Doug Phillips, a lawyer specializing in workers’ compensation who later became a vintner, died July 15. He was 64.
Phillips died at his Denver home from the effects of brain cancer. It had been diagnosed in May.
“We’ve lost a strong advocate of the injured worker and a damn good winemaker,” said Edwin L. Felter Jr., senior administrative law judge in the Denver courts.
In his eulogy at the July 22 service for Phillips, Felter said, “Doug did workers’ compensation law back in the 1970s when very few lawyers did and when it was not that popular a field to get into. He set the gold standard for the ethical, fair and compassionate practice of workers’ compensation law.”
Douglas Phillips was born in St. George, Utah, on Sept. 4, 1943.
His father, Robert Phillips, died when Phillips was 4, and while growing up he was given odd jobs, including baling hay and counting bottles at a soft-drink-bottling plant. After high school, he joined the Army, was a paratrooper and graduated from the Artillery and Missile Officer Candidate School.
He served in the Utah National Guard but resigned his commission as an officer in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War.
He put himself through the University of Utah working as a tow-truck driver and managed a motel with his first wife, Haven Howell.
Phillips earned his law degree at the University of Denver.
In addition to practicing law, he taught at the DU Law School and testified before the Colorado General Assembly dozens of times about workers’ compensation.
He married Sue Steninger Knisley on Aug. 20, 1994. They had met when they were on opposite sides in a court case.
In 1984, Phillips and a friend, Erik Bruner, started Plum Creek Cellars in Larkspur. He and Sue Phillips enlarged the company production from 400 cases of wine a year to 10,000 cases.
Phillips was determined that Plum Creek would be the first winery to make wine from only Colorado grapes.
He bought land near Paonia and grew chardonnay and pinot noir grapes.
Doug and Sue Phillips were also avid art collectors, said Mike Hurshman of Whitewater.
“They collected really high- quality art,” said Hurshman, an art dealer.
Phillips’ daughter Jennifer of Somerville, Mass., said her dad taught his children to “question authority, think for yourself and don’t follow the party line. He was a freethinker. He could also turn any negative into a positive.”
In addition to his wife and daughter, Phillips is survived by another daughter, Megan of San Diego.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
