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Rash of Kentucky lawyer suicides concerns colleagues

Varied reasons cited for deaths in recent years; bar president urges lawyers to watch out for each other

Jun. 3, 2013 |
Written by Andrew Wolfson


Lawyers and suicide

From 1999 to 2010, suicide rates for American adults age 35 to 64 increased 28 percent, from 13.7 to 17.6 for every 100,000 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported recently. For men in that age range, the rate is 27.3 percent.
There are no recent studies of the suicide rate nationally for lawyers — in part because most states don’t track suicide by occupation. But some older studies suggest it is higher:
• A 1997 study of life insurance data found that lawyers in Canada were six times more likely to kill themselves than the general population.
• A 1991 study of lawyers in North Carolina found that 26 percent had symptoms of clinical depression and 12 percent said they contemplated suicide at least once a month.
• A 1991 study at Johns Hopkins University of 12,000 workers found that lawyers were the most depressed of 28 occupations and 3.6 times more likely to be depressed than average.


One was a former University of Kentucky basketball player who practiced in Leitchfield, Ky. Another had been commonwealth’s attorney in Kenton County.

A third was a Louisville lawyer who helped battle the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville over cases of priest abuse — and whose Facebook photos still show him snowboarding, scuba diving and sightseeing with his family.

Jim Dinwiddie, Harry Rankin and Ross Turner all died in a similar way: They killed themselves.

So did Michael Jamison and Brent Travelsted of Bowling Green, Tod Megibow of Paducah, William P. Whalen Jr. of Fort Wright, Finis Raymond Price III and Dan Thomas Schwartz of Louisville, David Andrew of Crescent Springs, Leroy “Lee” Rowland of Lexington and Brad Goheen of Calvert City.

They are among at least a dozen lawyers in Kentucky who have committed suicide since 2010, including three in Louisville and three in Northern Kentucky. Half died in the past 12 months. All were men, their average age 53, and most were trial lawyers.

Kentucky doesn’t track suicides by occupation. But citing his recollection from 38 years of practice — and amid studies that show lawyers are six times more likely to kill themselves than the general population — Kentucky Bar Association President Doug Myers said the number of suicides among the state’s 17,500 lawyers is “disproportionate” and “disconcerting.”

Myers, who was so concerned that he wrote about the issue in a recent edition of the bar association’s quarterly journal, said in an interview that he doesn’t remember any similar spate of suicides by lawyers earlier in his career.

In a recent post, legal blogger Shannon Ragland, publisher of the Kentucky Trial Court Review, called the suicides by “middle-aged trial lawyers” an “apparent epidemic” and said the issue deserves serious attention and study by the KBA and the Kentucky Justice Association, the state trial lawyer group.