[justice and judge davies]
after retirement, was a personal injury action against a large drug manufacturer for an unsafe vaccine which left a five-month-old child with irreparable brain damage. The case was tried in Grand Forks, at the federal courthouse which now bears Judge Davies’s name, and resulted in a judgment of $599,033, a record at the time. In another case, Judge Davies awarded $200,000 in damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act, based on a veteran hospital’s negligent release of a mental patient who went on to kill his wife. Not unlike his time before Little Rock, Judge Davies maintained an intense work schedule, often holding court sessions at night, on legal holidays, and occasionally even on Saturdays. His philosophy was judges should earn their salaries by trying more cases—as many as Congress will allow them—and working longer hours. “I have never known a federal judge to expire from overwork,” quipped the quickwitted judge. In a telling portrayal of his devotion to work on behalf of regular people, Judge Davies once drove two hours to a small town to perform a naturalization ceremony at the home of an eightyone-year-old woman who could not make it to the courthouse on her own. In doing so, Judge Davies did not forget about the details. Having administered the oath, he shook the new citizen’s hand and ceremoniously announced, turning to the bailiff, “This session of United States district court is adjourned.” In the decades following his time in Little Rock, Judge Davies never lost the strict, just demeanor for which he was revered. As a no-nonsense judge who could cut incisively through legal complexities, a friend explained, “There’s no one I’d rather have with me on a camping trip, but I’d take any other judge in the state if I were in court and guilty.” Judge Davies was notably fair and objective, not allowing lawyers to take over his courtroom. Despite his expectation of model of decorum in his courtroom, Judge Davies’s wit shined through. As one of his sons recalled, “If things were too tense, he’d crack a joke in court to lighten up the atmosphere…. He was serious in court but had a real good sense of humor.” Judge Davies himself explained he found a bit of humor in the courtroom helped “[t]o take the tension away, just a little bit.” For example, in appointing a lawyer for a woman found to be indigent despite her husband having some available funds, Judge Davies quipped, “When you got married, your husband just promised to love, honor, and obey. He didn’t promise to defend you in court.” Besides continuing with his professional and civic engagements, Judge Davies spent his post–Little Rock days enjoying time with family and
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friends. A Milwaukee Braves fan, he was fond of attending their ball games. In the summer, he went to the Minnesota lakes to do some fishing and, as a contemporary recalls, drink a little bourbon. Toward his twilight days, Judge Davies missed the richness of his earlier days, lamenting to a reporter once, “there was one time I knew every lawyer in the state by name.” He assumed senior status in 1971, while continuing to serve on the bench actively. He retired permanently in 1984. He died in 1996 at the age of 91, having received countless awards and distinctions. Among them were the Sioux Award by the UND Alumni Association, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday Award from the North Dakota Peace Coalition, and the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, the state of North Dakota’s highest honor. Judge Davies made national history in his one month in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the more than a thousand other months since Little Rock, he established a legacy in North Dakota and elsewhere for his commitment to upholding the rule of the law for our citizens, the legal community, and his unyielding determination to fairly and objectively determine each case he was called upon to decide. U.S. Circuit Judge Kermit Edward Bye has compiled this collective on the life and times of U.S. District Judge Ronald N. Davies based upon what has been previously written and his own experiences in appearing before Judge Davies in court on numerous occasions going back to the mid-1960’s as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of North Dakota, as well as a private practicing lawyer thereafter until Judge Davies retired in 1984.