William A. Sutherland - Law

Law

Admitted to the bar in 1898, Sutherland practiced law in San Francisco until 1901, when he moved to Fresno, California and formed a law practice with Frank H. Short.

In about 1899, Sutherland began his association with legal publisher Bancroft-Whitney Company of San Francisco. He worked first on Walter Maline Rose's 12-volume Notes on the United States Reports, or at least the supplements to this digest of U.S. Supreme Court decisions. He received sole credit for volume 13, the 263-page index published in 1900. He then in 1902 co-authored with James Henry Deering the California Digest of the California Supreme Court's cases found in volumes 126 to 136 of California Reports (1899–1902).

In 1903, Sutherland became a law partner with Joseph P. Bernhard, who had also worked on Rose's U.S. Notes in San Francisco. After he and Bernhard dissolved their partnership in 1904, Sutherland practiced solo until 1906 when he merged his law practice with that of the law practice of future United States Congressman Henry E. Barbour, who had also established his law office in 1903.

The Bancroft-Whitney Company of San Francisco published in 1910 Sutherland's widely-used four-volume practice guide, A Treatise on Code Pleading and Practice. Designed for use by attorneys in California and other mostly-Western states that required code pleading. Bancroft-Whitney published Sutherland's supplement to the 1910 treatise in 1917.

Sutherland also authored a 973-page treatise, Notes on the Constitution of the United States, published by Bancroft-Whitney Company in 1904. This book was reprinted by Fred B. Rothman & Co. in 1991.

By 1912, Fresno's dominant industry, raisins, was in terrible shape. Prices were so low that they did not cover production costs. M. Theo Kearney's attempt to organize the raisin farmers had failed in 1904. After his death in 1906, several industry groups tried unsuccessfully between 1907 and 1912 to follow the Kearney model of a capitalized raisin cooperative. A group of prominent growers and Fresno businessmen, and Sutherland as their lawyer, formed the California Associated Raisin Company (later known as Sun-Maid). Similar to the Kearney model, the company had both grower members and nongrower investors. The trustees of a voting trust controlled all the shares and elected the seven directors. A novel feature devised by Sutherland and Fresno lawyers H.H. Welsh and M.K. Harris was the three-year grower contract, subject to a two-year renewal, binding the grower to deliver all of his crop for a guaranteed price. The vompany signed up 76% of the raisin acreage and raised $800,000 in capital, and began operations in April 1913.

In about 1913, Sutherland left his partnership with Henry E. Barbour and again established a partnership with Fresno's preeminent attorney, Frank H. Short. Short became ill in 1917 and then spent considerable time in San Francisco receiving medical treatment and eventually died in June 1920.