© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
Fort Worth (Oct. 3) – Legendary oil and gas lawyer Dee Kelly passed away Friday after collapsing at a lunch meeting at the Shady Oaks Country Club with friends from Texas Christian University.
Kelly was widely viewed as one of the most influential business and political leaders in the history of Fort Worth. He was 86.
He was the founding partner of Kelly, Hart & Hallman, which is the largest firm in Tarrant County. His clients included the Bass family, American Airlines, the Texas Rangers, private equity firm TPG Capital, Kimbell Oil Company, Moncrief Oil and boot manufacturer John Justin.
Kelly served on the boards of Sabre Holdings, Justin Industries, North Texas Bancshares, Sam Rayburn Foundation, UT Southwestern Moncrief Cancer Center and the Fort Worth Stock Show.
And he was a key advocate for American Airlines and the City of Fort Worth in various legal battles against the City of Dallas and Southwest Airlines over the operation of Love Field and enforcement of the Wright Amendment.
“I have loved every minute of being a lawyer and have been honored to work with some extraordinary business and political leaders,” Kelly told The Texas Lawbook in an interview two weeks ago. “I practiced both transactional law and litigation. No lawyers today do both. Litigation was always my favorite.”
The Texas Lawbook informed Kelly last month that the publication planned to honor him this month as a “Lion of the Texas Bar.”
“My dad grew to love Fort Worth and he had his hand in virtually everything that went on here,” Dee Kelly Jr. said in an interview Sunday. “But he was a lawyer first. He loved the art and craft of practicing law.”
Kelly Jr., who worked with his father for 30 years and is now managing partner of Kelly Hart, said his dad “was very demanding of all the lawyers, but his energy and force of will built the firm” into the success it is.
Business clients said Kelly was always a trusted counselor for them when they faced issues.
“Dee was a one man army, a force of nature, a brilliant legal strategist, and had a PhD. in human nature,” said former American Airlines General Counsel Gary Kennedy, who worked with Kelly for more than 30 years.
“If the airline was in a legal pinch and I needed advice of any kind, not just legal, or help reading the tea leaves of local politics, law firms and judges, he was the person to contact,” said Kennedy. “He was a fast talker and used Texas euphemisms that perfectly fit every situation and often kept me smiling. He was the consummate gentleman and a generous soul. There is a permanent void in North Texas with his passing.”
Dee J. Kelly was born in 1929 in Bonham, Texas. His father sold insurance. His mother worked in a cotton mill. He played quarterback for his high school football team and was a columnist for his school paper. He worked at an ice cream plant during high school to make a little extra money.
To pay his college tuition at TCU, where he was student body president, Kelly preached each weekend at three Fannin County churches, which paid him a combined $50 a month.
Kelly attended the night law school program at George Washington University and worked during the day as a clerk for U. S. Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, a fellow Texan he met while working for his high school newspaper.
In 1951, Kelly joined the Air Force. He served for 25 months as a first lieutenant.
He graduated from George Washington in 1954 and returned to North Texas to practice law, where he joined the Texas Railroad Commission as a legal examiner in the oil and gas division.
Fourteen months later, Kelly parlayed his newfound experience and knowledge of oil and gas into a lawyer position at the Cantey Hanger law firm in Fort Worth and later became general counsel of Moncrief Oil.
He opened his own law practice in 1964, where he landed his first big case as a lead lawyer. He represented the daughter of oilman William Fleming in a battle over her father’s estate.
“There was a lot of money at stake and the estate included oil and gas properties and a couple ranches,” Kelly said in the recent interview. “My client, Mary Fleming Walsh, prevailed after two years of litigation and she received nearly all of her father’s estate.
“At the time, I didn’t know the real value of the settlement, but I knew it was big because my client bought a $10 million life insurance policy on me in case I did not survive the trial,” he said. “There were times during that case where I thought she might just collect on that policy.”
Success begat success. Houston-based Kimbell Oil Company hired Kelly to represent it in a conflict with Rio Grande Valley Gas Co. Kimbell had drilled several gas wells, but Rio Grande refused to connect the wells to its pipeline system.
He convinced the state Railroad Commission to order the pipeline to connect to all the wells in the field. When a Travis County district judge reversed the Railroad Commission, Kelly successfully appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which handed a complete victory to his client.
Along the way, Kelly met Sid Bass, president of Bass Brothers Enterprises. By the mid-1970s, Kelly spent hundreds of hours a month doing legal work on oil and gas projects for the Bass brothers.
“Sid told me that we needed more lawyers and we convinced Vinson & Elkins to send us five lawyers to Fort Worth to work with me on Bass company work,” Kelly said in the interview two weeks ago. “In 1979, V&E made me an offer to join the firm. While I thought very highly of V&E and its lawyers, I wanted to start my own firm.”
Kelly told the five V&E lawyers, including Mark Hart, they could return to Houston or join his new firm. They opted to stay. He also convinced Coke and Coke partner Bill Hallman to join the team.
On March 1, 1979, Kelly Hart & Hallman opened its doors. The firm now has more than 130 lawyers in Fort Worth, Austin and Houston.
The lawyers and staff at Kelly Hart were informed of Kelly’s passing in an email memo sent at 5:02 p.m.
“There were a lot of tears shed Friday night. He was a great friend,” says Kelly Hart partner David Keltner. “We called every client Friday evening to tell them the news and every one of them talked about how much they loved Dee and how he was a true friend.
“Dee was fiercely loyal to his clients and they were loyal to him,” said Keltner, who is a former state appellate judge and leads the firm’s appellate law practice. “He will be missed.”
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