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Friday, November 07, 2008
Ind. Courts - Paul Buchanan Jr. dies at 90 [Updated]
Ted Evanoff's story today in the Indianapolis Star begins:
Paul Buchanan Jr., a legal force in Indianapolis for decades as a judge and lawyer, died Thursday at age 90.[Updated 11/12/08] Here is the obituary.Bruce Buchanan, his son, said the lawyer passed away after a bout of ill health related to colon cancer.
Born in 1918 into the family that runs the Flanner & Buchanan funeral home business to this day, Paul Buchanan went into law. He was instrumental in the 1955 founding of what today is Bose McKinney & Evans. It now ranks among the five largest law firms based in the city.
"His career and his pride was made as a lawyer and a judge," said Bruce Buchanan, noting that his father prized an engraving of President Abraham Lincoln as a symbol of integrity.
Paul Buchanan was known in legal circles for the clarity and logical organization of his writing and the reflections he made on the law in columns written over 25 years for Res Gestae, an Indiana Bar Association publication.
He was elected a judge in 1971. On the bench, Buchanan railed against graft in the courts, although perhaps his most famous case involved Ryan White, then a 14-year-old Kokomo resident stricken with AIDS. Serving on the Indiana Court of Appeals, Buchanan in 1986 tossed out a case filed by several Kokomo parents attempting to keep the boy out of public school.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 7, 2008 07:54 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts