JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Friends and colleagues of retired U.S.District Judge L.T. Senter — who presided over numerous insurancecases that arose from Hurricane Katrina — are remembering him as ajurist who ruled fairly and with integrity.

Just weeks after he stepped down from the bench, Senter died atage 77 Wednesday in the emergency room of North Mississippi MedicalCenter in Tupelo, said Lee County Coroner Carolyn Green.

“He was a very intellectual judge, but he did not take himselftoo seriously. He was always kind to the lawyers and thelitigants,” said U.S. District Chief Judge Michael Mills.

Senter ruled in the early Katrina cases that private insurance policies excludedstorm surge from coverage. He also ruled wind damage is coveredeven if storm surge contributes to a loss, known as anti-concurrent causation. Insurance companies, he said, hadthe burden to prove flooding caused a loss in order to denycoverage.

U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers said he and Senter had beenfriends for four decades.

“Judge Senter had an excellent legal mind, the utmost integrityand was unfailingly fair. I miss him greatly,” Biggers said.

Senter served as a circuit judge before he was appointed to thefederal bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. His full name wasLionel Thomas Senter, but he went by L.T.

From 1980 to 1982 he was a federal judge in Mississippi'sNorthern District, and served as the district's chief judge from1982 to 1998. He took senior status in 1998, and began traveling tothe coast in 2000 to help with the caseload there. After Katrinastruck in 2005, Senter agreed to preside over hundreds of insurance cases.

Mills said he and Senter were both from Fulton, but what theyhad in common didn't end there.

“I stood before him as a young lawyer and I was out of the samelaw firm he was from. I got his desk from when he was in the firm,and I later became a federal judge,” Mills said.

Senter was diagnosed with polio as a teenager and used crutchesmost of his adult life. In later years, he used a wheelchair,Biggers said.

“When he and I were circuit judges together traveling over northMississippi, just one or two of the courthouses had elevators. He'dhave to go up to the second and third floor and he would do it oncrutches. He never complained. He never failed to meet the courtwhen it was scheduled,” Biggers said.

Mills and Biggers said Senter didn't allow anything to slow himdown.

“He played golf. He drove himself and he was a delightfulsaxophone player. He used to be in a band. He was a real mentor toyoung lawyers,” Mills said.

U.S. Magistrate Robert H. Walker worked with Senter on the caseson the Gulf Coast. Walker said Senter “worked wonders” in helpingresolve the cases — many through a mediation system he devised.

“He strove to bring justice and relief to all the litigants onboth sides of the lawsuits, and I think he succeeded in doingthis,” Walker said.

Senter's office closed 1,421 Katrina cases.

Biggers said Senter's survivors include his wife, Elizabeth, andson, Jay.

Funeral services were incomplete, according to Tisdale-LannMemorial Funeral Home in Aberdeen.