© 2018 The Texas Lawbook.
Finalist: GC of the Year for a Small Legal Dept.
By Mark Curriden
(Jan. 10) – Baron Oursler was 11-years-old when he met a lawyer at a Black-eyed Pea restaurant next to his mother’s pet store in Garland.
“He was a personal injury lawyer who was telling amazing stories about helping folks,” Oursler says. “I was fascinated and hooked. I knew then I wanted to be a lawyer.”
Three decades later, Oursler is a successful commercial litigator and the general counsel of a $1 billion heavy-duty truck and trailer parts distributor.
During his four years at Irving-based FleetPride, he successfully handled unfair competition litigation, business contract disputes, labor and employment cases and trademark infringement litigation. He led the legal team in the acquisition of four independent retail businesses. He’s also negotiated hundreds of contracts with business partners and suppliers.
Based on these extraordinary successes, Oursler is a finalist for the 2017 Outstanding Corporate Counsel’s General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook will unveil the winners at the Outstanding Corporate Counsel awards event on Thursday, Jan. 25, at the Bush Institute.
“Baron epitomizes the qualities and characteristics that this award celebrates,” says Carter Scholer partner Joshua Bennett, who nominated Oursler for the GC of the Year honor. “Baron is really good at zeroing in on the intersection between legal issues and business issues, and then figuring out solutions.”
Big things have always been anticipated for Oursler. At Ralph H. Poteet High School in Mesquite, the senior class of 1998 published a brochure called “Prophecies” that had students predict what would become of their fellow classmates.
“Baron Oursler will talk his way to supreme power, becoming ruler of the world,” classmates wrote of Oursler.
While he has yet to achieve the post of supreme commander, Oursler became the first lawyer in his family when he received his law degree from Texas Tech in 2004.
The El Paso law firm ScottHulse hired Oursler as a first-year associate, where he joined legal teams defending a national concrete company accused of predatory pricing and representing the nation’s largest coupon clearinghouse in a lawsuit against a multi-national consumer products maker for price-fixing.
“I was so lucky to have an outstanding mentor in Richard Munzinger, who is an amazing trial lawyer and advocate,” he says. “Mr. Munzinger would tell me, ‘I don’t expect much out of you, only that what you do needs to be perfect and on time.’ While I wish I could say that I always lived up to his expectations, I can say that he taught me a great deal about being a better person and a better lawyer.”
In December 2007, Oursler moved to Dallas and joined Lackey Hershman as an associate working on various high-profile securities and complex commercial lawsuits.
Oursler made his first move in-house in 2012, when he became chief legal officer of Wichita Falls-based Carter Aviation Technologies, an aerospace research and development firm, where he negotiated contracts with aerospace companies, subcontractors and investors.
FleetPride hired Oursler in February 2014 as a contract lawyer to draft and negotiate commercial agreements. After less than a year, the company hired him full time as senior counsel.
During the past two years as head of FleetPride’s legal team, Oursler has achieved several major legal successes. Alongside his business partners, he played a key role in four successful acquisitions, including a deal that closed Jan. 2, that expanded FleetPride into 46 states with more than 260 stores and 3,500 employees.
“Baron has managed the successful defense and resolution of both a major trademark infringement lawsuit and a breach of commercial lease suit, recovering in the hundreds of thousands in fees for the company,” Bennett said in the nomination.
“Baron overhauled FleetPride’s non-compete agreements, and has created a reputation for the company as a successful enforcer of post-employment contractual obligations owed to the company, through the successful prosecution of numerous lawsuits against former employees and competitors,” he said. “Baron’s good judgment, breadth of experience, hard work, and abilities make him an invaluable asset to his company, and make his company more profitable.”
A great example of Oursler’s litigation prowess took place in May 2016 when he filed a civil lawsuit in Texas state court against a former employee and a competitor for misappropriation of the company’s trade secret information.
“Among other things, we had reason to believe that a former employee had downloaded our customer list and corresponding sales data the day before he left the company to join a competitor,” Oursler says. “We immediately sued the former employee and the competitor. The court granted us a restraining order and expedited discovery and we had a final court order in place within three weeks, which included a permanent injunction against the employee and certain employees of the competitor, and recovered over $70,000 in attorney’s fees.”
Those and other successes led FleetPride to promote Oursler to general counsel in September 2017.
“We are a lean and mean operation,” he says. “I have the opportunity to be involved in every aspect of the business. Every day is different. Every day presents new and unique challenges.
“A critical part of success has been learning how this industry operates and appreciating the relationships between the company and our employees, who are our most important asset, and the relationship company and its customers,” he says.
“My goal,” Oursler says, “is to offer answers to legal questions that provide our executives and team with practical business solutions.”
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