the things is to try to get some understanding of what it's about before you get into it uh which is kind of tough but perhaps you can go uh either in some way uh call up a lawyer I mean you can call me up and I'll talk to you about it um the the other because it's a huge commitment of time and expense uh to find out that there wasn't something you really wanted to do and uh I mean I I was sort of interesting I I came my father was a lawyer my grandfather was a lawyer his father was a lawyer but my father told me don't become a lawyer so I became a lawyer so um but but uh I think uh the idea is to sort of figure out is what are the various uh disciplines or specialties you can practice in so that what might interest you uh not every lawyer goes to court in fact most don't in fact most don't like to go to trials in in the courtroom and it takes a a lot of kind of um uh I guess practice to be able to get good at it um but there's always a need for good lawyers so the idea is if if you think you're uh you know really interested in it and you're doing really well in school you know that's the time when you should look at law school yeah to add a point lawyers uh facilitate our society they have a duty to our democracy um and they are very important and these days you see that more and more well one of the things that they sort of mentioned in law school I'm not sure they use the term quite that way but sort of social engineers in other words we clean up the messes a lot of messes that are made by other people lawyers help clean it up they help prevent it by um doing contracts and ordering private ordering the things uh they also advance for people who are otherwise not able to kind of have their say in in the process access access yes thank you dick dick Sutton lawyer runner all around good citizen thank you so much thank you dick may good just be here