Jack Potter and the Lawyer

Jack Potter was an old rancher from Beckham County, Oklahoma, who lived northwest of Elk City. I don’t know how it was that he first came to my office, nor do I recall any legal problems he had which demanded my services. In fact, the memory I have of his coming into my office was simply to visit. I always had coffee at the office and there were some people who frequently came in just to drink coffee and visit. It didn’t pay much, but there were always benefits other than monetary to be had. I never did all that much for him for which I could have conscientiously charged him and I don’t believe I ever sent him a bill for anything.

Jack seemed to be an old man at the time, the early 1980s. of course, at the time I was in my late 30s and he was probably no more than early to middle 60s, an age which would have seemed old then, but now that I am in my late 60s, it doesn’t really seem all that old. An old rancher, I never saw him without a dirty old cowboy hat and a chew of tobacco. He never spat so it caused some consternation on my part to watch him vigorously chew regardless of where he was.

He never had all that much, other than a house full of kids. They had the necessities of life, but little else. Rural Beckham County in those days when he would have raised his family was a difficult place to scratch out a living. He had managed to put together three quarter sections of land, a total of 480 acres of land, by simply working hard and living longer than he had had any reason to expect. That much land might sound like a lot of land, but in that part of the state it takes a lot of land to run a cow-calf operation of any size. Even though it was a lot of land, by some standards, the cow-calf operation he ran was not all that large. But, then fortune smiled on him.

In the early 1980s, there was an energy boom in this country which included Beckham County. Companies began deep well drilling for natural gas. Wells of 18-20,000 feet deep were not uncommon. It seemed wells were drilled almost everywhere and they were discovering gas in almost every area of the county. Prices were at an all-time high and people were making money. Even those people who had no wells drilled on their property were benefitting from mineral leases. We were all rich and if not rich, we were all comfortable.

El Paso Natural Gas, through their exploration division, drilled extensively in that and adjoining counties. They were a major player in that boom. They drilled three wells on Jack’s little ranch, one on each of the three quarter-sections. They were deep wells, exceeding 20,000 feet in depth. When they drill that deep, they have expended huge sums of money and have a vested interest, if not an urgent interest, in getting a return on their investment. All three of these wells “hit,” that is, they produced natural gas in huge quantities. They were good for El Paso and they were good for Jack.

Suddenly, Jack was a wealthy man. He was a hugely successful cowman with a very profitable cow-calf operation, something which was profitable because he could supplement it with his other income, his mineral income for which he didn’t have to turn a hand. It was a dream come true.

Jack really didn’t change his lifestyle all that much. He didn’t build a new house or divorce his wife to marry a younger woman or buy new cars and trucks. He continued to live as he always had, allowing the money to accumulate. He did come into my office one day and announced he and I were going to take helicopter flying lessons. He had decided to buy a helicopter (which he could use in his cattle operation and, thus, charge it off on his taxes) and he wanted me to fly with him. And, he thought it would be a lot of fun if we would both learn to fly together. I explained to him that I really couldn’t afford to do that and he replied that he was going to pick up the tab for the both of us. He had gone to the public library and read up on how helicopters work and the proper techniques of operating them. He explained it to me as we drove to Oklahoma City to look at the one he had decided to buy. It was a glorious little flying machine. We needed to do some more research into his finances and agreed to come back and begin our lessons later. Within a week, he came back into my office and announced that he had changed his mind, that he could buy a new pickup every month for this amount of money. While it wouldn’t be as fast or fun, there were benefits to being on the ground when checking cattle.

There was another time Jack considered spending a lot of money. He came into my office and asked what I would charge to defend him on a murder complaint. His daughter had been mistreated by her husband and Jack has decided to kill the young man. Asking what it would cost to defend him in a trial clearly showed that he wasn’t entirely committed to the idea of murder, he was just weighing his options. I said, “Jack, you know those three gas wells you have?” He allowed that he knew them better than most. “Well,” I continued, “you should still have one of them left after it’s all over. I’ll have the other two.” As he thought it over, he asked, “What if I just give him an ass whipping?” “In that case, Jack,” I replied, “you’ll still have all three wells and I’ll buy myself a new luxury car.” The talking about it was all he needed and the young man was spared his life, something he may have never known was in danger.

Then, there was the purchase of a life-time. K-C Cattle Company was a company which owned a large ranch, more than 6,000 acres, which it no longer used. It was no longer in the cattle business and its land interests were limited to oil and gas exploration and production. Land on which to run a cattle operation was no longer in its portfolio. Jack had been around that land for years; he had secretly wanted it for his own, but had never been so bold as to express it to others as it was too expensive for him to ever realistically think he might be able to acquire it. But, that was before El Paso had made him a relatively wealthy man. The ranch owned by the K-C Cattle Company was within his grasp.

The head of the K-C Cattle Company was a man by the name of Champlin. Mr. Champlin was a decent man, an old style gentleman about the same age or a little older than Jack. The two of them visited about the sale of the land and agreed to the terms by which Jack would take possession of the ranch. Basically, there was to be a structure of payment based on the production of the wells by which Jack had recently struck it rich. When they parted, Jack suggested and Mr. Champlin agreed that he would have me draft an agreement whereby Jack would take title to the land and the purchase would be financed and paid by the production of the gas wells. The amount of the payments would still leave Jack plenty of money to stock the ranch with choice beef cattle and operate it profitably.

I drafted an agreement based on the report given to me by Jack, and after he read it he assured me it was precisely what he and Mr. Champlin had agreed on. I then sent the agreement to Mr. Champlin’s lawyer, a man named Singsong. [Singsong is not his real name, but why invite a lawsuit for slander, even if truth is a defense?] The next week Jack and I went to meet with Mr. Champlin and his lawyer in Mr. Singsong’s office which was a couple hundred miles away. We had to drive because we didn’t have a helicopter.

A word of explanation about lawyers: they’re quite often jerks. I have seen more deals killed by lawyers than I care to recount. All Mr. Singsong had to do was read that agreement, confer with Mr. Champlin to determine whether it did in fact recite the agreement of the parties, and advise him if there was anything illegal or unenforceable about the agreement. But, he, like so many lawyers, saw everything through the eyes of an advocate. We met in his office, he sitting behind it in his large “power chair,” Mr. Champlin sitting to his left at the end of the desk in a normal office chair, and Jack and I sitting across from him in a pair chairs which seemed to have had their legs sawed off four or five inches.

Jack and I sat there looking up at Mr. Singsong as he went line by line picking the agreement apart. He found flaws in every sentence and every word. He didn’t like anything about it. When I tried to explain why it was written as it was, he wasn’t interested at all. He interrupted me every time I tried to say anything. He was rude and condescending and treated the two of us as if we were a couple of conmen who were trying to take advantage of poor Mr. Champlin. Poor Mr. Champlin indeed. He was a very successful businessman who probably ate schmucks like Jack and me for lunch. On and on Mr. Singsong went, and I was surprised that Jack was sitting there taking it all in very calmly. I noticed he had removed his hat when we sat down, one of the very few times I had ever seen him bareheaded. And, he wasn’t chewing tobacco. Those two facts alone told me he respected Mr. Champlin and was conducting himself accordingly. Mr. Champlin was quiet during the meeting, saying nothing to us or his lawyer. It was hard to tell what he was thinking.

After about twenty minutes of listening to Mr. Singsong talk down to us and treat us like a red-headed step-child, I quite calmly asked, “Jack, do you want that place this bad?”

“I God-damned sure don’t,” he replied as he stood and put his hat back where it belonged. “Let’s get out of here.”

By the time I stood, Jack was half-way to the door of Mr. Singsong’s lovely office, the kind intended to showcase a prosperous lawyer, but which really shouts to anyone who knows the system that it houses a price gouging SOB. I was picking up my briefcase as I heard Mr. Champlin take over the meeting. He asked us to wait and then proceeded to dress down his litigator. He told him that the papers were exactly what he and Jack had agreed to, even throwing in a remark that “Mr. Franklin has done a superb job” and that we were not there to argue about it. We were there to sign it.

We sat back down and went through the formalities of signing everything. Then we said our goodbyes, shook Mr. Champlin’s hand and started to leave. I noticed that Mr. Singsong was holding back across the room and appeared to feel badly about his behavior of earlier in the meeting. Jack was perfectly happy to say goodbye to Mr. Champlin and leave, but I couldn’t let that happen. I walked across the room, shook his hand and said, “It’s a pleasure having done business with you, Mike.”

Jack Potter, may he rest in peace. He’s a man from my past I greatly miss.