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  • Inside Track
    April 15, 2015

    Full Steam Ahead: 50 Years for Appeals Court Judge Charles Dykman

    Joe Forward

    Charles DykmanApril 15, 2015 – In 1977, a young attorney, Charles Dykman, sat down for lunch with his younger brother, Peter, who was working for the Legislative Reference Bureau. Charles said he wanted to be a judge on the new Wisconsin Court of Appeals.

    Peter advised against it. “You’ll have to find time to campaign, spend lots of money, and work like a dog. You won’t like it,” he said. Naturally, the chat inspired Charles Dykman to proceed full steam ahead, despite his brother’s warnings.

    In 1978, at age 39, Charles Dykman was elected to the newly created Wisconsin Appeals Court bench, where he stayed for more than three decades, retiring in 2010. Born and raised in Madison, Judge Dykman said he would do it all over again.

    “Judges deal with life,” Judge Dykman recalled. “That’s what I have enjoyed most about being on the Court of Appeals. People bring their problems and disputes to the court where, using negotiation and discussion, appellate judges work together to find the correct result.”

    This year, still active as an adjunct law professor, practicing attorney, and volunteer, Judge Dykman celebrates 50 years in the legal profession, far removed from his 1965 graduation from U.W. Law School and his first years as a young lawyer turned judge.

    Getting Started

    As a young man, Judge Dykman thought he might go into TV or radio. Working at a local Madison radio station as a classical music “disc jockey,” he majored in TV and radio communications at U.W. Madison. Planning his music programs and spinning the records, Judge Dykman started to absorb both the law and the words of judges.

    “My former station manager went to law school, and then set up his solo practice in the radio station where I would read from his Wisconsin Digest,” said Judge Dykman. In the time between spinning Mozart and Beethoven he enjoyed reading about the law and the broad range of disputes that came up.”

    When job prospects in TV and radio turned out to be less promising than Judge Dykman had hoped, he decided to return to UW and continue his studies in the law school. He saw a former high school classmate doing well at U.W. Law School, and thought he could succeed too.

    Graduating law school in 1965, he joined a firm that branched into Oldenburg & Lent. Dick Lent and Hugh Oldenburg became his mentors. “Although they had little time to help me, I did learn as much as possible about the day to day practice of law,” recalls Judge Dykman, who shared an office with Lent. Doing general litigation, Dykman became immersed in Madison’s legal community.

    “It took a while to gain acceptance with the small firm litigation bar. But, back in those days, young attorneys could make a living even when they were first starting out,” he said. “I feel that my work at Oldenburg and Lent helped me establish a name for myself.”

    “They gave me cases and once in a while, I would bring one in,” said Dykman, who received one-third fees on assigned cases and two-thirds fees on cases he brought in.

    “So I worked as a sole practitioner within that firm. I learned the business and I learned more law, and got to know the courthouse folks,” he said. “I did the sorts of things you did to assimilate into the legal fraternity.” In 1970, attorney Dykman made another bold move.

    “Being a young and brash lawyer, and not understanding how things really were, I explained to them that I should be on the partner track. But, the partners disagreed. Now I can see why. I didn’t have a “book” of business. They had the clients. So, I decided I could run my own law office. I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and was too young to recognize the many obstacles to success,” Judge Dykman said.

    For the next eight years, Dykman built his solo practice, mostly in litigation and real estate dealings. Oldenburg & Lent gave him collections cases that helped get him going.

    But in 1977, he saw another opportunity – as a judge for the Court of Appeals – and raced full steam ahead. He used about $12,000 to put the campaign together, and won.

    On the Bench

    His tenure on the bench started in 1978. And for the next 32 years, Judge Dykman served on the District IV Court of Appeals with stints as presiding judge.

    During these years, Judge Dykman decided a variety of cases argued by some of Wisconsin’s best lawyers. And he enjoyed the process of reaching consensus with his colleagues on the bench, or diverging based on his own readings of the law.

    “Trial court judges used to tell me they wouldn’t be an appeals court judge for all the tea in China, but I enjoyed the role,” Judge Dykman said. “We were somewhat insulated and removed from trial courts, but I welcomed the intellectual aspects of it.”

    Judge Dykman was particularly intrigued with negligence cases, and had opportunity, in his final decision, to make a significant impact on Wisconsin negligence law. In the case Tesar v. Anderson, Judge Dykman ruled that a father-to-be could pursue a wrongful death action against an auto insurer based on the argument that one of the alleged negligent drivers, the pregnant mother, owed a duty of care to the world and could be found negligent.

    “That case was the finale for a theory I learned from Professor Campbell in law school,” said Judge Dykman, referring to U.W. Law Professor Richard Campbell, who died in 1991. “It was the culmination of my work on the bench, and my favorite case to decide.”

    Joe ForwardJoe Forward, Saint Louis Univ. School of Law 2010, is a legal writer for the State Bar of Wisconsin, Madison. He can be reached by email or by phone at (608) 250-6161.

    Since retiring from the Fourth District Court of Appeals in August, 2010, Judge Dykman has served the court system in several roles: as a reserve judge, as a member of the State Board of Bar Examiners, and as a member of the OLR Board of Administrative Oversight. In early 2011 he was honored as a “Leader in the Law” by the Wisconsin Law Journal and was given the Lifetime Achievement recognition.

    He continues to serve as an adjunct faculty member with the UW Law School, teaching a negligence methodology course. For the past year and half, he worked a pro bono administrative law case, and mentors new lawyers at the Inns of Court meetings.

    As an ongoing project, Judge Dykman has provided legal education programs for a number of the county bar associations of the Fourth District. He summarizes and reviews cases decided in the previous year by Wisconsin’s Appellate Courts.

    “When I graduated from law school, the idea of practicing law for fifty years was in the realm of whimsy,” said Judge Dykman, who is enjoying his retirement with his wife, Bonnie. “I never thought I would serve as a lawyer and a judge for this long, but it happened. It was a rewarding 32 years on the bench.”



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