Anne B Cathcart

Anne B. Cathcart devoted her legal career to public service in Nevada. She earned her juris doctorate in 1983 from the University of Santa Clara School of Law in California and joined the Office of the Attorney General as a legal researcher in 1988. Admitted to the Nevada bar in 1990, she was sworn in as a deputy attorney general that same year and rose to senior deputy attorney general in 1994.

Much of her work centered on inmate civil rights litigation, which she supervised for three years. She served on the Ninth Circuit Court task force on prison remedy procedures and was instrumental in developing a case evaluation system for resolving inmate litigation in cooperation with the U.S. District Court and the Nevada Department of Prisons. Those efforts, together with her work with the National Association of Attorneys General on prisoner litigation reform, helped reduce Nevada's inmate litigation by 66 percent.

Cathcart was designated a special assistant to the attorney general in June 1998 and served as the office's primary legislative liaison during the 1997 and 1999 sessions under Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa. Most notably, she represented the state in the tobacco litigation that culminated in the master settlement agreement between the tobacco industry and 46 states, including Nevada. Colleagues remembered her as a wonderful person to work with who always wanted to know how she could help. She died on August 15, 2000, at the age of 52.