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OCU Distinguished Alumni Award, 2006
Cheyenne native, 1957 high school graduate, and local rancher Windle Turley has been awarded Oklahoma City University’s School of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award for 2006. The award was presented in Oklahoma City on November 4th, 2006.
During his Oklahoma City University days, Windle focused his studies on mathematics and philosophy, graduating from Oklahoma City University in 1962. By the time Windle graduated from OCU, he had determined he wanted to be a voice for change. Convinced that the law offered the greatest prospects for change, he enrolled in the Southern Methodist University School of Law.
He achieved his Juris Doctorate from Southern Methodist University’s School of Law in 1965. At SMU, he was a member of the National Championship Moot Court Team – the first time SMU had ever won the award. Within a few years of graduation from law school, he started to develop a reputation as a lawyer who would take on the challenge of hard cases against large opponents if the outcome had the prospect to reduce injury, death or suffering in our society.
Windle’s career as a trial lawyer has been marked by nationally significant cases over his 41 years in practice. Shortly after graduating from law school, he found himself arguing before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of children of unwed parents who were denied child support in the State of Texas. The law was held unconstitutional, and so-called “illegitimate children” were given equal standing for child support as other children.
Turley believed that the incidents of injury and death could be reduced through product safety litigation that held manufacturers responsible for their unsafe designs. In 1972, he commenced the first of a long series of groundbreaking product liability cases, which in many situations helped create a national forum that highlighted dangerous defects in vehicular and consumer products. During this time he filed and successfully tried the first-ever aviation crashworthiness case, the first tractor-truck fuel fire cases, the first airbag case filed and tried prior to the requirement that now places them in every vehicle.
Following the crash of an American Airlines DC 10 in Chicago, Turley convinced a Federal Court to require the FAA to ground the world’s entire fleet of DC 10s until an inherent defect that had been discovered by the NTSB could be corrected.
In the 1980’s Turley filed a series of cases throughout the United States against various manufacturers of cheap handguns, seeking to hold them accountable for the widespread damage and deaths these guns were causing in our society. This theory is still being used today to reduce the misuse of handguns.
When abortion protestors were threatening the peace and indeed the life, of a Dallas doctor, Turley and his firm took Operation Rescue to court and obtained a large damage award and more important an injunction forcing the protestors to distance themselves from the doctor and his family. This case helped moderate abortion protests throughout the country.
In the mid 90s, Turley took on the cause of young boys who had been sexually abused by their catholic priest. The result was the largest sexual abuse verdict ever rendered against the Catholic Church, a judgment that helped open the door for abused victims throughout the world to come forward.
On behalf of hundreds of abused and injured children, Windle Turley took the Hare Krishnas to court over abuse of children kept in their boarding schools. The result was a reformation in the treatment of children by the worldwide Iskcon organization and compensation to hundreds of children for needed therapy and vocational training.
His lawsuits against the Dallas Police Department helped bring about a change in what was a dangerous Dallas Police pursuit policy, and his bicycle helmet cases helped stimulate the City of Dallas to require children to wear bicycle helmets.
In his mission to use litigation to reduce the incidence of injury and death, he has continually taken on the most difficult and challenging of cases and opponents. Including the largest corporations, institutions and governments in the world.
He has been called The Crusader, a Tough Guy, a Man of the People, Top-Notch, an Innovator, a Legal Legend, the Police of the Injustice Patrol, and the Best by the media and his colleagues but what he prefers is “Societies Handyman” trying to fix that which is broken.
Many of his cases have been provocative and unpopular, such as the lawsuits involving handguns, abortion protestors and Hare Krishnas, all of which resulted in death threats against Turley and his family.
At the Turley Law Firm in Dallas, Texas, dozens of young trial lawyers, after receiving their training on the Turley Team, have moved on to make large contributions toward the betterment of their communities. He has lectured throughout the country, taught at law schools and authored more than sixty legal articles on the preparation and trial of injury cases. He has written two books: Aviation Litigation and Firearms Litigation.
In 1992, and again in 1997, Turley achieved one of the ten largest jury verdicts in the nation. Windle has been recognized as one of the leading Air Crash Lawyers in the United States by The National Law Journal. He has been named a “Super Lawyer” by Texas Monthly Magazine on multiple occasions and remains a constant on the D Magazine’s list of Dallas’ Best Lawyers. In 2004, in an article about “Dallas Men Who Could Kick Your Butt,” Windle was officially named by D Magazine as one of “50 Tough Guys” in Dallas history. He has been named to the Best Lawyers in America list for 23 years and to the leading aviation attorneys in the world by the Guide to the World’s Leading Lawyers.
Windle has served his profession as President of the Dallas Trial Lawyers Association, Director of the Texas Trial Lawyers, and as a Chairman of the Trial Lawyers of American Aviation Section. He is a Board Certified Trial Specialist, and a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates.
In addition to photographing wildlife all over the world, Windle also spends time at the ranching operation, owned by him and his wife Shirley, near Cheyenne, Oklahoma. There, 24,000 acres are devoted to raising cattle, improving grasslands, and preserving wildlife native to the area.
Turley still carries a full load of challenging causes in his Dallas Law Firm and most of all he enjoys his time with his two grandchildren, Lacey and Ronald.
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