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The Lakeland lawyer's contributions have come in the legal arena, in which she was the driving force behind two of the most significant citrus-related litigations in the past three decades.
A 1980s case forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to pursue "orange juice adulterators" — juice processors outside Florida who were adding sugar and other additives to inferior juice and misleadingly selling it as 100 percent OJ. The faux OJ was taking market share away from the genuine Florida product, diminishing the brand and profits to the state's growers.
But the Florida Department of Citrus had no authority over out-of-state processors, said Bernie Lester, the department's executive director at the time, and FDA officials initially showed little interest in pursuing litigation.
Florida traditionally provides nearly all the domestically produced OJ in the U.S., and the state's juice processors buy 95 percent of the annual orange crop. But three major freezes and a couple of minor ones during the 1980s destroyed crops and trees, creating an opening for the unscrupulous OJ processors.
Working as the Citrus Department's general counsel, Gunter, 58, and the department's scientists built the case against the adulterating processors and shared it to the FDA, which agreed to pursue criminal charges. Some company officials got jail time, Lester said, and OJ adulteration has not been an issue since.
"The adulteration issue was not one that got a lot of headlines, but it was very important to the Florida citrus industry," said Bill Becker, owner and CEO of Peace River Citrus Products Inc., a Vero Beach processor, who was chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission at the time. "She stayed on top of it and pushed and pushed. Absent her involvement, I'm not sure we would have been successful."
The Florida citrus industry still feels the effects of the second, more controversial case last decade involving five foreign citrus processors represented by Gunter that nullified a state tax on imported orange juice.
The Florida Citrus Commission, the Citrus Department's governing body, imposed the imports tax to help finance OJ marketing, which represent more than half its annual budget.
The Citrus Department, a state agency that promotes Florida citrus products, is financed mostly by taxes paid by Florida growers. Those growers argued OJ imports benefit from that marketing program and should help finance it through a tax equal to theirs, thus giving the levy its name, "equalization tax."
While Florida growers supply more than 90 percent of the 1 billion gallons of orange juice consumed annually in the U.S., processors need imported OJ to meet domestic demand.
Gunter essentially won the argument the state tax was illegal because the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to tax imports. In agreeing to the 2003 settlement, Citrus Department officials conceded U.S. trade officials had advised the state tax was probably illegal under World Trade Organization rules.
The settlement has cost the Citrus Department millions of dollars in tax revenue, a loss that subsequently became more acute. The department has lost millions more since 2005 under the impact of weather and diseases that has cut Florida's average orange production dropped by a third.
The howls from Florida growers have grown only louder that imports unfairly benefit from Citrus Department marketing without paying, commonly called "free rider."
Gunter said she knew the equalization tax lawsuit carried the risk that Florida growers, most of her clients, would ostracize her, especially if she won.
"That was a heavy lift for me, both personally and professionally," she said. "I was told I would not eat lunch in this town again if I took the case. I was prepared for that, but every lawyer I know has faced that in his career."
Perhaps, but few lawyers would take on the risk, said Judge Lynn Tepper of the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court in Dade City, a friend and former law school classmate familiar with the case.
"It takes a lot of guts. You're going against the people in your own community, like Atticus Finch defending someone the community doesn't like," said Tepper, referring to the main character in the book and movie, "To Kill a Mockingbird."
Almost nine years after she settled the lawsuit, Gunter still eats lunch in Lakeland and other citrus towns and still counts some of the biggest names in Florida citrus among her clients.
Army Brat
Kristen Elizabeth Gunter was born Feb. 13, 1954, to Roy and Hope Elizabeth Carlson in St. John's, Newfoundland, in Canada, where her father, an Air Force pilot, was stationed. She was the fourth of the couple's five children and the elder daughter.
A self-described "Army brat," Gunter and her family moved every few years with Roy Carlson's reassignments. She lived, by chronological order, in St. John's; Colorado Springs, Colo.; Burlington, Vt.; Montgomery, Ala.; Madrid, Spain; Lompoc, Calif.; Tampa; Okinawa, Japan; and back to Tampa.
Unlike some Army brats, who complain of feeling rootless and losing friends, Gunter said she enjoyed the frequent relocations.
"I enjoyed the new horizons," she said. "It probably installed a rhythm of change in me. In early adulthood, I did have a feeling every three years, I would like something new."
Her mother, now Hope Kirkendall, a Lakeland resident, said Gunter from a young age was an explorer and a risk-taker. She usually wanted to do what her three older brothers were doing, such as riding her bother's rocking horse, even at age 3, when she was too small to reach the stirrups.
At age 5, Gunter taught herself to ice skate and to ride a bicycle without training wheels, an early example of the relentlessness that has served her well in her legal career.
"She fell off that bike 89 times a day," Kirkendall said. "She would go on top of a hill, then ride it down. But she couldn't stop, so she would crash. Then she'd go back to the top of the hill."
A tomboy? "Oh, boy, was she ever," the mother said.
Gunter got straight A's in school and was a good athlete, particularly excelling at swimming, but she remained popular with fellow students because she never put on airs, family and friends said. She was the kind of person who becomes the homecoming queen and head cheerleader, both of which Gunter did at her polyglot high school in Okinawa.
After her graduation, the family returned to Tampa and Gunter graduated in three years from the University of Florida with a bachelor's degree in journalism. A law degree from Stetson University followed in 1977.
Gunter worked at small law firms and the Pasco County State Attorney's Office before finding her niche in Florida citrus in 1980, when she joined the Citrus Department legal staff and soon rose to general counsel, its top lawyer.
Through her life and career, Gunter has shown a natural ability to put others at ease, often with humor, usually expressed through a quip or a knowing jest that breaks up a sober conversation, said family, friends and even former legal adversaries.
"She's a delight to deal with," said lawyer Hank Campbell, now with Valenti, Campbell, Trohn, Tamayo & Aranda in Lakeland, who represented the Citrus Commission in the equalization tax lawsuit. "The truly best thing about her is she truly cares about the Florida citrus industry."
And she takes as well as she gives, said Robert Carlson, 61, a retired Denver lawyer and the brother who let Gunter ride his hobby horse.
"One of her endearing qualities is that she laughs easily," he said. "She makes you think you're funny, and I'm not very funny."
[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-422-6800. ]
