Charles R. Moore
Charles R. Moore
Introduction
After practicing law as a trial lawyer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for 50 years Mr. Moore retired in 2022. Rather than fading away, he is undertaking new non-profit projects with emphasis on journalism, the massacre of freed slaves on Easter Sunday1873 at the Grant Parish, Louisiana, courthouse, and Eastport, Maine, a small coastal town where his mother was born. These projects are listed at the end of this bio. For those who may want information about him, the following resume is presented, which is admittedly lengthy in order to address different areas of his life which some may find relevant in evaluating his proposals and projects.​
Early Life​
Charles R. “Chick” Moore was born in Hays, Kansas, in 1947. His mother, Ruth Davis, was a school teacher in Eastport, Maine, where she met his father, Larry, a Navy Seabee, who was stationed in Eastport during World War II. Eastport is a small community on Moose Island on the northern coast of Maine. It is located across the bay from Campobello, Canada, an island known for being the summer home of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Moore is married to Keithe Moore and he has two children, a son, Eric, and a daughter, Meredith.
After the war, Mr. Moore’s mother got on a train in Eastport and traveled to Kansas City to meet his father, where they were married. They then moved to Hays, a small town in western Kansas, where his dad worked for Lone Star Cement Company which supplied cement to the oil drilling industry. The year he was born, his mother took him by plane and train to Eastport to meet his Maine family. Maine has always played an important part in his life, with Mr. Moore returning almost every year since. It was in Maine that he got his nickname “Chick,” which is a nickname for Charles on the Down East coast of Maine, probably of Irish origin.
At age ten, his father was transferred from Hays to New Orleans because of an offshore oil boom. His family lived on the west bank in Algiers. He attended public schools, graduated from Martin Behrman High School in 1965, and then attended college at LSUNO (now the University of New Orleans), located next to Lake Pontchartrain. At LSUNO, he was active in student government and was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha. He graduated in 1969 with a degree in government although he originally considered chemistry and journalism as a career.
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Mr. Moore entered LSU Law School in 1969 and graduated in 1972. He was a member of the Louisiana Law Review, the Order of the Coif and was inducted into the honor society of Phi Kappa Phi. He received the award for the best Comment, a lengthy student-authored analysis of a development in the law published in the Law Review. He has since been inducted into the LSU Law Center Hall of Fame.
Boats docked at the breakwater in downtown Eastport
Law Practice
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After briefly practicing with other law firms, Mr. Moore started his own law firm in 1975 in Baton Rouge, where he practiced for 50 years as a trial attorney until his retirement in May 2022. His practice was primarily focused on personal injury, wrongful death, and medical malpractice, trying cases across the state. He was board certified in Civil Trial Advocacy by the National Board of Trial Advocacy. He served as an adjunct faculty member at LSU and Southern Law Schools, teaching pretrial litigation. He was a member of both the Louisiana State Law Institute Committees on Product Liability and Evidence. He assisted Professor George Pugh, the primary force behind the Code of Evidence, in having it adopted by the Louisiana Legislature. He was frequently called to the Capitol to testify on proposed legislation.
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Mr. Moore served as president of the Louisiana Association for Justice (formerly the Louisiana Trial Lawyers Association), whose members primarily represented injured Louisianans, their families, and small businesses. During his term, he was successful in having the organization adopt a Code of Professionalism. Subsequently, he co-chaired the Louisiana State Bar Association's Committee on Professionalism which was charged with writing a Code of Professionalism for the Louisiana Bar. The Code was adopted by the Louisiana State Bar Association. For this work he received the Bar Association's President's Award. He was a member of the Intra-Professional Committee for Physicians and Attorneys, which focused on improving the interaction between the two professions. He served as president of the Louisiana Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), an organization of plaintiff and defense attorneys who support trial by jury.
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Mr. Moore has been a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association, the American Association for Justice, the Louisiana Association for Justice, the Baton Rouge Bar Association, and the American Board of Trial Advocates. He was selected for membership in the Litigation Counsel of America, a national invitation-only trial lawyer honorary society. He has been admitted to all Louisiana state and federal courts and has practiced before the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. He has been admitted to practice in other states on a case-by-case basis.
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Mr. Moore's legal philosophy is that no one is above the law, and because of that, he has taken cases that other attorneys have shied away from accepting. Most notable were suits in the 1990s filed in the New Orleans Federal District Court against a majority of the judges on the Orleans Parish Civil District Court and then judges on the Criminal District Court. In both cases court personnel were wrongfully terminated after they were fired for reporting improper financial practices to law enforcement.
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Depositions of all judges were taken under oath. In the case against the Criminal District Court judges, jury selection had begun when the case settled. All defendant judges were present in Court. This case is an example that in America no one is above the law, and even the most powerful can be held responsible for their wrongful acts.
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Publications
In addition to the Louisiana Law Review, Mr. Moore has been published in the Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce and was asked to write an article published in Japan regarding his representation of the family of Yoshi Hattori, a foreign exchange student who was brutally shot and killed in Louisiana after knocking on the wrong door as he was seeking to attend a Halloween party. Mr. Moore had the honor of representing Mr. and Mrs. Hattori and helped them win a civil judgment against the man who had shot Yoshi even though he had been acquitted in a criminal trial. The Hattori case was followed internationally and has resulted in documentaries in both the United States and Japan in which Mr. Moore appeared.
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Mr. Moore also co-authored an article published in Australia on injuries arising from the use of electrosurgical equipment. Most recently, his article on the importance of the oath that attorneys take when they are sworn in was published in the Louisiana Bar Association Journal. He has been a frequent lecturer, making over 100 presentations at seminars and bar meetings. He was often called on to speak on the use of demonstrative evidence and has written on the subject in the Louisiana Bar Journal. He also was requested to write the chapter on demonstrative evidence in a book aimed at introducing young attorneys to litigation practice in Louisiana.
Seminars and programs
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Mr. Moore has spoken at many seminars over the years, mainly on demonstrative evidence, products liability, and professionalism. With participation from the district and the appellate courts and the state Supreme Court, as well as from all Louisiana law schools and professional law organizations, Mr. Moore organized a ceremony held at the Manship Theater at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge at which attorneys joined together to recommit themselves to the oath they had taken when sworn in. The oath is inspirational and aspirational and can be found at https://www.lsba.org/Members/LegalLibrary.aspx.
Judges from the Louisiana Supreme Court, Courts of Appeal, and District Courts readministering the Attorney Oath
He also has organized seminars on the importance of an independent judiciary. Speakers included the Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court and Louisiana and out-of-state judges who described blatant attempts to intimidate them to influence their decisions for which they received death threats. The cases arose from social issues randomly assigned to each judge and were addressed according to applicable law. One federal judge chose not to participate because he had to be under constant protection because of death threats since the trial of a well-known drug figure.
Speaking at the seminar held in Baton Rouge was Judge George Greer, a Republican Florida state probate judge who had been randomly assigned the Terry Schiavo case. In that case Terry’s husband had petitioned the Court to permit the removal of Terry’s feeding tube because she was in a permanent vegetative state. The removal of the tube would have permitted Terry to die naturally. The case received national attention and much debate. After his ruling which applied Florida law that the tube could be removed, Judge Greer was denounced on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Radio hosts excoriated him and gave out his address and phone number to listeners. He received multiple death threats and required the protection of Florida State Troopers to keep him and his family safe.
When Mr. Moore was called upon to head the Law Day program in Baton Rouge, he went about trying to make the event memorable for the high school students who were bused to the Centroplex Theater in downtown Baton Rouge. The participating high schools selected students who had an interest in journalism. These students were given the opportunity to question members of the Baton Rouge serial killer task force at a press conference held solely for the students. At that time, Baton Rouge was in the midst of a hunt for a serial killer whose murders had shaken the city. Dr. Mary Manhein, forensic anthropologist and founder of the internationally respected FACES Laboratory at LSU, was also questioned by the students about how the faces of long deceased crime victims could be recreated so that they could be identified. Finally, students debated before the entire audience whether a teenager convicted of first-degree murder should be subject to the death penalty.
Public Service
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Mr. Moore has a history of public service, having co-founded Louisiana Industries for the Disabled, Inc., now known as UPLiftd, which trains, evaluates and employs disabled workers. He served as chairman of the advisory council of the Women’s Community Rehabilitation Center, which provides a transition from institutional care to a return to the community for women with mental impairments. He is the past president of the Arts and Humanities Council of Greater Baton Rouge, served as a member of the finance committee of the Baton Rouge Area Parks and Recreation Association (BREC), was President of Mid-City Kiwanis, served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Louisiana Arts and Science Center and was a member of the LSU College of Arts and Science Advisory Council. He currently serves on the Board for the Eastport Arts Center.
Mr. Moore also founded Science Outreach Foundation, a personal project to excite school children to learn science through hands-on interaction with a life-size cast of a T-Rex skull, dinosaur fossils, meteorites, enlarged Hubble Space Telescope photos, a space shuttle heat shield tile, a mammoth tusk, crystals, insects from around the world and many more wonders of science. Mr. Moore has spoken free of charge to over 25,000 students at more than 80 schools across Louisiana, from New Orleans to Bastrop and from Amite to Sulphur, with many stops in between.
Surrounded by kids after a Science Outreach Foundation presentation
In 1986 the mayor of Baton Rouge asked Mr. Moore to file suit to reinstate over 5,000 voters who had been illegally removed from the voter rolls which he did on a pro bono basis. For that work, the mayor designated Election Day in honor of Mr. Moore’s firm. He has served as chairman of the East Baton Rouge Parish Executive Committee of the Louisiana Democratic Party as well as a member of the State Central Committee. He was an unsuccessful candidate for state representative, running on the slogan “Education First,” and was proud to have been endorsed by many in education.
Other Interests
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Mr. Moore has been an avid photographer and has developed an interest in photographing whales and other wildlife on the Maine coast. He enjoys collecting art. He also sponsored and worked to bring lobster boat racing to Eastport, a sport that is popular on the Maine coast in communities with lobster fishing fleets.
6513 Perkins
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6513 Perkins is an office building owned by Mr. Moore. He has had his office at this address since it was built in 1992. The building offers large high-quality office suites and small offices with access to large and small conference rooms. The tenants are part of a “Community of Professionals” where there is a sense of camaraderie. Its website is accessible at 6513Perkins.com. The building is a local landmark across from the Pennington Biomedical building, and it has had a large American flag hanging from its front balcony since 9/11. The flag has been stolen three times and burned once but has always been replaced. Mr. Moore receives calls thanking him for hanging the flag, with many stating that it comforts them. After one theft, a veteran brought Mr. Moore a large flag he owned and asked that it be flown from the balcony, which was proudly done. On another occasion, a Gulf War veteran receiving medical treatment for PTSD got off the bus by the office and came in to talk about his experience because he was drawn to the flag.
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The flag has become a backdrop for photographs. The Port Allen Pelican High School baseball team was bused to the office to have its photo taken in front of the flag. Passersby often stop by to have their photos taken. After luncheons held by Mr. Moore for retired judges, the judges would stand for a photo in front of the flag.
A rare snowfall at 6513 Perkins
Current Projects
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Support of Investigative Journalism: A free, independent, and ethical press is the foundation of our democratic society. In recent years there have been major attacks on the press which have resulted in widespread distrust of the media. It is a common occurrence to hear someone say that “you cannot believe anything in the press.” Attacks on a free press have always preceded authoritarian rule. It is because of this that Mr. Moore is a vigorous supporter of investigative journalism which motivated him to establish the Charles R. Moore Investigative Journalism Support Fund at the LSU Manship School of Mass Communication with a gift of $100,000.
The gift has two primary goals: The first is to encourage students to choose investigative journalism as a profession. To this end prominent national journalists, chosen by the LSU faculty, have been brought to LSU to speak to the students in seminars and in classes. The second goal is to address re-establishing the public’s trust in the media by educating the public about ethics in journalism.
Mr. Moore is also contacting for-profit and not-for-profit media outlets to determine what ethical standards they follow. The results have not been uniform, with many outlets refusing to respond to the inquiry. There will be follow-up with the outlets in an attempt to understand why they will not inform the public why they should be considered a trustworthy source of news by communicating their standards and practices to their readers.
Eastport Arts Center: The Eastport Arts Center is a center of life in Eastport. For a small city with a permanent population of less than 1,300, the Center provides an amazing amount of diverse programing. Mr. Moore is proud to serve on the board. A visit to its website is well worth a trip. https://eastportartscenter.org. He is also the sponsor of a poetry contest through the Eastport Arts Center. The idea behind the contest is that there is poetry in all of us. The contest encourages anyone to submit poems to be judged in junior and senior categories. Each category awards generous cash prizes. Most of the submitted poems are published in a book which is released before the winners are announced. Entries have been received from poets across Maine and from across the US.
Eastport Daffodil/beautification Project : Mr. Moore donated 5,000 daffodil bulbs to the City of Eastport which were planted downtown to add spring color to the city. This will be an ongoing and hopefully expanding project.
Peavy Library: Mr. Moore is working with the library to update its digital collection of old newspapers to make historical research easier.
