Packard keeps up the fight for employee rights

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On a sunny March weekend earlier this year, Tamara B. Packard went kayaking between the “icebergs” of Lake Monona. That’s just one recent indication of her strong will and fearlessness.

Another was her willingness to relocate to Madison without a job in the mid-90s after a few years in legal practice. In time, Packard landed her “dream job” practicing employee-rights law and other civil litigation at Cullen Weston Pines & Bach LLP.

Her very first case there was advocating for domestic-partner benefits for Madison’s public school teachers. Under the tutelage of Lester Pines, the firm prevailed before the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in Pritchard v. MMSD and Madison Teachers Inc.

Now a partner at the firm, a more recent success was Donohoo v. Action Wisconsin, 2008 WI 56.

“I was deeply, personally and professionally engaged in that case, and at its most stressful point, during the trial court stage, I was actually having daily migraines,” she said.

Packard defended Action Wisconsin, now known as Fair Wisconsin Inc., the statewide gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered/questioning equality advocacy group, in a public-figure defamation lawsuit. The plaintiff could not show actual malice and the trial court granted summary judgment.

Action Wisconsin then successfully moved for sanctions, arguing the case was frivolous.

Ultimately the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed.

It wasn’t Packard’s first high-court success; she’d previously convinced the court to allow her client’s admission to the bar in In re Vanderperren in 2003.

“Being involved in any case that gets published is rare and wonderful. But I can also tell you that I’ve gotten a great deal of satisfaction out of some smaller cases that you’ll never see anything written about because they’re problem-solving without litigation,” she said.

Packard is a founding board member of the Fair Wisconsin Education Fund. She also writes a column about legal issues for the GLBTQ community for a Madison publication entitled “Our Lives.”

She and domestic partner Renee Herbers spend their weekends hosting dinner parties, in between home improvements.

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