Hartford's Man in San Antonio

For most of the time this expert has held anything about him, S. S. Searcy was two documents four years apart — a lawyer Hartford-Empire hired in 1932, and the man William C. Church wrote to in 1936 to say, in confidence, that George A. Ball was buying the plant.

The commissioned extract of the transcript of record in Hartford-Empire Co. v. United States [ev-0059] replaces both with something better and duller: a continuous professional file. Searcy was Hartford-Empire’s standing Texas counsel. The Three Rivers account was his from the first demand letter to the last order after the sale, and Hartford’s own lawyers refer to him in-house, without introduction, as “our Texas attorney” [@ev-0059, part 16, at fol. 59495]. There is no gap between 1932 and 1936 to be explained. There is a file.

His name was Seth

Church’s letter of 14 September 1936 — the one document about Searcy that was already held here — is addressed formally at the top to “Mr. S. S. Searcy, Attorney at Law, Frost National Bank, San Antonio, Texas,” and then opens:

“Dear Seth:”

[@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60658]

That salutation is the whole of what the admitted record says about his given name, and it says it in passing, in a letter from a man who was about to use him. It also settles, in the same line, that Church and Searcy were two men who knew each other well enough for a first name — which is not the same thing as saying they were the same man, and the caution against confusing them stands.

What he was retained to do

Hartford sent Three Rivers a cancellation notice in July 1932 and filed suit on 21 October 1932 in the United States District Court at Corpus Christi [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10221]. Searcy made the demand that preceded it. A 1934 Hartford memorandum put in evidence by the Government recites that in 1932 “Mr. Searcy advised Three Rivers that they were refusing to pay an unpaid balance of $6,600.41 and asked for a satisfactory adjustment before suit was filed” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10261]. Hobson’s letter to Searcy the following May repeats the same figure back to him: “According to your request we informed you th[a]t the amount due us by Three Rivers September 1, 193[?] was $6600.41” [@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63455] — the year digit is destroyed in the OCR.

Safford was asked directly what the retainer was for:

“Q. I assume in the meantime Hartford had employed Mr. [Searcy] to represent it in the collection of this account? A. That is correct, yes.”

[@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176] — the name is dropped by the OCR, but the exhibit just read into the record was Searcy’s letter of 21 October 1932 and the next question names him.

Collection, then. Not destruction. The distinction matters, because what Hartford did with what it won is the part of this story the collector literature has never had.

The decree Hartford won and chose not to use

Hartford’s suit succeeded. Safford confirmed it under examination:

“Q. Mr. Safford, have you ever obtained a decree in the suit you entered? A. Yes. It was a consent decree that had been entered in accordance with the agreement between Coquat and Hartford-Empire Company. Q. Was it a decree granting you repossession of the [machinery] and judgment for the license fees due, royalties due? A. That is correct.”

[@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10181]

Hartford had, in 1933, a judicial right to take its forming machinery out of the Three Rivers plant. It did not take it. It relicensed the receiver instead, under a supplementary agreement with Henderson Coquat dated 21 June 1933 and a court order of the same date approving it [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10182].

Hobson’s letter to Searcy of 16 May 1933, marked “Confidential,” says what the judgment was actually for [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10178; part 18, fol. 63454]:

“We know of no reason why judgment should [not] be entered, although it might be wise for you first to write Coquat a letter saying that you are about to enter judgment. The wisest course seems to be to enter judgment and then if Coquat produces some plan which is acceptable to us then execution of the judgment can be stayed. … It is our present desire that execution of judgment should be stayed as long as possible to give Coquat further opportunity to see if he can deal with our licensees.”

[@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63455]

The judgment was a held lever, not a sale of machinery. Searcy’s instruction was to obtain it and then not use it, so long as the receiver kept trying to place the plant with a Hartford licensee — which is what the same letter says Coquat had been sent to Hartford to do, interviewing Collins of Liberty Glass at Sapulpa and possibly General Glass Corporation, either to buy Three Rivers’ output at agreed prices or to take over the licenses and leases and run the plant [@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63454].

The machinery stayed in Three Rivers to the end. When the plant was finally sold, the state District Court directed that it be returned to Hartford, and Hartford left it where it was [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10268].

The Washington rumour

The same confidential letter carries a paragraph that has no counterpart anywhere else in this expert’s holdings:

“Rumor has reached us that Mr. Coquat, when leaving Hartford, went to Washington where he is supposed to have seen Mr. Garner, who referred him to the Department of Justice, all with a view toward preventing our cancellation of the Three Rivers licenses and leases.”

[@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63454]

It is a rumour, reported as a rumour by Hartford to its own lawyer in May 1933, and nothing admitted here corroborates it or follows it. What it establishes is narrower and still worth having: that Hartford believed the receiver of a south Texas glass plant might reach the Vice President of the United States, and thought it worth writing to Searcy about.

The revocation notice as a clock

By September 1934 Coquat was negotiating with Ball Brothers, and Hartford was using Searcy to time pressure against that negotiation. Hartford’s letter to him of 5 September 1934 [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60654]:

“Generally speaking, we would prefer to have Three Rivers taken over by someone already in the business, and would prefer not, if possible, to have new people in the business.

We ourselves talked with Mr. Ball today, and according to him, the present plan contemplates his seeing Mr. Coq[u]at on Friday. …

My reaction, following your letter, was to send you a notice of revocation to be given to Mr. Coquat so that it would take effect thirty days hence. As a result, however, of the conversation with Mr. Ball we will not do so for a few days at least until we learn a little more as to how things are progressing.

I should appreciate it, however, if ab[ou]t Saturday or Monday you could call up Mr. Coquat, find out how things are going, and make it clear to him that if his Ball deal—”

The passage is cut off in the printed exhibit as reproduced in the OCR.

Two things sit in that letter. The revocation notice was to be held in Searcy’s hands and released on Hartford’s read of the Ball negotiation — the same instrument, used the same way, as the unexecuted judgment. And “We ourselves talked with Mr. Ball today” is Hartford in direct contact with George Ball in September 1934, which is not what Safford said under oath two years later: asked whether there had been “no discussion or dealing or transaction between Ball Brothers and Hartford respecting the matter prior to” September 1936, he answered “I don’t believe so, no” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10216]. The conflict between that answer and Hartford’s own letter is recorded, not resolved, and is treated at length elsewhere in this expert’s holdings.

Searcy is the addressee of the letter that contradicts the testimony.

The file, 1932–1936

The exhibits offered during Safford’s examination and printed in parts 16 and 18 make Searcy the most heavily documented correspondent in the Three Rivers record. Dated items to or from him, as the extract gives them:

21 October 1932 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5706 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176]
16 May 1933 — Hobson to Searcy, “Confidential,” Defs. Ex. H-5708 [@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63454]
25 May 1933 — Hobson to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5710 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10178]
2 January 1934 — Safford to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5712 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10184]
26 July 1934 — Safford to Searcy, Gov. Ex. 1803 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10266]
24 August 1934 — Hobson to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5718 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10184]
1 September 1934 — Searcy to Hartford-Empire Company [@ev-0059, part 09, after fol. 10186], acknowledged in the reply of the 5th [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60654]
5 September 1934 — Hartford-Empire to Searcy, Gov. Ex. 1197 [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60654]
13 October 1934 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5725 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10195]
18 October 1934 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5726 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10197]
8 June 1935 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5727 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10198]
14 June 1935 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5728 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10199]
19 July 1935 — Safford to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5729 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10201]
23 July 1935 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5730 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10202]
4 October 1935 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5732 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10204]
7 January 1936 — telegram to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5735 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10206]
22 April 1936 — Safford to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5737 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10207]
5 May 1936 — telegram, Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5738 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10208]
28 July 1936 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5739 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10213]
5 September 1936 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5740 [@ev-0059, part 09, at fol. 10215]
14 September 1936 — Church to Searcy, Gov. Ex. 1200 [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60658]
15 September 1936 — Searcy to Hartford-Empire, Defs. Ex. H-5741 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10215]
17 September 1936 — Safford to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5742 [@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63508]
10 October 1936 — Safford to Searcy, Defs. Ex. H-5744 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10217]
16 November 1936 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5745 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10218]
4 December 1936 — Searcy to Safford, Defs. Ex. H-5747 [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10220]

Two further items place him without giving a date the extract preserves. Government Exhibit 1787 was cited in court as showing that Safford “met Mr. Searcy in St. Louis and had a conference with him respecting the status of the Three Rivers account and the nature of its business” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176]. Government Exhibit 1799 is a Safford letter to Searcy setting the conditions on any license to Coquat, beginning with the requirement that “the agreement between Mr. Collins and Mr. Coquat must be concluded” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10263]. Several offering colloquies name an exhibit and a date but lose the correspondent’s name to the OCR; those are not listed above.

The list is not the whole file. It is what survives in an OCR extract of four of the transcript’s fifty-eight parts.

What the work actually consisted of

Little of it was courtroom work, and the one court appearance the record describes was a failure. Safford:

“on May 1st I attended a hearing of the court at George West, Texas, and at that time, when Mr. Searcy, our attorney, attempted to argue his motion, the Court was informed that the state court no longer had jurisdiction because the assets of the debtor had been transferred to the Federal Court at Corpus Christi, because the second petition under 77-B had been filed. … So that on May 1st when I was there, there had been no ruling upon our motion for the return of the equipment.”

[@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10213]

The rest was intelligence and accounting. He read the receiver’s proposed plan of reorganization and summarised it; Safford, asked whether the plan was “about as Mr. Searcy has set out in his letter,” answered “Yes, that is correct” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10198]. He was the address Hartford forwarded strange mail to — when a Dr. Robert A. Kelly wrote to Hartford about Three Rivers in September 1935, Safford’s entire response was “I think I sent the letter to Mr. Searcy and asked him for information about it, and that is all” [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10204]. He was asked to find out what the Texas courts would require before Hartford sued a different Texas licensee entirely, the Knape-Coleman Glass Company [@ev-0059, part 16, at fol. 59495]. And he kept the ledger of what Three Rivers owed: Safford’s letter to him of 10 October 1936 states royalties of $14,357.53 from Coquat’s operation and $17,532.72 from Chamberlain’s, “a total due Hartford of $31,890.25,” of which Hartford was paid forty per cent [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10218]. An earlier debt of $6,915.20, owing from before the receivership, was never collected at all [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10184].

Why Church wrote to him

By September 1936 Searcy’s client was the largest creditor of a receivership about to be settled at forty cents on the dollar. That is the whole reason Church’s disclosure went to him: he held Hartford’s claim and Hartford’s consent, and Ball needed both. Church’s letter asks him to get the transfer documents executed by “your clients,” to send “the Hartford Empire set out by air-mail,” and then names the buyer under a request for confidence [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60658].

Searcy forwarded Church’s creditor circular and the confidential letter to Hartford together on 15 September [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10266]. Two days later Safford wrote back with an instruction that has nothing to do with resisting the sale: “Mr. Smith suggests that in addition to the above you try to get the receiver to agree that the machinery is our property and should be returned to us” [@ev-0059, part 18, fol. 63509].

Hartford took the forty per cent and the machinery order. It did not object to the buyer.

What the record does not make him

It does not make him a conspirator, and it does not make the 1932 suit an attack disguised as a collection. Under cross-examination the Government put the obvious disparity to Safford: Hamilton Glass had been in default about three months to a total of approximately $34,000, and was not sued [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10261]. Three Rivers was pursued over $6,600.41. Safford’s answer was that it was a credit judgment — “Three Rivers was behind in their royalties and we didn’t have very much confidence in their ability to pay” — and that customers were reporting Three Rivers was cutting the market [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10261]. He also conceded that Acme Glass, the predecessor of Olean, had its license cancelled for default as well [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10258].

That is the Government’s theory and the defendant’s answer, put to the witness in open court and left there. This expert records both and adjudicates neither.

What the record does establish is that a single San Antonio lawyer, acting for one creditor, was the point through which Hartford watched, timed, and eventually settled its part of the destruction of the Three Rivers Glass Company — and that the same lawyer was the person the buyer’s counsel chose to tell first.

What this expert does not hold

Nothing about Searcy outside this account. No firm, no bar admission, no dates, no full given or middle name beyond the “Seth” of Church’s salutation [@ev-0059, part 16, fol. 60658]. Martindale-Hubbell, Texas volume, 1935 or 1936 remains the obvious acquisition and would also settle whether a William Church practised in San Antonio in the same years.
The 1932 retainer letter itself. The predecessor article quoted a letter of 26 August 1932 employing Searcy “on behalf of Hartford-Empire Company in its contemplated suit against Three Rivers Glass Company,” and a statement that the object was to take the machinery out of the factory, from an exhibit in the Temporary National Economic Committee hearings. That volume is not admitted here and the quotation is withdrawn. What is held describes the retainer as collection of the account [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10176] and shows the machinery being won and deliberately left in place [@ev-0059, part 09, fol. 10181; part 18, fol. 63455].
The professional card in the San Antonio Express, 1 April 1940. Cited by the predecessor from an unadmitted research note; not held; withdrawn.
The other fifty-four parts of the transcript, which have not been searched, and the page images, which have not been matched to any passage quoted here. All wording above is provisional on that.
Any answer from Searcy’s side. Every document here is Hartford’s file or the Government’s exhibits. Searcy’s own papers, if they survive, are not held.