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I am compelled by a lawyer's ability to "get things done" in a just way and to help clients and plan participants realize on their legal rights. |
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Title: Managing Partner
Location: Portland
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Professional Experience
Donald A. Burns joined Miller Nash in 1973. He represents employers and boards of trustees regarding employee benefits matters, including tax-qualified and taxable pension, profit sharing, and health and welfare benefit plans, and the federal agency, business, money management, contract, and service provider issues of those plans. Don is a business and tax lawyer in the employee benefit plans area. He started with the firm as a litigator, prevailing in court and jury trials and at the Oregon Supreme Court. He handled the withdrawal liability administrative proceedings for the Oregon-Washington Carpenters-Employers Pension Trust Fund and was involved in the federal-court briefing that led to a 9-to-0 U.S. Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendments Act of 1980. Don got into employee benefits practice through litigation over merging the Portland Teachers' Retirement Fund Association into the Oregon Public Employees Retirement System ("PERS"), which resulted in the Portland School District's funding its unfunded pension liability with double tax-exempt bonds.
Don has been a partner since 1979 and served on most all Miller Nash committees. He has served as the firm's Acting Managing Partner since June 2007 and has been the Managing Partner since January 1, 2008.
Professional Activities
A member of the American Bar Association, the Oregon State Bar, and the Multnomah Bar Association, Don is a past president and former member of the board of directors of the Portland chapter of the Western Pension & Benefits Conference. For a number of years he was a special assistant attorney general to the State of Oregon and an adviser to the Oregon Department of Justice on employee benefits matters. Don served as a member of Governor John Kitzhaber's Committee on PERS. He also served on an Oregon Department of Insurance task force on multiple-employer welfare arrangements and on the Oregon Department of Human Resources Health Division task force on Policy and Technical Issues regarding implementation of the Oregon Health Plan. While in the U.S. Army at Fort Polk, Louisiana, Don assisted the U.S. Staff Judge Advocate General's Court Martial Trial Counsel. Don has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America for each year from 1993 through 2009, in the Best of the U.S., and in the inaugural and subsequent listings of Oregon Super Lawyers for 2006 through 2008.
Civic Activities
Don is a past trustee and treasurer of the Multnomah Athletic Club and served on its Finance, House, and Athletic Committees. He was a member of the Washington County Planning Commission for four years and chosen by the other members as the chairman for three years. He served on the Washington County Board of Adjustment, the Property Rights Commission, and the Blue Ribbon Committee for Land Use. He served as a director of the Washington County Employees Federal Credit Union, as a member and the president of the Raleigh Hills Community Planning Organization #3, and as a member of the Finance Committee of the Catlin Gabel School.
Education
Don earned his bachelor of arts undergraduate degree in social science pre-law, with high honors at Michigan State University, and his law degree, with distinction, at Duke University School of Law. He was a member of the Michigan State freshman basketball team in the 1964-1965 season, was a two-year dormitory resident assistant, and was a member of a number of honorary organizations.
Personal Activities
Don has coached basketball and baseball. His girls' teams won three Oregon AAU state basketball championships. His two daughters were college athletes. He is also a birder, family-history researcher, traveler, and stamp collector. Don's family has housed, taken into their family, and fully or partially supported two eastern European young women, who have graduated from Lewis & Clark College in Portland and are on their way to promising careers.
Practice Areas
Employee Benefits
Articles Authored
Supreme Court To Hear Arguments That Might Affect Cost of Group Health Plans
AV
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