McMath, Sid

English

University of Arkansas at Little Rock: UALR Bowen Law Repository

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review Volume 25 Issue 2 Article 1 2003 Henry Woods: A Great Lawyer, Judge, and Friend Sid McMath Follow this and additional works at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview  Part of the Judges Commons, and the Legal Biography Commons Recommended Citation Sid McMath, Henry Woods: A Great Lawyer, Judge, and Friend, 25 U. ARK. LITTLE ROCK L. REV. 221 (2003). Available at: https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/lawreview/vol25/iss2/1 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review by an authorized editor of Bowen Law Repository: Scholarship & Archives. For more information, please contact mmserfass@ualr.edu. HENRY WOODS: A GREAT LAWYER, JUDGE, AND FRIEND*Sid McMathtI appreciate having the opportunity to say a few words about my friendand my law partner, Judge Henry Woods. Henry and I both were from HotSprings. I was about four years older than he was, so I didn't get to knowhim in high school. His mother and my mother were very dear friends,though. I went to the University of Arkansas and was in law school whenHenry was an undergraduate. I got to know him better then. He and ElsijaneRoy, Judge Roy, were very active in student politics. They organized agroup of students into what was a political party and were pretty well incontrol of student elections there for two or three years. Of course, I wasalways interested in student elections, and even in law school, I had a curi-osity about them because I had organized a political group as a sophomoreand then ran for president of the student body in my senior year.When the war came along, Henry went into the FBI. He was theyoungest FBI agent in the service. His principal job was to search for andferret out cells of Nazi sympathizers and communists. The FBI training wasgreat for Henry.When the war was over, I was president of the Young Democrats, avery active young Democratic party-more active than the senior party. Iserved my term as the young Democratic president, was elected prosecutingattorney in Hot Springs, and began getting ready to run for governor. At thattime, Henry was president of the Young Democrats. I called Henry who waspracticing law in Texarkana and asked him if he could visit with me. I hadhim in mind for my campaign manager. He came to Hot Springs, and wevisited. I finally asked him, "Henry, can you manage my campaign if I runfor governor?" He said, "Well, how much money do you have?" (Henry hada faculty of getting right to the meat and the coconuts, you know, rightdown to the core of the question.) "Well," I said, "I have $1500 in cash and$1500 pledged." He grinned, took my hand, and said, "I'll take the job; Ithink we can win!" So, we both started work on building an organizationacross the state. Our principal support came from veterans. I had led the GImovement in Hot Springs. We got the GIs as they came back from the war* Sid McMath graciously agreed to speak with the editors of the UALR Law Reviewabout his relationship with Judge Henry Woods. This piece is an edited transcription of thatconversation.t Sid McMath served as governor of Arkansas from 1949 until 1953. He was a majorgeneral in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, a decorated World War II veteran earn-ing a battlefield promotion to lieutenant colonel, and served as president of the Third MarineDivision Association and the Marine Corps Reserve Officers' Association. Also a distin-guished trial lawyer, McMath established a law firm now known as McMath Woods, P.A.,where he remains of counsel.UALR LAW REVIEWand organized a group of GIs in Garland County through the old McLaugh-lin machine. (But that's another story.)We had a tough campaign. That year President Truman was runningfor president, and the Dixiecrats were trying to beat President Truman,forming the Dixiecrat Party in 1948. Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wrightwere the Dixiecrat candidates. Henry and I were for President Truman andthe civil rights program. We believed in the repeal of the poll tax and inhaving African-Americans vote and participate in the election process. Sowe supported President Truman, and he carried Arkansas and Texas.After I was elected governor, Henry became my executive secretary.Our programs included building roads to get us out of the mud and dust,getting electrification to the rural areas that didn't have any electricity (halfof the rural areas-eighty percent of our people lived in rural areas-didn'thave any electricity), and building a medical school and a medical center.Henry was very helpful to me in all of these areas. He was a good organizerand was acquainted with the members of the Legislature and people overthe state who had political influence. Therefore, we were able to get ourprograms passed without much opposition.On our electricity program, half of Arkansans had no electricity, andpower companies refused to furnish it because they didn't think it was prof-itable. The rural areas throughout the country weren't getting electricity. Soin order to get electricity to rural areas, President Roosevelt organized arural electrification program, which made it possible for farmers to jointogether in co-ops to borrow money from the government at a very low rateof interest and build their own steam-generating plant or the generating fa-cilities and transmission lines. Henry helped me tremendously in that battleand fought the private power companies for three years before it finallybecame a reality. We had the steam-generating plant built in Ozark. TheOzark Steam Generating Plant was the first co-op generating plant andopened the door for other generating systems to be built to get electricalpower to all rural areas. The old black wash pot in the back that womenused for the laundry is not even in the memories of the rural women now.That was one of the great services we did.In 1950 at the state Democratic convention, I offered a change in therules of the Democratic Party so that African-Americans could becomemembers. In 1948 there was a one party system, just the Democrats. Victoryin the Democratic primary was tantamount to elections. So, we wanted togive the African-Americans an opportunity to participate in the elections,and there were some Democrats who agreed with me. The Democratic Partywas an all-white party, so Henry, Joe Martin, and I drafted a resolutioneliminating "white" from the requirements to be a Democrat. Henry led thefight on the floor of the convention, had a tough battle, but got it passed.Other Southern states, in due course, followed suit.[Vol. 252003] WOODS: A GREAT LAWYER, JUDGE, AND FRIEND 223When I was defeated for a third term, Henry, Leland Leatherman, and Iorganized a law firm. Henry had been a good student. He was an A-studentin high school and an A-student in college. In 1936 or 1937, the dean of thelaw school, Dean Waterman, said he could tell what law students were go-ing to be when they got out and started practicing law from their grades. Hesaid the A-students will be professors, the B-students will be corporate law-yers, the C-students will be criminal lawyers, and the D-students will bepoliticians. He didn't mention anything about plaintiffs' lawyers or personalinjury lawyers. A personal injury trial lawyer at that time wasn't very highin the public esteem or in the esteem of the bar. He was looked on as anambulance chaser. Our firm, though, represented personal injury plaintiffs.Of course, coming out of politics, we had to establish to lawyers and to thepeople that a politician could become a lawyer. We had to get known aslawyers. Henry and I joined all the bar associations and the American TrialLawyers Association, alternately serving on the board of the American TrialLawyers Association. We were selected as members of the Inner Circle ofTrial Lawyers, which is limited to one hundred trial lawyers in the UnitedStates, and to the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, which consistsof five hundred lawyers from around the world, and of which I becamepresident. We had a convention in Little Rock while I was president, and themembers marveled at the hospitality, the program, the reception they re-ceived, and the progress we were making in Arkansas-they had heard dif-ferent things about Arkansas.Henry and I tried cases together and were a pretty good team. One ofour opponents was the Wright, Lindsey & Jennings law firm. They repre-sented insurance companies, the people we were usually suing. The princi-pal trial lawyer that we ran up against from the Wright firm was AlstonJennings. We fought in the courtroom, but ate and drank as friends. Wewere always friends. Ed Wright, who was president of the American BarAssociation at the time, asked Alston one day, "By the way, what kind oflawyers are Henry and Sid?" Alston said, "Well, both of them togethermake a pretty good lawyer."Henry was a student of the law and had a tremendous memory. Hecould talk to you about any subject. He was also a student of the Greek phi-losophers. He read the Roman writers on the subject of law and on the Latinlaw. He was familiar with the English common law and was versed in theEnglish language. He learned about the lives of the people who wrote theConstitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence andunderstood what they were talking about when they wrote in the preambleof the Constitution "We the people of the United States, in order to form amore perfect union, establish justice . . . ." He understood this phrase be-cause Henry devoted his life to the pursuit of justice in the courtroom. Weshared a feeling that justice had a spiritual quality and that justice was reallya mandate from on high. We represented a lot of people who didn't haveUALR LAW REVIEWany money to hire a lawyer or to advance costs. We used the contingent fee.People seeking tort reform want to eliminate contingent fees and punitivedamages. What they are really talking about is eliminating the right to trialby jury. I mean, the pursuit of justice, justice under the laws-there is nohigher calling and no greater reward. Henry shared that philosophy. In ref-erence to the jury system, he believed in it, and despite human failing, it'sthe best system that we have for deciding controversies between citizensand between the citizen and the bureaucratic government.Henry and I remained partners until he went on the court. He wasnamed by Senator Dale Bumpers as a United States district judge. His namewas submitted to President Carter who submitted it to the Senate JudiciaryCommittee for confirmation. The Judiciary Subcommittee conducted hear-ings on it, which I attended with Henry. Senator Howell Heflin of Alabamawas chairman of the subcommittee that conducted the hearings, and he hadbeen in my platoon at officers' candidate class when he was striking for acommission at Quantico, Virginia. I was his platoon commander and ad-mired him greatly. They conducted an extensive hearing. Henry's nomina-tion was approved unanimously by the subcommittee and then by the fullcommittee. He became a United States district judge on March 21, 1981.He made a great judge. He was a great trial judge because he was agreat trial lawyer. Some day I think it will be a requirement, even if it's notwritten, it would be practiced, that before a judge is appointed as a trialjudge that he have been a trial lawyer at least some of the time, that he havetried cases in a courtroom, and that he have listened to the jury's knock onthe door. Judges understand trial practice better if they have been a triallawyer.As a judge, Henry was a hard worker. He would take any case thatcame his way-he did not bow out of any of them. He took on the integra-tion cases in Pulaski County, handling them for about ten years. He enteredan order consolidating the schools in Pulaski County, which was a vision-ary, far-reaching order. His order would have saved a lot of money andwould have facilitated the integration procedure, but was reversed by theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Judge Wilson re-cently defended Judge Woods's action in consolidating the schools in Pu-laski County in an opinion. Some day it will be done.Henry also worked on his cases. He processed them even up to thetime of his last illness. When he died all of his cases, even the AmericanAirline cases that were scheduled for trial, had been processed, and all thepeople that had a case in his court at the time of his death had an opportu-nity to present their case in court. That is how conscientious Henry was.He was a poet too. As a trial lawyer, he would come up with quotesfrom poetry that would be appropriate at the time. We had tried the firstmaritime case heard in Arkansas: Brinegar v. San Ore Construction Co.Brinegar was injured on a boat while working on a coffee dam on the Ar-[Vol. 252003] WOODS: A GREAT LAWYER, JUDGE, AND FRIEND 225kansas River near Pine Bluff. Whether or not it was an admiralty case or aworkers' compensation case was an issue. The lawyer for the insurancecompany said in his opening statement that if this were an admiralty case,one couldn't get enough money in the courtroom to compensate. The judgedirected the jury that at the time of his injury Brinegar was in a boat, wasworking on the river on a project, and was a member of the crew of a vessel.So that brought the case under maritime jurisdiction. The lawyer who fi-nally tried the case for the insurance company became the president of theAmerican Bar Association and later went around the country talking abouthow he had lost a multi-million dollar case in Arkansas. He took a littleliberty in making it a good story. He said, "Henry Woods and McMath weretrying the case. When the judge came to a tough question of law, he'd turnto Henry Woods and say, 'Mr. Woods, what's the law in that case, what'sthe law on that."' He went on to say that when McMath was making thefinal rebuttal (Henry would make the opening and I would make the closingargument), "I had occasion to object to his argument three times. I thoughthe was maybe getting a little far afield, it wasn't relevant, or it was prejudi-cial or something. The third time I objected, Judge Oren Harris leaned overon his elbows on the bench, peered over his glasses, and said, 'Mr.Sheppard, don't interrupt the Governor when he's talking."'While trying the Brinegar case, Pat Brinegar was our last witness totestify. He made a great witness, paralyzed from the waist down, barely nota child, just a youngster at twenty-two years of age. He didn't make anypitch for sympathy or anything. The last question I asked was "Pat, if youcould do anything in this world you wanted to do, what would you do?" Hesaid, "I'd get me a car; I'd outfit it so I could enter the stock car races; andI'd enter every stock car race in the United States." During a recess we an-ticipated that the defendants would make us an offer because Pat's testi-mony was the close of our case. We had brought Pat over from the rehabili-tation center in Hot Springs and asked him to wait in the ambulance as wemight have some questions to ask him, get his advice on something, and thatthey might make us an offer. He had testified from a wheelchair, and whenthey rolled him out in the hallway to put him back in a stretcher to take himdown to the ambulance, they dropped him. The jurors saw, and three ofthem got down and lifted him up, put him on the stretcher, helped carry himdown, and put him in the ambulance. Henry and I didn't know about this,and we went down and told Pat that they had made us an offer. It was a bigoffer for back then-a lot of money. We told him that twelve jurors had toagree on the verdict, that sometimes it's hard to get twelve people to agreeon anything, and that this money would help him pay his debts and take careof him and his wife. After we finished talking to him, we said, "What doyou want to do Pat? Let us know. It's up to you." He smiled an Irish grinand said, "Let the jury decide." See, he knew something we didn't knowabout his relationship with the jurors. He felt that he had made good contactUALR LAW REVIEWwith them, that he had related to them when he was testifying, and that theyhelped him get back to the ambulance. So, we let the jury decide, and theydecided for Brinegar with a great verdict. In Henry's poetic closing state-ment, I remember he quoted from Invictus, saying, "Out of the night thatcovers me black as a pit from pole to pole I thank whatever gods may be formy unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have notwinched, nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head isbloody but unbowed."' He finished by saying that's the way it is with PatBrinegar and sat down. The jury was quiet and came in with a great verdictfor that boy, a record at the time. And so, that was Henry.Henry also had a wonderful family. He has a daughter, Eileen, and ason-in-law, Paul Harrison, the immediate past president of the ArkansasTrial Lawyers Association. The law practice is also continuing, and Henryhad a great influence on it. The boys have a great tradition, a wonderful lawfirm, and are still representing people who need their help. They get a caseand clients that don't have any money and they take them on a contingentfee, usually a third of any award. The firm advances the costs, and if thecase is not won, it absorbs the costs. The firm's philosophy when interview-ing and determining whether or not it's going to take the case is to answertwo questions: (1) has this person been wronged and injured by that wrong;and (2) can we help him. That's the philosophy that Henry and I had as wetried these cases, entered in the courtroom, fought the battle, and listened forthe knock on the door, and that's the philosophy that the boys have today.They are doing fine.Henry did more than anybody else that I know of to improve the pro-fessional image of the plaintiffs bar, the plaintiffs trial lawyer. He wasalways interested in young lawyers and would give lectures to young law-yers. He would also participate in and conduct seminars. Henry would go toHastings College in California and teach two weeks out of the year to in-struct young lawyers. He wrote Comparative Faul? with Beth Deere. It isan authority in all the courts of the United States, and I don't know of anyother treatise that's equal to it. In addition, he wrote a lot of articles for thebar journals.He was a tremendous judge and a good friend, and I miss him. A lot oftimes when there was something on my mind about a case, something thathappened back when we were together in politics, or trying cases, I'd justcall Henry. I forget that he's gone. A great lawyer in the courtroom, lawyerof the court, and a writer of the law. Judge Bill Wilson said that "JudgeWoods was a giant." He was a giant, as a lawyer and as a judge. He will be1. William Ernest Henley, Invictus, in MODERN BRITISH POETRY 234 (Louis Unter-meyer ed., 1920).2. HENRY WOODS & BETH DEERE, COMPARATIVE FAULT (3d ed. 1996).[Vol. 252003] WOODS: A GREAT LAWYER, JUDGE, AND FRIEND 227remembered in the history of Arkansas as one of our great lawyers and greatjudges.

Henry Woods: A Great Lawyer, Judge, and Friend

https://lawrepository.ualr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1280&amp;context=lawreview

Henry Woods: A Great Lawyer, Judge, and Friend

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Arkansas at Little Rock: UALR Bowen Law Repository