Deputy AG Laurel Duffy to run for District bench

Deputy Attorney General Laurel Duffy has announced she will run for the Fifth District Judicial Department 2 position currently held by Robert Lane in the November election.

Duffy is currently working in the attorney general's insurance fraud division out of a Las Vegas office. She is a member of the Pahrump Senior Center board and the Pahrump Valley Community Action Team. Duffy toured Yucca Mountain recently and voiced concerns over the project. She declined to answer some questions, citing the Code of Judicial Conduct.

"The challenge in the Fifth Judicial District is you are a circuit judge, you have to make a circuit to four different courtrooms -- Pahrump, Tonopah, Hawthorne and Goldfield," Duffy said.

Duffy moved to Pahrump in February 2001.

"I had moved out to Pahrump mainly because I had a lot of dogs. They didn't like Summerlin. It was too hemmed in," she said. "When I got out here, I talked to a few people and it was suggested to me that I consider running."

Lane, a former Nye County deputy district attorney from the Tonopah office, was elected by a razor-thin margin over Nye County Chief Felony Prosecutor Kirk Vitto in the November 2000 election to the Department 2 judicial seat, a second judicial position created by the 1997 Nevada Legislature. Lane's initial term in the newly created position is only for two years, but the winner next November will serve a full, six-year term.

"I guess coming to Pahrump and becoming involved in the community, what has become a concern to me, it doesn't appear there's a lot of good legal advice behind what is being done," Duffy said. "I think there's a lot of legal questions about business, about what a lot of the boards and committees are doing."

Duffy received her bachelor's degree at the University of Minnesota in 1972. She received her master's degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1978. Duffy went to law school at the University of Colorado, where she received her law degree in 1988, that same year she became a member of the Nevada bar.

Duffy worked for the Morton Galane law firm in Las Vegas from 1988-93, a firm specializing in civil litigation, business law and corporate law. She went to work for Les Combs, a sole practitioner in Las Vegas, who handles security misconduct in casinos, from 1993-95. That was her first experience with the attorney general's office. Duffy said she represented the Nevada Highway Patrol and the Nevada Division of Motor Vehicles.

From February 1995 to August 1997, Duffy worked for the attorney general's office handling cases involving civil rights litigation and allegations of excessive force, since October 1999, she has been working for the attorney general's insurance fraud division. In 1997, Duffy went to work for Mike Cherry, now a judge, at that time a special Clark County public defender who handled murder cases where attorneys had conflicts of interest. She handled seven murder trials there.

"I have been a lawyer for 13 years and I have done virtually every type of law there is," Duffy said. "I have done lots of things in my career as an attorney, I have done both civil and criminal, defense and prosecutor."

"I think that my experience uniquely qualifies me to be a different type of judge," she said. "I do not have a bias. If I did, I would not do all these different things."

"Also, prior to going to law school, I was a special education teacher in Clark County for 10 years," Duffy said. "I also have a community perspective."

Some of the highlights of her career she mentioned, included a $9.8 million jury verdict she won for her client, Dr. George Mead Hemmeter, in a case against Humana Hospital in 1991. During a trial before the Nevada Supreme Court, titled Runion v. State, the court issued an important ruling that certain jury instructions were necessary where self-defense is claimed, Duffy said. In another case she defended, Reyna v. Ortega, she said the Nevada Supreme Court offered some protection against Nevada Highway Patrolmen from lawsuits whenever they make an arrest.

Duffy is one of three prosecutors working for the attorney general's insurance fraud division, one prosecutor in Northern Nevada, two in the Las Vegas office. Combined, the three prosecutors get about 30 referrals per month, Duffy said. They made 36 convictions in the fiscal year ending last June 30, since last July 1, Duffy said the insurance fraud division has had 21 convictions.

While the attorney general's office has had some referrals in the Pahrump area for insurance fraud, Duffy didn't prosecute a case here until the recent filing of charges against Jennette Dyer for obtaining money under false pretenses, forgery of a public document, filing a false claim for insurance benefits and an attempt to obtain money under false pretenses.

Duffy denied the Dyer prosecution was an attempt to gain publicity for her candidacy. Bob "Red" Dyer and Jennette "Genie" Dyer are well known in the Pahrump community after their one-year term as Nye County public administrators in 1999-2000, for which they are facing over 30 counts of theft, misconduct of a public officer, perjury and other charges.

"We have been working this case since 2000," Duffy said. Insurance fraud cases have a three-year statute of limitations, meaning a case against Jennette Dyer had to be filed this year, she said.

Duffy plans a fund-raiser from 1 to 4 p.m. on St. Patrick's Day at the Willow Creek golf course.


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