Law School Mourns the Passing of Rick Plunkett (’84)

Rick Plunkett (’84), who founded the Minnesota Justice Foundation during his 1L year at the Law School, died Nov. 2 at his home in Rochester, Minn. The cause of death was cancer.

While an undergraduate at the University, Plunkett served as president of the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group. After graduating with honors from the Law School, he practiced law for five years before joining his family’s cable, banking, and real estate businesses in the Rochester area.

“To understand Rick fully, you have to understand the intellectual firepower he possessed,” Plunkett’s brother-in-law, Mike Christenson, told the Rochester Post-Bulletin. “A lot of lawyers get that firepower out of adrenaline or fear of failure or anger, and that gives us a bad name. His fierceness was born out of something different. If he could concentrate on a problem long enough, he felt confident that he could resolve it.”

In founding MJF, Plunkett set the course for an organization that has dedicated itself to meeting the legal needs of low-income Minnesotans for more than three decades. Next year, as it commemorates its 35th anniversary, MJF will establish a distinguished service award in Plunkett’s name.

“Rick was in touch with me as recently as August to plan a clerkship that would study and write a paper on the subject of police practices that result in deadly confrontations,” said Janine Laird, MJF’s executive director. “He was interested in creating new public policy calling for the practice of de-escalation and the least violent intervention possible. It was clear to me that he still had the fire and enthusiasm that he brought to organizing MJF 35 years ago.”

Click here to read the Post-Bulletin article on Plunkett’s life.