Prop 8 Trial Hero David Boies’ Daughter Dies of Cancer

On an American Foundation for Equal Rights conference call with reporters and bloggers Tuesday afternoon about the 9^th Circuit ruling on the standing issue, attorney Ted Olson explained that his legal partner David Boies was not on the call for a “very important reason.” That reason is that Boies’daughter Caryl, 48, died of cancer on Dec. 26.  In an article in the Miami Herald about her life and death, the paper reported that Caryl – who was born in Riverside, California, worked with her father on the federal challenge to Prop 8 that has made David Boies a member of the LGBT family.

AFER’s Chad Griffin says you can email condolences to mail@afer.org and AFER will forward them to David Boies.

Here’s an excert from the Miami Herald story:

“For attorney Caryl Louise Boies, no cause was hopeless, be it a class-action lawsuit against the federal government or a corporate giant — or her own cancer.

The founding partner of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP’s Fort Lauderdale office, “she was indefatigable,” said her father, David Boies, lead attorney for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in the Bush v. Gore case, which determined the 2000 election, and, with his opponent in that case, Ted Olson, led the fight to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage.

His daughter worked on both, David Boies said.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where his daughter argued several cases, “is probably the worst circuit for class actions,” said David Boies, of New York. “Every lawyer in the field thinks of Fifth as the place where class actions go to die.”

But that never deterred Caryl, who “saw the law as a way of helping people,” her father said. “From the time she got out of law school, she concentrated on plaintiff’s work.”

Two years ago, after Caryl Boies learned she had late-stage lung cancer, she stopped at nothing to find a cure. An ex-smoker, she underwent aggressive chemotherapy and experimental treatments as far away as China.

Born March 13, 1962, in Redlands, Calif., Boies died Dec. 26 at her dream house in Fort Lauderdale’s Rio Vista neighborhood. The West Indies-style home, designed by Javier Acebal of A & F Architectural Design, Inc., was among the project she began after diagnosis, and determined to complete.”

Tagged as: American Foundation for Equal Rights, Caryl Boies, David Boies, Prop 8 federal trial, Ted Olson