Morse, Hughes attorney, longtime resident, dies

Thursday, Dec. 9, 2004 | 8:33 a.m.

Putting three sons through college caused attorney William Morse to decide not to seek retainment to the District Court bench in 1970 and instead return to lucrative private practice in Las Vegas.

It could not have become more lucrative than when he formed a partnership with Joseph Foley the next year and landed as a client reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, who ushered in the corporate gaming resort age in Southern Nevada.

Several years later Morse successfully defended Hughes' estate against the "Mormon will" of Melvin Dummar, which became the basis of the film "Melvin and Howard."

William Reed Morse, who practiced law in Clark County for 54 years, was one of Las Vegas' top civil attorneys and twice defeated the late "King of Torts" Melvin Belli in local cases.

Morse died Monday of heart failure. He was 82. Services for the Las Vegas resident of 72 years will be 11 a.m. Friday at Our Lady of Las Vegas Catholic Church. Visitation will be from 4 p.m. to a 6 p.m. rosary today at Palm Mortuary-Downtown. Burial will be at Palm Mortuary-Downtown.

"Bill had a real keen ability to distill the facts and simplify them so the jury could understand them, especially in difficult cases," said John Mowbray, Morse's law partner for the last 20 years.

Morse was the son of noted Las Vegas attorney Harold M. Morse, who had joined with Madison B. Graves to found Morse & Graves, Clark County's oldest law firm.

Bill Morse, who was working on cases until the end, died one day shy of the 38th anniversary of his father's death.

Morse worked at his father's firm after passing the Nevada Bar in 1950. He eventually became a partner in Morse, Graves, Parraguirre & Rose, before leaving the firm to become a District Court judge on Jan. 18, 1970.

Morse, who at the time was chairman of the Clark County Republican Central Committee, was appointed by then-Gov. Paul Laxalt to replace retiring Judge Alvin Wartman.

However, in July 1970, Morse announced he would not run for election to that post, citing financial situations.

Foley and Morse then formed a partnership that would last 13 years, but ended in a dispute over the distribution of attorney fees from the Hughes estate. The case went to the Nevada Supreme Court and was eventually settled, but the two men never reconciled, Mowbray said. Foley died in December 2002.

Born Nov. 21, 1922, in Silver Creek, Neb., Morse came to Las Vegas with his family in 1932 and graduated from Las Vegas High School eight years later. He was a member of the 1938 state championship football team and was starting quarterback for the 1939 Wildcat squad.

During World War II, Morse served in the Navy as a pilot. He flew 165 combat missions in both the Atlantic and Pacific campaigns.

On one mission, Morse saved his own life and the lives of his radioman and gunner by making a blind emergency landing on the deck of a carrier at night after the engine of his TBM Avenger sprung an oil leak.

After the war, Morse graduated from the University of California in 1947 and received his law degree from Hastings College of Law in 1950.

One of his first big cases in Las Vegas was in 1953 against then-46-year-old Belli, who represented a man who was injured after raising a pipe out of a well and hitting a power line. Morse, then 31, represented Southern Nevada Power Co.

District Judge Frank McNamee ruled contributory negligence played a part in the man's injuries -- a decision upheld by the Nevada Supreme Court -- in a case that Nevada Power attorneys today frequently cite as precedent, Mowbray said.

In 1965, the two attorneys locked horns again in a wrongful death case brought by a woman who was hit by a motorist while crossing the Strip in front of the Desert Inn -- an incident in which her husband was killed.

Belli was the attorney for the widow. Morse represented the driver.

"It appeared to be a slam-dunk case for Belli," said former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan, then a deputy district attorney who, during a break in his duties, watched part of the Morse-Belli rematch.

"However, Belli was flamboyant, dressed to the nines and carrying a carpetbag briefcase, while Morse walked and talked like a homespun country lawyer. Bill connected with the jury like a neighbor talking across the fence. He was a very humble man with no aura of arrogance. He had the common touch."

That jury verdict in favor of the defendant also went to the state Supreme Court, which unanimously affirmed the judgment.

After Hughes died in 1976, Morse defended his estate against Dummar, who had claimed to have picked up Hughes in the desert in 1967 and taken him to Las Vegas. When Dummar tried to prove that Hughes had left him one-sixteenth of his estate for being a good Samaritan, a Clark County jury ruled against him.

In September, 1984, Morse went into partnership with Mowbray, who nine years earlier had been a clerk in the firm of Morse & Foley. The firm of Morse & Mowbray will retain its name because one of Morse's sons, Harold M. Morse II, works there as an attorney, Mowbray said.

In 1985, Bryan, who then was Nevada's governor, appointed Morse to serve on the Nevada Ethics Commission, a post Morse held until the mid-1990s.

A hunter, fisherman and golfer, Morse was a founding member of the Spanish Trail Country Club and a member of Ducks Unlimited and the Boulder Dam Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

In addition to his son, Morse is survived by his wife, Margaret "Betty" Sullivan Morse of Las Vegas; two other sons, Timothy Morse of Las Vegas and John Morse of Seattle, Wash.; a sister, Molly Morse Griswold Budding of Redlands, Calif.; and seven grandchildren.

The family said donations can be made in William Morse's memory to the Bishop Gorman High School Capital Campaign, 1801 S. Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV. 89104.