BARRISTER OF THE MONTH: ERIN B. MOORE ESQ

Erin B. Moore Esq.

Green & Green, Lawyers

It is often said that Dayton has a collegial bar and that is certainly true perhaps most vividly among those lawyers who practice in the courtroom. These are lawyers who know each other well. They have faced off often. Their skills and shortcomings have been displayed to captive audiences of judges and juries with a client’s freedom or fortunes, or both, hanging in the balance. Every seasoned trial lawyer knows the thrill of victory and the misery of defeat. In this city, the victors temper their triumphs with the knowledge that their adversaries are worthy and honorable, that defeat could well befall them one day at the hands of the other. The defeated are not disgraced. Their future victories await.

Erin Moore well knows the highs and lows of trial work. She has been doing it for over twenty-five years, the last 23 here in Dayton at Green & Green. She came to the firm a few months before the death of its founder, F. Thomas Green, a lifelong and highly successful insurance defense attorney known for his capacity to invoke rage in the souls of plaintiff’s lawyers who dared to sue one of his clients. When Erin arrived, the firm had already been placed in the capable hands of Green’s son, Thomas M. Green, his father’s equal in skill and diligence, but whose diplomacy with adversaries contrasted patently with the elder Green’s penchant for sarcasm.

Born in Bloomfield, Indiana, Erin knew at a young age that the law would be her calling. Perry Mason was her first hero in the legal profession, the lawyer who never lost a case, whose clients were always falsely accused of murder, and who always established his client’s innocence by exposing the real murderer. Black and white television reruns were not her only source of fictional legal enjoyment. As a youngster, she was an avid reader of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Agatha Christie novels.

Erin played softball and was a cheerleader in high school. A photo of her in her cheering uniform is still displayed prominently in the Bloomfield High School gym. After graduating in the top ten of her high school class in the spring of 1986, she entered Indiana University that fall. Her success as a student continued at IU where she was Phi Beta Kappa majoring in English and criminal justice. After graduating early in December, 1989, Erin worked as a legal assistant at a Bloomington law firm until the next fall when she entered the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. In law school, Erin was a moot court competitor and an inductee of Phi Delta Phi, the honorary legal fraternity. Among her classmates was Mark Godsey, the director of the Ohio Innocence Project, who famously freed Ohio inmate Ricky Jackson after serving forty years of a life sentence for an East Cleveland murder he did not commit. For at least a portion of that prison term, Mr. Jackson was on death row.

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BARRISTER OF THE MONTH: Erin B. Moore Esq. continued from page 6

Erin’s first job as a lawyer was with Ritter, Robinson, McCready & James, a Toledo-based insurance defense firm that was populated with, and fancied, OSU law grads. At Ritter, Robinson, Erin devoted her time and energies primarily to the representation of insureds and political subdivisions. That associated lasted until the fall of 1997, when Erin left Toledo to join Green & Green.

Erin’s relocation to Dayton coincided with her marriage to husband, Daniel, whom she met at a friend’s gathering in Bloomfield. More than a hamlet of 2,400 Hoosiers, Bloomfield is where the Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division is located. Strange as it may seem that the United States Navy would establish an outpost in southern Indiana, Daniel nevertheless had civilian employment there as a senior scientist. After a short stint at the Newark Air Force Base in Heath, Ohio, Daniel took a position at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base whereupon the newlyweds settled in Dayton.

At Green & Green, Erin has continued her insurance defense and political subdivision work, but has expanded into other areas such as construction litigation, insurance coverage disputes and insurance bad faith defense. She even takes the occasional plaintiff’s personal injury case. In addition to her work at Green & Green, Erin is the Chairperson of the Sugarcreek Township Board of Zoning Appeals. She handles employment cases pro bono for the Dayton Volunteer Lawyers Project and she is a member of both the Lawyers Club of Dayton and the Carl D. Kessler Inn of Court. Recently, Erin was added to the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court’s list of approved mediators. She has also taught trial practice and alternative dispute resolution as an adjunct professor at the University of Dayton School of Law. In her spare time, she keeps honeybees in hives at her home in Xenia. She and Daniel also enjoy traveling to among other destinations America’s national parks.

Over her career, Erin’s victories have been numerous and her losses few. Two victories stand out in her memory, one in Toledo and the other in Dayton. In the Toledo case, a mortgage company’s alleged errors and omissions were at issue. During final argument, Erin suggested that the jury return a verdict of $5,000 for the plaintiff. Thinking it too generous given Erin’s able defense, the jury found for the defendant and awarded no damages. The Dayton case involved a juvenile who fell after being chased by a dog. After demonstrating that the kid’s injuries were so minor as to be indiscernible, the jury rendered a defense verdict in the time it took for Erin to leave the courtroom after adjournment and purchase a beverage from the soda machine in the courthouse basement.

Like the younger Green, one would strain to observe Erin noticeably perturbed. She is courteous to her adversaries and respectful of them. She represents her clients zealously, but without bravado. She fits in perfectly as a member of Dayton’s trial bar and typifies its reputation as being among the most collegial. She is a credit to the Dayton Bar Association and worthy of our recognition of her as Barrister of the Month.

By Thomas J. Intili Esq. DBA Editorial Board Intili Group, a Legal Professional Association tom@igattorneys.com | 937.226-1770

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