Admitted to practice before all courts,
state and federal
Admitted to practice before all state courts
Frederick M. Baker, Jr. has enjoyed a distinguished and varied career.
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Most recently, he served in an of counsel capacity to Willingham & Cote, P.C., litigating complex coverage issues in the trial and appellate courts. Before that, he served for over eight years as a Commissioner of the Michigan Supreme Court, after nearly two decades as a partner at one of Michigan’s leading law firms, Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, where he was a trial and appellate litigator. He began the practice of law at Willingham & Cote, P.C., after three years as an assistant professor at T.M. Cooley Law School, where he taught contracts, civil procedure, and legal writing and research. Before that, he served as law clerk to the late Chief Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals, Robert J. Danhof, after serving as a prehearing attorney in the Court of Appeals Research Division. He began his career as an instructor of law at Wayne Law School, where he taught legal writing, research, and advocacy. He has also taught, as an adjunct professor, both insurance and conflict of laws, at T. M. Cooley Law School and insurance and no-fault insurance at Michigan State University College of Law.
A graduate of Washington University Law School, in St. Louis, where he was an associate editor of the Urban Law Annual Law Review, and the University of Michigan, he has received numerous awards and honors for his legal writing, scholarship, and contributions to the profession, including the Urban Law Annual Writing Award, the T.M. Cooley Stanley Beattie Memorial Teaching Award, the State Bar of Michigan’s John W. Cummiskey Award for pro bono service to the public, the Roberts P. Hudson Award (the State Bar’s highest award), the Ingham County Bar Association’s Distinguished Volunteer of the Year Award for 2000, and two T. M. Cooley Law Review Distinguished Brief Awards, for his Supreme Court Briefs in the leading Headlee Amendment case, Bolt v City of Lansing (the “rain tax” case) and Kreski v Modern Wholesale Electric and Consumers Power (adopting the “Fireman’s Rule”).
Baker was counsel of record in over 40 published state and federal appellate decisions, including Stockdale v Jamison (establishing the Michigan rule of damages in wrongful refusal to defend and wrongful refusal to settle cases), in 1982; MacDonald v State Farm Mut Ins Co (defining the relationship between eligibility for no-fault work-loss benefits and illness that independently renders the insured unable to work), General Motors v Department of Treasury (prohibiting double taxation under the use and sales tax acts of the value of goodwill repairs performed after the vehicle warranty expired), Bolt v City of Lansing (the “rain tax” case holding a storm water fee to be a tax under theHeadlee Amendment), and Kreski v Modern Wholesale Electric and Consumers Power (adopting the “Fireman’s Rule”). In each of these, Baker secured victory after the lower courts had ruled against his clients.
Baker has devoted substantial efforts to pro bono work Bar activity, including: 24 years as Chairperson of the Michigan State Bar Publications and Website Committee, which oversees all Michigan State Bar publications, from 1987 to 2011; Reporter for the Michigan State Bar Grievance Committee,1982-84; Michigan State Bar Young Lawyers Section Councilperson, 1981-84; Chair, Michigan State Bar Committee for the Delivery of Legal Services to the Elderly, 1978-88; and Founder and President of the T. M. Cooley Law School’s Sixty Plus Law Center, Inc., from 1978-87, where he has served as a Board member from 1987 to present. With friend John Voelker, a/k/a Robert Traver (author of Anatomy of a Murder and former Michigan Supreme Court Justice) and Richard F. Vander Veen III, Baker founded the John D. Voelker Foundation, which has provided over 24 law school scholarships to Native Americans. He also serves as a trustee and chair of the Lansing Area Community Trust and Lansing’s W.B. and Candace Thoman Foundation, which provides grants to promote civil liberties and assist Lansing community and educational programs.
Baker is listed in Who’s Who in: America, American Law, and the World; enjoys Martindale-Hubbell’s highest (A-V) rating, and is the author of numerous scholarly publications, including Journal of Insurance and Indemnity Law, Closing the Door on Michigan Consumer Act Claims (2015); Michigan Appellate Practice Journal and Michigan Journal of Insurance and Indemnity Law (dual publication), Suggestions for Improving Your Chances When Applying for Leave to Appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court (2014); Anatomy of a Settlement, 78 Mich. B.J. 446 (1999); Michael Pe-Taw-Se-Gay: A Voice for Native Americans, 71 Mich B.J. 898 (1992); Co-Author, Annual Surveys of Insurance Law, 36 Wayne L. Rev. 711 (1990), 34 Wayne L. Rev. 859 (1988), 32 Wayne L. Rev. 677 (1986), 30 Wayne L. Rev. 675 (1984), and 29 Wayne L. Rev. 797 (1983); Michigan Bar Examination Appeal Manual (1982); Note, Development Rights Transfer and Landmarks Preservation, 9 Urban L. Ann. 131 (1975); Comments, Eminent Domain and the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, 9 Urban L. Ann. 237 (1975); Water Pollution Control Reform in Iowa, 8 Urban L. Ann. 241 (1974), and numerous book reviews, as well as the editor of dozens of articles published in the Michigan Bar Journal since 1984.
