The past six months have been a whirlwind for Baron Oursler.
In December and January, he played a critical role in the sale of his employer, heavy-duty truck parts retailer FleetPride, to a New York private equity firm for an undisclosed amount of cash.
On May 6, Oursler’s wife gave birth to their first child – a son who was born six weeks prematurely and spent a month in the hospital but is now doing fine.
Two weeks later, he started his new job as general counsel at Worldwide Flight Services, the world’s largest air cargo handler. WFS is headquartered in New York, but Oursler is based in Dallas.
“It has been a crazy year so far – one hell of a spring and summer,” he told The Texas Lawbook in an interview this week. “The new job is great and I am still learning my way around the business. Our son, Carter, has more than doubled his weight. He’s perfect – healthy and happy.”
Oursler, who received the 2017 General Counsel of the Year Award for a Small Legal Department from the DFW Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook, spent five-and-a-half years at FleetPride – first as senior counsel and then as general counsel – where he successfully handled unfair competition litigation, business contract disputes, labor and employment cases and trademark infringement litigation.
A 2004 graduate of Texas Tech University School of Law, Oursler negotiated hundreds of contracts with business partners and suppliers and he led the Irving-based company through a half-dozen significant M&A transactions, including the acquisition of four independent retail businesses.
The largest and most important deal, of course, was TPG Capital’s sale of FleetPride to American Securities, which closed in January.
In April, executives at Worldwide Flight Services decided to create a corporate in-house legal department and picked Oursler to be its first general counsel.
“I wasn’t looking for a new job, but the FleetPride sale had just closed and WFS approached me,” he said. “I feel that this is an opportunity to challenge myself. It’s a larger company in a more complex industry with a larger, global footprint.”
Oursler – The Early Years
Oursler’s path to becoming a lawyer started when he was 11 years old and 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 said in an interview with The Texas Lawbook in 2018. “I was fascinated and hooked. I knew then I wanted to be a lawyer.”
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 and has achieved extraordinary success.
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.
“Baron is really good at zeroing in on the intersection between legal issues and business issues, and then figuring out solutions,” Carter Arnett partner Joshua Bennett, who nominated Oursler for the GC of the Year honor last year, told The Lawbook in a 2018 interview.
“I was so lucky to have an outstanding mentor in Richard Munzinger, who is an amazing trial lawyer and advocate,” Oursler 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.
“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.
“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.
“I have the opportunity to be involved in every aspect of the business,” Oursler said in 2018. “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 added.
“My goal,” Oursler said, “is to offer answers to legal questions that provide our executives and team with practical business solutions.”