Arthur N. Bailey

A Jamestown resident since 1961, he was born, May 4, 1935, as the eldest son of the late Arthur Jay Bailey and the late Macy Berkey Bailey.

He was a 1953 graduate of Salamanca High School, a 1956 graduate of the University of Buffalo and a 1959 graduate of the University of Buffalo School of Law, as well as of several subsequent medical and legal institutes.

His legal career commenced in Jamestown as a partner in Van Vlack, Goodell & McKee, where he replaced Charles E. Goodell, the great Congressman and U.S. Senator, a law firm he later acquired and merged into the firm of Lodestro & Bailey. He soon became nationally recognized by specializing in the modern, cutting-edge practice in the fields of medical/legal, products liability & medical negligence/malpractice actions. He soon became very active in the American Trial Lawyers Association, where he was elected as the youngest-ever National Director from New York and was elected to the Executive Committee for eight consecutive years by ATLA’s board, during which he also was elected as an honorary member of the Trial Lawyers of California, West Virginia, Florida, Tennessee, Colorado, San Francisco, and of the First Amendment Trial Lawyer’s Association. Additionally, he was very honored to be an invited lecturer at the Annual CLE Seminars of 43 of the U.S. States and of the foreign countries.

He also became a prolific writer in these specialized areas of law, having become the Editor of the Class Action Law Journal of the ATLA, as well as the two-term President of the National Class Action Section thereof, having held more than 265 elected or appointed positions. He was a life-long member of the Jamestown Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, and the American Bar Association. In addition, he successfully became a member of the federal practicing bar of the Northern District of California, the federal bar of Minnesota, the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. He was also a pro hac vici member of a federal court in every U.S. Circuit Court of the United States

More recently, he has been recognized as having been the first-filer or shared leadership in more federal class actions than any other individual lawyer in U.S. history.

He was most proud of his many “firsts” in his profession including: the defeat of the Federal Court Environmental Injunction against the construction of the Chautauqua Lake Bridge; the defeat of AT&T/Bell Telephone’s monopoly prohibiting customer-owned equipment, which case led directly into the entire “cell phone industry”; the first and only successful class action on behalf of the Jewish Holocaust Survivors of WWII against the Swiss Banks where $1.5 Billion was won, collected and distributed; the first successful class action in Chautauqua County History; and the first $1 Million single injury award in Chautauqua County history. Mr. Bailey first appeared and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004 in F. Hoffmann-LaRoche, Ltd. vs. Empagran, S.A., 542 U.S. 155, in the “Vitamin C Appeal” (No.: 16-1220, May 5, 2018).

Mr. Bailey also became the elected President of every school, college, law school, professional organization he ever belonged to and, during his year as President of the Jamestown Bar Association, he founded the Robert H. Jackson Center Inn of Court, together with its “People’s Law School” where gifted local lawyers teach average citizens the fundamentals of law in a classroom setting.

Unquestionably, Mr. Bailey believed that his highest and best accomplishment was being the first-ever to collect, read, and assemble every decision and major speech authored by Robert H. Jackson during his U.S. Supreme Court tenure and to donate them, along with the other early founders, to the Robert H. Jackson Center, Inc. and thereafter, to become a recognized director and donor, to see it grow into the now internationally famous institution, seemingly continuing so into the future.

Of all his other impressive material accomplishments, he most enjoyed his many teaching assignments, first as a law instructor at JCC and thereafter, as an Evelyn Woods-trained “rapid reading” instructor to several thousand students over the decades, while typically doubling or tripling each student’s reading speed, while raising his own personal words-per-minute up to nearly 2000 words-per-minute. He also enjoyed playing and teaching three dimensional chess and syllogistic logic.

He also took pride in being among the pioneer-counsel in new-age litigation which “broke the monopoly” of the NCAA against any payment for college athletes; and in representing Jim McCusker and other NFL players in the now-famous “brain-damage” litigation against the NFL, as well as giving “voice-to-the-voiceless” by representing the citizens of South Africa against their apartheid government, including the huge trans-national corporations who aided and abetted them, under the Alien Tort Claims Act.

During his six-decade long career, he has been the author of numerous published articles, books, and professional instructional tapes, as well as having memberships in the Institute of Children’s Literature and the National Lawyer-Author Association.

He was a communicant of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, a Vestryman therein, and a teaching Sunday School Superintendent. He was a life-long member of Moonbrook Country Club, the Lakewood Rod & Gun Club.

First and foremost, he was a devoted husband, father, son, and brother. He is survived by his wife, Joanne E. Bailey whom he married on March 10, 1960; a son Arthur N. Bailey Jr., a practicing attorney in San Francisco, California; a daughter, Darlene M. Kennedy (Andrew Hanses), a practicing CPA in Chicago, Illinois, and daughter, Kimberly A. Ward, a special-ed teacher and behavior analyst in Oklahoma City, now residing in Jamestown, New York. He is also survived by three grandchildren, Alex Ann Kennedy (Dillion Roberts) of Lebanon, NH, Dr. Lauren Nash Kennedy (Mateo Villarreal) of Kansas City, MO and Dayton M. Ward of Jamestown, New York.

He was preceded in death by his father and mother, as well as a brother, Robert R. Bailey, who died February 25, 2001, and a brother, David B. Bailey, of Jamestown, New York, who died on December 30, 2018.

A funeral service will held at 10 am Thursday in the Lind Funeral Home. with a burial thereafter in the Sunset Hill Cemetery.

Friends will be received from 4-6 pm Wednesday in the Lind Funeral Home.

Memorials may be made to the Robert H. Jackson Society, Jamestown, New York, 14701.

You may leave words of condolence at www.lindfuneralhome.com.