February 2016 – Lions Of The Texas bar

Forrest Smith: A Lawyer and GC with a Heart for Community Service

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_4″ last=”no” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_imageframe lightbox=”no” lightbox_image=”” style_type=”none” hover_type=”none” bordercolor=”” bordersize=”0px” borderradius=”0″ stylecolor=”” align=”none” link=”” linktarget=”_self” animation_type=”0″ animation_direction=”down” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” hide_on_mobile=”no” class=”” id=””] [/fusion_imageframe][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”3_4″ last=”yes” spacing=”yes” center_content=”no” hide_on_mobile=”no” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” background_position=”left top” hover_type=”none” link=”” border_position=”all” border_size=”0px” border_color=”” border_style=”” padding=”” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”” animation_speed=”0.1″ animation_offset=”” class=”” id=””][fusion_text]By Mark Curriden

(Feb. 23) – Forrest Smith had been a lawyer in the tax department of Magnolia Petroleum (now known as Mobil Oil) for only six months when the company’s assistant general counsel, Roy Ledbetter, approached him about handling a personal case for his family.

The client was an important employee of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. More importantly, the client was Ledbetter’s daughter’s husband, who had been sued after he rear-ended another car.

“The assistant GC said it was time to get my feet wet in court,” Smith says. “I felt there was a lot of pressure to win.”

Smith argued that the “sudden emergency” doctrine applied because the plaintiff had stopped suddenly without warning and thus contributed to the accident.

“We were thrilled beyond measure when the jury ruled in our favor, especially because this was my trial,” he says. “My happiness didn’t last.”

The lawyer for the plaintiff, David Kidder of Thompson & Knight, filed a motion for a new trial claiming the evidence did not support the verdict. The trial judge agreed.

“Need I say the jury ruled against us this time?” Smith says. “My trial future became quite cloudy.”

Since graduating from the Southern Methodist University School of Law in 1963, Smith has been on a mission to use the law to improve North Texas. In fact, no lawyer has been more community focused.

Smith has chaired the Dallas Economic Development Board, the Parkland Hospital Board, the Texas Youth Commission, the Dallas Better Business Bureau and the Greater Dallas Chamber of Commerce. He helped create the General Counsel Forum and the Committee for a Qualified Judiciary. He’s even served as Honorary Counsel General of Thailand.

Smith has mediated more than 500 disputes. Ninety-eight percent resulted with settlements. He even took a major tax case to the Supreme Court of the United States.

“I learned that lawyers were extremely influential citizens and the practice of law could be used to improve our communities,” says Smith, who is now senior counsel at Friedman & Feiger.

Smith spent the first 35 years of his legal career in-house at Mobil. He handled a lot of employment law matters, including litigating about 50 arbitrations in Texas, Alaska and Wyoming.

“I particularly enjoyed my monthly visits to Mobil’s Beaumont refinery, which is where my father had worked for 40 years and where I had summer jobs,” Smith says. “My representation of the Mobil facility in Beaumont gave me the opportunity to try my first – and last – Admiralty case.”

In 1975, Mobil executives transferred Smith to its tax department in Dallas. He regularly supervised 50 property, sales and income tax cases, including the hiring of local counsel in each of those matters.

“My 35 years with Mobil was very influential in shaping my life – both as an attorney and civic leader,” he says. “Early in my career with Mobil, I had a great interest in public affairs. I made over a 100 speeches to Rotary clubs and other civic organizations demonstrating all of the great things that come from petroleum. This was when oil was $5.00 per barrel.”

Mobil encouraged Smith to “participate in political and civic affairs,” and he did.

“In the late 1970s, it became clear that judges were no longer being elected just on their record,” he says. “I created the Committee for a Qualified Judiciary (CQJ) to help educate the public on which candidates are qualified, irrespective of political party.

“I firmly believe the current system of electing judges does not serve the community,” he says. “The CQJ is still active, but only legislation will change the system.”

While community service was a significant part of his job, Mobil still depended on him to help with all major tax disputes, including one that took Smith to the U.S. Supreme Court as second chair in 1983. The case was Container Corp. v. Franchise Tax Bd.

“During the mid-1970s, the biggest issue facing international corporations was whether states had the ability to tax income of U.S. corporations when the income was earned totally outside of the U.S.,” he says.

“We argued that such tax violated the U.S. Constitution and the 5^th amendment,” he says. “The states argued that so long as the tax was measured by the amount of activity generated by the corporation in the state, the tax was permissible.”

In a five-to-three decision, the justices ruled that the corporation had enough activity in the State of California to permit the tax levy.

When Smith retired from Mobil, he joined the Dallas law office of Arter & Hadden and continued his focus on tax law. In the early 1990s, the Dallas County Appraisal District tried to reduce the number of taxpayers claiming that their land was used for agriculture purposes, which entitled them to a lower rate of tax.

“My client owned several thousands of acres in Las Colinas under the agriculture exemption and it would have cost millions of dollars if he lost the agriculture exemption,” he says. “We had a five-day jury trial and were very pleased that the jury supported our theory. The client was also happy.”

During the next two decades, Smith practice at Bell Nunnally and Ryan Law LLP, where he provided state and local tax litigation representation to corporate clients and presided over alternative dispute resolutions in complex legal controversies. But he truly focused on his community service projects, including:

Helped create the first Minority Counsel program to promote minority attorneys within the corporate community;
Helped create the Russell Perry Award to honor leaders promoting the free enterprise system and raised more than $5 million dollars last year for Dallas Baptist University scholarships;
Led in the creation of the Dallas Life Ledgen’s of Service Award, which raises funds to assist the homeless in Dallas; and
In 2012, the General Counsel Forum created the Forrest Smith Scholarship Award, which provides funds for low-income students at the SMU Dedman School of Law.

In 1997, Smith came up with the idea of creating a non-profit organization for corporate in-house lawyers to share best practices. The result was the creation of what was initially called the Dallas-Fort Worth General Counsel Management Practices Forum.

“Riding the wave of Forrest’s boundless energy, enthusiasm and contacts, the organization swelled into today’s The General Counsel Forum—a state-wide community of more than 700 general counsel and senior managing counsel representing more than 450 companies and organizations,” says Classic Industries General Counsel John Clement. “Forrest is a friend and mentor whose place among the Lions of the Bar is well deserved.”

While the Dallas community has benefited greatly from Smith’s leadership skills, he has received a few bonuses, too. For example, as head of the Chamber, he invited all of the ambassadors from around the world to come to Dallas for a weekend. During one of the visits, Smith became friends with the Ambassador from Greece.

“He told me that Thailand was looking for a representative from Texas and he would like to nominate me,” he says. “I knew little about Thailand, but I was honored to be nominated. About a year later, I was notified that the King had appointed me as his representative and I was now the Honorary Counsel General of Thailand.

“Now, 20 years later, I continue to represent Thailand working with U.S. citizens wanting to travel there and companies who want to do business there,” Smith says. “Some of the 6,000 Thai citizens in DFW are my close friends.”[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

David Beck: ‘Can’t Believe They Pay Me to Do This’

HOUSTON (Feb. 22) – David Beck – only months removed from law school – stood before a Harris County District Court jury. The year was 1965 and he represented an older couple who drove their car the wrong way on a newly built freeway. They collided head-on with another vehicle, causing serious injuries to the driver.

It was Beck’s first trial.

“I argued that it was a dark night and there were no lights and that these people acted reasonably and the accident was unavoidable,” he said. “I was absolutely petrified. I didn’t want the partner to go with me in case I embarrassed myself.”

Beck did just fine. The three-day trial ended with the jury ruling that his clients were not negligent.

“It was a small case, but I knew right then that I wanted to try cases for a living,” he said.

Five decades later, Beck is one of the go-to trial lawyers in the U.S. He’s represented some of the biggest corporations and most prominent individuals – Exxon Mobil, Clear Channel Communications, Enterprise Products, the Bass brothers, for example – in cases in which tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake.

Corporate general counsel have a short list of lawyers to call when they face bet-the-company litigation. In Texas, the list always includes Beck.

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Born in Pittsburgh in 1940, Beck is the oldest of five children. His family moved to Port Arthur when he was 14. His father worked at a refinery and a janitor. His mom was a homemaker.

For college, Beck stayed home, worked as a janitor and studied history and government at Lamar University in Beaumont. In 1962, he headed off to law school at the University of Texas.

“I arrived at UT with a suitcase and a dream,” he said. “Dean Page Keaton told us on the first day of law school that you can spend your whole life as an honest and good lawyer but you can lose that reputation in five minutes.”

Upon graduating from UT in 1965, Beck joined Fulbright & Jaworski’s litigation section.

Five years after the trial involving the elderly couple, Beck was back in Harris County District Court. Seated at the opposing counsel’s table was another young lawyer showing a lot of promise: John O’Quinn.

O’Quinn represented two Houston police officers who were driving in their patrol car with their lights and siren blasting when another vehicle crashed into them at a cross streets. Both officers claimed injuries.

“O’Quinn tried to get the jury excited or prejudiced by telling them that my client jumped out of his car and started screaming obscenities,” Beck said. “What O’Quinn didn’t know is that my client was in a German concentration camp. My client told the jury about the experience and he showed the jury the numbers that the Nazi’s tattooed on his wrist.

“The jury sat in absolute silence,” he said.

Beck offered $1,250 to settle. O’Quinn demanded $3,250. The jury basically split the demands and awarded $2,000.

“I was crushed by the verdict,” Beck said. “I truly thought I would win. I remember walking into the office of the chair of the litigation section of Fulbright and told him that if I couldn’t win that case that I needed to quit the practice of law.”

Beck stayed at Fulbright for another 23 years and eventually became the head of its energy and environmental section.

In January 1992, Beck decided to strike out on his own and formed his own boutique with Joe Redden and Ron Secrest. Together, they built a litigation powerhouse of 42 lawyers.

“I enjoy what I do so much that I still can’t believe they pay me,” Beck said. “I try to stake out the moral high ground. Jurors want to do what’s right.”

In the two-dozen years since starting Beck Redden, the firm’s senior partner has taken more than a hundred cases to trial.

One of Beck’s biggest courtroom victories occurred in 2010 when he represented Memorial Hermann Hospital in a lawsuit brought by a group of Houston physicians who owned a failed hospital. The lawsuit accused Memorial Hermann of using illegal anti-competitive tactics and tortious interference that led to their hospital‘s failure.

The plaintiffs sought hundreds-of-millions of dollars in damages and several million dollars more in lawyer fees.

“We showed that these doctors made a special secret side deal in which they got a rebate or kickback from the insurance company, but never told the patients about it,” Beck said. “I asked the doctors on the witness stand why they didn’t inform their patients, and each one provided a different answer. The jury clearly didn’t think they were telling the truth.”

The Houston jury heard nine weeks of testimony but deliberated less than three hours before it returned with a verdict completely vindicating Beck’s client.

Two years later, Beck was back in trial representing Exxon Mobil. One of the corporation’s executives sued, claiming the Irving-based oil and gas company’s compensation plan was illegal because it restricted or even eliminated stock options if the executive left to work for a competitor.

The executive sought $5 million in damages. Exxon Mobil also realized that a loss in this single case would call into question the oil giant’s worldwide executive compensation program.

Once again, Beck convinced the jury to rule in his client’s favor. The Texas Supreme Court upheld the decision and the ruling set a precedent.

Beck’s list of successes is several pages long. He represented a small oil and gas exploration company in a trade secrets case in which $140 million in damages were at stake. He represented the University of Texas in a legal battle against Ryan O’Neal over the ownership of Andy Warhol’s portrait of Farrah Fawcett, which was valued as much as $12 million.

The case eventually settled, but Beck said lawyers need to show they are willing to go to trial, even in questionable cases.

“Lawyers who don’t lose cases at trial are not trying that many cases,” Beck said. “In hindsight, I wish I had known that the law practice would eventually gravitate toward becoming a ‘business’ as opposed to remaining a true profession. I don’t know that I would have done anything differently, but it would certainly have been a factor in deciding my career path.”

Beck said his only other possible professions would have been teaching or becoming a Catholic missionary priest.

In a recent interview with Young Lawyers Magazine, Beck said there are two lawyers he admires most.

“The first is John Adams, who in 1770 defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre when anti-British feelings were at their peak,” he said. “Nevertheless, he defended them because he believed in the right to effective counsel for the accused.”

The second hero was a former law partner at Fulbright: Leon Jaworski.

“As the Watergate prosecutor, he clashed with then-President Richard Nixon over the tapes of conversations recorded by the President,” he said. “After Jaworski successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that Nixon was required to turn over the tapes, on August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned. Jaworski established the principle that not even a President is above the law.

“Leon Jaworski stressed the duty that we lawyers have to serve the profession and make it better,” Beck said. “I have tried to live by that admonition.”[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

H. Ron White: Breaking Barriers and Setting Standards – Updated

(Feb. 28) – Ron White has scored huge courtroom victories and represented some of the nation’s largest corporate clients. He’s mentored some of the most successful lawyers in Dallas, including several judges.

White successfully built his law firm from scratch. He’s served in some of the most prestigious positions for business and community organizations in North Texas. Like the other Lions of the Texas Bar, he has been honored with just about every award state and local bar associations hand out.

But White is unlike the other 49 Lions. None of them have experienced anything close to White’s life and career. He is the only who is African-American.

“I got used to being the only one a long time ago,” White says. “Today, I am one of this group of 50, which is a huge honor because these are the best of the best lawyers. But 45 years ago, I was also the only one… I mean, the only one black business lawyer in all of Dallas.

“Back then, at bar association meetings, I really stood out,” he says.

The impact that White has had on the DFW legal community has been immeasurable.

“Ron is a true trailblazer,” says former American Airlines General Counsel Gary Kennedy. “It doesn’t hurt that he’s an excellent lawyer and an extraordinarily nice guy.”

White’s place in Dallas legal history is secured. He was the first African-American male to serve as a state District Court judge in Dallas. He was a co-founder of the General Counsel Forum, a long-serving board member of the Urban League and a member of the executive board of Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.

Ron White was born on Feb. 10, 1941 in Richmond, Va.

“Opportunities were few, but education was the road-map to success,” White says.

White went to Hampton University, where he graduated in 1962 with a degree in biology. That year, he joined the Army, where he served as a captain in Germany and Vietnam. In 1967, he was appointed to the General’s Staff as the Regional Petroleum Logistical Supply Officer in Quinn Yan Vietnam in 1967.

In 1969, he began his legal studies at Howard University Law School. He clerked for the general counsel of the Federal Power Commission, now known as FERC.

Atlantic Richfield Co., an oil refinery and extraction company now owned by Tesoro, recruited White when he graduated from law school in 1971 to be an in-house lawyer handling environmental- and employment-related matters. A condition of the employment was a move to Dallas.

“Dallas was such a small town back then,” he says. “No African-Americans worked at any of the corporate law firms. Racial attitudes were not ideal, but they were changing.”

White handled land issues, drafted opinions on various regulatory matters and supervised outside counsel.

“There was actually some concern that I would not be admitted to the Dallas Bar because there were only two black lawyers who were members at the time,” he says. “There was not a lot of interaction with white lawyers who worked for ARCO. I would say it was less than a warm welcome.”

According to state bar records, there were 17 lawyers of color practicing in Dallas in 1972. Nearly all of them were criminal defense lawyers.

“Most African-American lawyers operated at small practices or shared office space,” White said at a CLE program at SMU Dedman School of Law in 2016.

White left ARCO in 1977 to start a downtown law firm capable of competing against the biggest business law firms in Dallas. He said he took cases he did not plan to take because he needed to “pay bills and put food on the table.”

“I remember the day we went from manual typewriters to an IBM electric type writer,” he says. “Then I got a fax machine and we were kicking out documents. We were paddling fast, trying to build a law firm that we knew the city and the business community needed.”

In 1983, Texas Gov. Mark White appointed White to be Dallas’s first black male state District Court judge, where he served for two years.

White campaigned to be elected for the district court for a full term in 1985, but he lost by 3,000 votes.

“It hurt a lot because it was such a close margin,” he says. “But it was an amazing experience.

Rejoining the private sector, White decided he wanted to build a new law firm, but he also recognized he needed help.

White developed a unique marketing and business development partnership with the global law firm Jones Day that allowed lawyers with White’s law firm, which is now called White & Wiggins, to move into the Trammel Crow Tower offices of the mega-firm.

“Jones Day had a floor they were not using,” he says. “They provided us with business opportunities we could not otherwise have had and we provided them opportunities that they otherwise could not have had.

“We wanted to be able to practice our craft at a level that only a large business law firm would provide,” he says.

In the past two decades, White & Wiggins has successfully represented the DFW International Airport Board, Ford Motor Company and American Airlines.

White was lead counsel for the DFW Airport in an environmental qui tam lawsuit that alleged that fuels and residue from the airport had made its way into nearby streams and creeks. The plaintiffs sought $300 million in actual damages, which could be trebled under the U.S. False Claims Act.

White successfully turned the multi-week trial into a battle of experts, which favored his defense. The courtroom victory showcased the legal skills of White and his team.

White was co-counsel with Locke Lord to shepherd a $700 million bond issuance that funded the construction of a sewage system and a separate $300 million bond issuance that helped build the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas.

As successful as White’s representation of clients has been, it pales in comparison to his record of mentoring great lawyers and leaders, including Dallas Court of Appeals Chief Judge Carolyn Wright and state District judges Brenda Green and Tonya Parker.

“He was more than just a boss,” says Potter House General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer Darwin Bruce. “Ron is a leader who is passionate about his career. As a young lawyer, he cares about you as an individual and your success.”

Bruce and others say that White had a dream and many lawyers benefited from it.

“African-American lawyers and Hispanic lawyers are just as capable of doing highly sophisticated legal work as others,” White says. “Our goal has been to get business lawyers to recognize our abilities.

“Lawyers determine the rules in life. For that reason, it is important that African-Americans be at the table,” he says.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]