U.S. Attorney and Second Circuit Judge from Rutland area remembered

Friends and family have remembered Peter Hall, a former U.S. Attorney for Vermont and judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as well as the founder of the Rutland law firm that started as Reiber, Kenlan, Schwiebert, Hall and Facey P.C., 35 years ago.

Hall was 72 when he died of cancer in March. Last month, a memorial service took place at the Paramount Theatre.

Justice Paul Reiber, chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, called Hall at the memorial, a “good friend of so many years.

“A profoundly decent person steeped with respect for human nature. He’s someone who achieved tremendous success yet remained humble and modest, who never took himself too seriously. A committed public servant focused on community and doing the right thing who showed toughness and strength of character right to the end,” Reiber said.

Anna Dunton-Gallagher, Hall’s stepdaughter, remembered Hall as someone who was her “go-to jack-of-all-trades.”

“If my car broke down, I called him. If I needed help building a fence, I called him. If I needed to figure out how to cook a turkey, I called him. He just had this vast expanse of knowledge on everything and was always very happy to drop what he was doing to help me, whether (it was because) he was obligated because I was his stepdaughter, probably a little, but that’s also just who he was,” she said.

According to his obituary, Hall was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but spent much of his early life on the family farm in Shaftsbury.

“He prided himself on being a Vermonter, having deep-rooted ancestral ties to the state; his great-great grandfather, Peter Washburn, served as governor of Vermont in the 1850s,” his obituary reads.

After graduating cum laude from Cornell Law School in 1977, Hall served as law clerk to Judge Albert Coffrin of the U.S. Court for Vermont before becoming First Assistant U.S. Attorney for Vermont.

He went into private practice to form Reiber, Kenlan, Schwiebert, Hall and Facey P.C. in Rutland.

Attorney Rodney McPhee, a member of the same law firm which is now known as Facey, Goss & McPhee, P.C., said Hall and Reiber raised pigs together. He said there was an ongoing joke that the reason Hall brought him in as an associate was that McPhee, who was raised on a farm in Chittenden, was “one of the people who could catch his pigs for him.”

McPhee, who is currently the managing partner at the firm, which still has an office in Rutland, said Hall worked well with everyone even though the role of an attorney can lead to a lot of conflict.

“He represented his clients extremely zealously, but he got along with the attorneys. He was always respectful to everyone. Sometimes that is missed in the practice of law but Peter taught me that you could represent clients without having conflict with the other side,” he said.

McPhee also noted that “everything you read about him is absolutely true.”

“He was one of the kindest people you would ever meet. What I loved about him, he did not try to put on airs. Every other morning, you would see him in (Seward Family Restaurant) at the counter with the regular folks. He would be in his blue jeans, driving his old pick-up truck. I don’t think anyone knew that he was a Second Circuit judge by any means,” he said.

In 2001, Hall became the U.S. Attorney for Vermont.

President George W. Bush appointed him to the Second Circuit in 2004, where he was Vermont’s only federal appellate judge.

More locally, Hall was chairman of the board for Rutland Regional Medical Center, a member of the select board for the town of Chittenden and president of the Vermont Bar Association.

Judge Geoffrey Crawford, who sits on the federal trial court in Rutland, called Hall “so steady, so helpful to so many of us and always so available.”’’

“It made him a wonderful colleague,” he said.

Crawford said their roles as judges were different so they didn’t discuss cases but he said when he had concerns about general matters that he shared with Hall, he “always got wise counsel.”

“Mostly, what I think we all appreciated was the warmth and common sense that was such a feature of Peter Hall,” he said.

Retired attorney Norman Cohen said he had known Hall for almost 50 years. Cohen said he believed he was working himself in the U.S. Attorney’s office when Hall was a clerk for Coffrin.

“Through the years, I’ve tried cases against him and with him. There was no difference. He was a consummate professional. A consummate gentleman. He might tease me if he won or I might tease him but it was never anything but good-natured,” he said.

Cohen said when he attended Hall’s memorial service, he noticed “there wasn’t a word there said in that hour and a half that I disagreed with.”

“Everybody just loved him and respected him and I never heard anybody say a word to the contrary,” he said.

patrick.mcardle

@rutlandherald.com