James G. "Gerry" Schulze

I have been practicing since 1983.  I practice with Darryl E. "Chip" Baker and Ruthanne Murphy.   I have had the privilege of being involved in some cases that had an impact on the law, for better or for worse.  On the "better" side, I was asked to represent the New York Times in the Prempro class action when the defendants sought to use the power of the Court to keep evidence about their "ghostwriting" contributions to medical literature confidential.  Our efforts resulted in the de-designation of numerous documents improperly labeled as confidential and exposing a practice that created a danger of misleading medical researchers.

With the exception of the New York Times, I usually have represented individuals or very small businesses.  I have had the privilege of doing appellate work for other lawyers on some very significant cases.  I wrote the brief for Super Lawyer Bobby McDaniel in the case McCoy v. Montgomery, 370 Ark. 333, 259 S.W.3d 430 (2007), which was a landmark case on the issue of punitive damages in a medical malpractice case.  I handled Warnock v. Archer, 380 F.3d 1076 (8th Cir., 2004) on appeal.  That case was a significant case on the issue of freedom of religion in the school setting.  I wrote the brief in Boudreaux v. Mauterstock, 88 Ark.App. 389, 199 S.W.3d 120 (2004) which was one of the leading cases on the factors for changing a child's name.  I was asked to handle the appellee's brief on Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Kilgore, 85 Ark. App. 231, 148 S.W.3d 754 (2004), which was significant on the liabilty of a pharmacy for dispensing the wrong medication to a consumer.  I wrote the brief for the plaintiff's lawyer in  Saine v. Comcast Cablevision of Arkansas, 354 Ark. 492; 126 S.W.3d 339 (2003), in which summary judgment on behalf of a public utility was reversed where an employee of the utility was alleged to have committed a sexual assault on a customer.  I wrote the brief on the appeal from the summary judgment granted in the tobacco case of  Boerner v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 260 F.3d 837 (8th Cir. 2001).  I left the firm before the case was ultimately resolved as the only verdict against a tobacco company in Arkansas.  I handled Wiles v. Webb, 329 Ark. 108,  946 S.W.2d 685 (1997) in which the sudden emergency instruction was finally abolished.  In my brief on that case, I acknowledged that I had previously lost sudden emergency cases on appeal both arguing that the instruction should have been given and that it should not have been given and that in losing those cases from every direction, I had become somewhat of an expert.  The Supreme Court finally recognized that the instruction was inherently confusing and abolished it entirely.

I have had some success in civil rights cases on behalf of persons objecting to violations of the Establishment Clause.  I was the successful lawyer in United Coalition of Reason, Inc. v. Central Arkansas Transit Authority, 2011 WL 3607580 (E.D. Ark. 2011) and American Humanist Association v. Baxter County, 2015 WL 7012851 (W.D.Ark. 2015).

On the "worse" side, I lost Yancey v. Beverage House of Little Rock, Inc., 291 Ark. 217, 723 S.W.2d 826 (1987), which left the immunity rule for sellers of alcoholic beverages intact. Fortunately, the legislature finally remedied that.  Also, the several cases on the sudden emergency rule that I lost before Wiles v. Webb.  Diemer v. Dischler, 313 Ark. 154, 158-59, 852 S.W.2d 793, 795-796 (1993); Druckenmiller v. Cluff, 316 Ark. 517, 873 S.W.2d 526 (1994).  Of course, I still sincerely believe the learned court was wrong in almost every case I ever lost on appeal.