Hardy Myers

Hardy Myers (October 25, 1939 – November 29, 2016) was an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served three terms as the 15th attorney general of the state of Oregon, United States. Prior to taking office in 1997, he served from 1975 to 1985 in the Oregon House of Representatives, the last four of those years as its speaker, and was also a Metro councilor and chaired the Oregon Criminal Justice Council.

Early life and education Myers was born October 25, 1939, in Electric Mills, Mississippi. He moved with his family to Bend in central Oregon in 1943 where his father, a lumberman, became manager of the Shevlin-Hixon Lumber Company, one of the two large mills that used to operate on the Deschutes River. His family then moved to Prineville in 1951. He attended public schools until graduation from high school.

Myers returned to Oregon to continue on to law school at the University of Oregon School of Law in Eugene, earning a LL.B. in 1964. While at the University of Oregon he became Phi Eta Sigma (freshman scholastic honorary), Phi Kappi Phi (undergraduate scholastic honorary), Omicron Delta Kappa (undergraduate leadership honorary). He was also on the Board of Editors of the Oregon Law Review. During that time, East made national headlines for ordering U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to show why an Oregon lawyer should not be paid for defending a criminal defendant he had been ordered to defend by the federal court. In what Time magazine said was "may be the neatest constitutional argument of the year", East justified the expenditure under the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. At Stoel Rives, his practice specialties were labor and employment law, and government affairs law.

State legislator He first ran for, and was elected to, the Oregon House of Representatives in the 1974 elections representing what was then House District 19 (parts of NE and SE Portland). He served as in the House until 1985. In that time he was rated most outstanding member of Oregon Legislature in The Oregonian 1979 and 1981 surveys of legislative observers (no 1983 survey); rated most outstanding metro area State Representative in Willamette Week surveys of legislative observers in 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. Myers twice served as chair for the Committee on Judiciary, first from 1977 to 1978 and once again from 1983 to 1984.

Under Myers, Oregon has been a leader in a series of multistate lawsuits against and settlements with big drug manufacturers in the past five years, as recently as October 22, 2008. Some of the cases involved companies such as Eli Lilly and Company, Merck, Pfizer and Purdue Pharma and garnered settlements of millions of dollars, some of which came back to Oregon to enable the state Department of Justice to pursue future investigations and enforce consumer-protection laws.

In early January 2008, Myers and Gov. Kulongoski announced that Oregon along with 14 other states are joining California in a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to uphold the right of states to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from automobiles. The lawsuit is in response to the EPA's denial of California's request for a waiver to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than those set by the federal government, preventing California, Oregon, and other states from implementing stricter greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars.

In August 2007, Myers announced that he would not seek reelection in 2008.

His third and final term as Attorney General ended on January 4, 2009.

Association and awards As Attorney General, Myers served as: Hardy Myers (D), 52% Victor Hoffer (R), 41% 2000 Hardy Myers (D) (inc.), 50% Kevin Mannix (R), 46% 2004 Hardy Myers (D) (inc.), 55% Paul Connolly (R), 40%

Personal life Myers married Mary Ann Thalhofer of Prineville in 1962. They had three sons, Hardy III, Christopher and Jonathan.