Progress of firm shaped by lives of key partners

Listen to this article

Harris Beach PLLC has grown from its foundation: three generations of the Harris family, whose members began to make a mark on the Rochester legal scene soon after their ship docked in New York City in 1850.
Much of the history of the firm can be told by looking at the lives of some of its most prominent partners.

Edward Harris
Founder (1835-1911)

Edward Harris was 15 at the time his tenant-farmer parents, who wanted a better life, moved from England to settle in Gates.
Shortly after they arrived, Edward caught the attention of Rochester attorney Henry Ives. Based on the recommendation of a friend, who was impressed with Edward’s work ethic and enthusiasm, Ives hired him as a clerk for $1 a week.
The young Harris took an immediate interest in law and at age 21 was admitted to practice law based on his apprenticeship with Ives. In 1856, the two became partners in Ives & Harris.
Edward became known as an expert litigator, a lawyer noted for sticking to the facts of a case. His brevity often was credited for his victories.
An 1860 case involving the Erie Canal established him as a leading trial lawyer-he achieved a victory with a one-page brief.
At issue was the drowning of a man’s horse and loss of harness in the Erie Canal while on the tow path. The man claimed the defendant was negligent in maintaining the tow path according to the maintenance contract with New York. The plaintiff sought $125 plus interest and other costs.
The court ruled in favor of plaintiff, but the defendant appealed. Edward then filed the one-page brief on behalf of his client that won the case.
He and his wife, Emma Hall Harris, had two daughters and three sons.
He was a man of his word. In the mid-1860s Edward had built a home at 1005 East Ave. He misunderstood a remark his wife made once and believed she wanted to move into a more modern house. So, he made a deal to sell the house, but when his wife found out, she was devastated. The buyer heard of the misunderstanding and told Edward that they had only an oral contract and it was not legally binding. Edward replied, “Sir, my word is as good as my bond; you will buy the house.” He went on to build another house at the corner of Argyle Street and East Avenue.
Later in the 1860s Edward brought the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Co. into the firm as a client. He also handled the incorporation of Security Trust Co. in 1892.
Five years later he became the fourth president of the Rochester Bar Association, which today is the Monroe County Bar Association.
Edward, who became known as the “dean of the Rochester Bar,” died in 1911. In a show of respect for his contributions to the legal community, the courts closed for one day.

Albert Harris (1861-1931)

In 1884, Albert Harris joined his father, Edward, and they created the Harris & Harris law firm.
Albert worked on the consolidation of the Edison Illuminating Co. and the Rochester Gas Co. to form Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. in 1892.
In 1906, he moved to New York City to become general counsel of New York Central. There, he directed the 1914 merger of several railroad companies, creating the New York Central Railroad Co.
Albert was known to be energetic and hardworking. He had a well-stocked law library in his home, which he used many evenings and during the day so he would not get interrupted.
He was a director of the Guaranty Trust Co. of New York, Central Railroad of New Jersey, the First National Bank of Chicago and the American Express Co.
He was born in Rochester in 1861 and attended Professor Hale’s Academy. In 1881, he graduated from the University of Rochester and then attended Columbia Law School.
He married Hebe Beach, sister of Harris Beach partner Daniel Beach, in 1887. He died in 1931 in New York City.

Edward Harris (1875-1948)

In 1905, another Edward Harris joined the firm: son of the founder and brother of Albert.
The younger Edward expanded the practice. He persuaded Rochester Savings Bank to offer savings bank life insurance. He also founded the Citizens Tax League, an organization that still scrutinizes municipal budgets and taxes today.
Harris Beach was the first law firm in the area to use electric typewriters in the early 1930s, according to firm archives.
Edward understood the value of replacing the old-fashioned manual typewriters with the first electric typewriters, designed by IBM Corp. and manufactured in Rochester. He promoted the features and benefits of the new technology throughout the firm. But there was apprehension; many were reluctant to use the typewriters for fear of being electrocuted.
He was born in Rochester in 1875 and went to St. Paul’s School, Hobart College and Cornell Law School.
He was a trustee of Rochester Savings Bank, director and vice president of Security Trust Co., and director of both Rochester General Hospital and Nantucket Cottage Hospital in Massachusetts, where he had a summer home.
Edward helped organize the Allendale School in Brighton and Camp Cory, the Young Men’s Christian Association boy’s camp on Keuka Lake. He also was part of the advisory committee of what today is known as the YMCA of Greater Rochester.
During World War I he headed YMCA activities at Camp Dix, N.J., where many Rochester men trained before going to France.
“(He) was a very warm-hearted man. He lent money to a lot of young men to go through law school and medical school, all of whom turn out to be very good bets,” said Edward’s son Edward in a past interview.
He and his wife, Mary Peck Harris, had a daughter and two sons. He died in 1948.

Edward Harris (1912-2005)

In 1939, a third Edward Harris joined the practice his grandfather founded. When he came on board at Harris, Beach, Folger, Keating and Wilcox, the firm had eight associates and eight partners.
By the 1980s, Harris Beach had more than 60 attorneys practicing in virtually every major area of law.
Edward focused his legal practice in the area of business transactions and representing financial institutions.
Born in Rochester in 1912, he received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1935 and his law degree from Cornell University Law School in 1938.
Edward served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as captain of a submarine chaser and then served as executive officer of a destroyer escort in preparation for the invasion of Japan.
In speaking about community service, he once said, “Having been helped a lot, in return I want at least to help a little.”
With that as his motivation, Edward served as a director of both the Security Trust Co. and Rochester Community Savings Bank. He also served on the boards of Rochester General Hospital, the University of Rochester and Strong Memorial Hospital, Crime Stoppers International, the Memorial Art Gallery, YMCA of Greater Rochester and Springfield College.
Edward and his wife, Jacqueline Harris, had six children.
An avid horseman, he owned a horse farm outside of Geneseo and was instrumental in creating Morven Park, an international center for training horsemanship instructors in Virginia.
After 61 years of practicing law, the grandson of the firm’s founder retired.
“My father and grandfather were lawyers, so I thought I would be one too,” he said in an interview at the time. In a way, he was emulating his grandfather, a lawyer who had been known for his brevity by sticking to the facts of a case.

Daniel Beach (1873-1948)

Daniel Beach is most remembered for his U.S. Supreme Court case over 25 acres of newly created land at the mouth of the Genesee River.
Beach-who started his 50-year career at Harris & Harris, now Harris Beach PLLC, in the late 1800s-took the keenest satisfaction in his victory in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. New York State case.
There was a strip of some 25 acres of land at the mouth of the Genesee River that had grown over time from deposits by the currents of the river and Lake Ontario.
In 1922 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts laid claim to this land on the basis of original crown grants and treaties. Beach joined in opposing the Massachusetts claim as counsel for New York Central Railroad, one of the corporations involved in the title defense.
He argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. After more than four years in the courts, Beach’s side won and the Massachusetts claim was denied.
Beach established his reputation as a detail-oriented lawyer who strongly advocated on behalf of the firm’s clients, Harris Beach archives show.
He was born in 1873 in Watkins, Schuyler County, which later became Watkins Glen. In 1887 Beach’s sister Hebe married Albert Harris, son of the firm founder, Edward Harris.
Beach attended Watkins Academy and the Fort Hill School in Rochester. He graduated from Hobart College in 1892 and studied law at the University of Goettingen, Germany.
He attended law school at both Columbia University and then New York University, where he received his law degree in 1896.
In 1897 Beach joined Harris & Harris, newspaper reports show, and he was named partner in 1905.
Beach was a trustee and counsel of the Rochester Savings Bank and a director of the Security Trust Co.; Sibley, Lindsay & Curr Co.; General Foods Corp.; Rochester Gas and Electric Corp.; and the New York State Railways. He also was a trustee of Hobart College before it was Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and director of the Convalescent Hospital for Children, the Rochester Children’s Nursery and the Church Home.
He was also a senior warden of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and enjoyed the association of men in various literary groups.
Upon his death in 1948, the Rochester Savings Bank posted a resolution of esteem and sympathy stating that Beach was “… true to the highest ideals of the legal profession; he was considerate and helpful always; and no matter what the issue of controversy might be he could disagree without being disagreeable. In a word, he was always a gentleman.”
He died at his Rochester home on Barrington Street. He and his wife, Marion Lindsay Beach, had two sons and two daughters.

Willis Matson (1866-1929)

Willis Matson was one of the best-known trial lawyers in the state.
At one time he tried nine vigorously contested lawsuits in one week and in that year completed 200 trial cases, which was a state record at the time.
Matson in 1911 joined Harris, Havens, Beach & Harris, now Harris Beach PLLC. Virtually all the important cases that came to the law firm in the 15 years following were tried by Matson-and his list of victories was long.
Once-before he joined the firm and was working as an assistant district attorney-he was pitted against George Raines, who had a nationwide reputation for victories in criminal cases. But young Matson got a conviction in that important case.
He was a trial lawyer for New York State Railways and other corporations and appeared as counsel for the New York Central Railroad, Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. and several banks.
Matson had an extraordinary legal mind, company records state. He could read cases, then dictate a brief putting in all the citations to the names and pages of cases from memory.
He was a skillful adversary in litigation yet also was courteous and fair even in the hardest-fought cases, firm archives show.
He was one of Rochester’s most reputable business lawyers of the time and understood the significance of helping Rochester’s businesses.
The last important legal work Matson did was the organization of the Union Rochester Shares Inc. in 1928. He represented the Union Trust Co. in its merger with the National Bank of Rochester. This consolidation created the city’s largest bank with combined assets of more than $75 million.
He was also a director of the New York State Railways, Union Trust Co., General Railway Signal Co., Rochester, Lockport & Buffalo Railway, Marine-Union Investors Inc., Duffy-Powers Co. and other corporations.
He was born in Clarendon, Orleans County, in 1866 on the land his father farmed and his grandfather had cleared.
Matson graduated from the Brockport Normal School. Customary for the time, he completed his legal studies at a Brockport law firm and in 1893 he was admitted to the bar.
Two years later he was elected police justice for his township and served until 1898 when he became assistant district attorney in Monroe County. In addition to his county position, he continued to be a partner at his Matson & Mann law firm.
During World War I Matson was head of the Monroe County Exemption Board, where he would make final decisions as to whether a person would enter the military or serve the nation best by staying home.
He had well-rounded experience as a trial lawyer in criminal cases, then civil cases, and later as a corporate lawyer and a counselor to banks and large business enterprises.
He died at his home in the Rock Beach neighbornood in 1929. He and his wife, Rose Randall Matson, had a son and a daughter.

Kenneth Keating (1900-1975)

Kenneth Keating demanded excellence from himself and others during his 33-year career as a partner at Harris Beach PLLC.
In 1930, Keating became a partner of what was then Harris, Beach, Folger, Remington, Bacon and Keating. For decades he was known to be an excellent teacher for young lawyers who worked with him, the company archives show.
Keating would go to fellow partner Charles Wilcox’s home to visit on occasion. Wilcox’s son, Michael, has childhood memories of those events and remembers his dad referring to Keating as a great trial lawyer.
Edward Harris, grandson of the firm’s founder, once said of Keating, “When you hired Ken Keating, you hired his body, mind and soul.”
Keating was successful in trial and appellate work and in politics.
Born in Lima, Livingston County, in 1900, Keating graduated from Genesee Wesleyan Seminary in Lima in 1915. From there he graduated from the University of Rochester in 1919 and from Harvard Law School in 1923. He was admitted to the bar that year and began practicing law in Rochester.
During World War I, Keating served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army. During World War II, he served overseas and was promoted to brigadier general in 1948.
After leaving the service he returned to practicing law.
In 1946 he was elected as a Republican in the House of Representatives in the 80th Congress. He then was reelected to the five succeeding Congresses.
In 1958 he was elected to the U.S. Senate. The 1964 Senate race drew much of the nation’s attention when Democrat Robert Kennedy left the Johnson administration to challenge Keating for the New York Senate seat. Keating lost to Kennedy by a wide margin.
In 1965 he became a judge of the New York State Court of Appeals. He served there until he became U.S. ambassador to India from 1969 to 1972. He served as ambassador to Israel from 1973 until his death in New York City in 1975.
The Kenneth B. Keating Federal Office Building in downtown Rochester was named to recognize a man who gave much of his professional and personal talent to his hometown.

Charles Wilcox (1902-1980)

Charles Wilcox was known as the “complete lawyer” and was well-respected in the legal profession.
He started his 45-year career in 1930 with Harris, Beach, Folger, Remington, Bacon and Keating-now Harris Beach PLLC-and consistently demonstrated grace under pressure, the company archives state. Wilcox was noted for his “bedrock honesty” and he was the kind of person people instinctively trusted. Juries were anxious to do what he told them to do.
Wilcox was known primarily for his skill as a trial lawyer, but he also excelled in the area of wills and trusts, and structuring corporate deals.
Two well-known deals he helped structure became Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield. In 1936 he formed the Rochester Hospital Service Corp., which was later known as Blue Cross. A decade later he formed the Genesee Valley Medical Care, which was later known as Blue Shield.
Wilcox had a sense of humor. For many years, Harris Beach had a messenger who took great pride in his professional appearance. The well-dressed man also resembled Wilcox. The two would be mistaken for each other in the community but usually not in the office. One day, however, when a newly hired attorney needed documents delivered to court, he approached Wilcox in the hallway and asked him to promptly deliver them. Wilcox graciously accepted the assignment. A senior partner enjoyed watching this exchange before informing the young attorney what he had done.
In 1949, Wilcox was appointed a special assistant attorney general for New York to conduct a grand jury investigation of alleged fiscal irregularities by Hamilton County officials. Gov. Thomas Dewey directed that a special term of court be convened in that county with state Supreme Court Justice John Van Voorhis presiding.
In 1966, Wilcox represented the then-owners of WOKR-TV 13 on a contract dispute. The case was to be heard by state Supreme Court Justice Austin Erwin of Geneseo. Erwin stood up and personally welcomed Wilcox to his courtroom. Wilcox asked that opposing counsel’s motion for summary judgment not be granted and Erwin quickly agreed, company files show.
Wilcox, whose father was the first principal of East High School, was born in Rochester in 1902. He graduated from Amherst College in 1923 and from Harvard Law School in 1927.
In 1928 Wilcox was appointed assistant district attorney for Monroe County. The following year he joined Harris Beach.
He was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed fishing and duck hunting. He also enjoyed holiday tradition, and on the Saturday before Christmas each year, Wilcox would invite friends to his Washington Road home near the Pittsford and East Rochester town lines. The guests would bring axes and chop down trees for their celebrations.
Wilcox was characteristic of Harris Beach’s encouragement of lawyers to be active in the community.
He served as president of the Greater Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce Inc. in 1963. Prior to his appointment, he told a reporter, “The Chamber hopes to promote the prosperity of the whole community. If a lawyer can help, he should be willing to help.”
He would run Chamber board meetings with parliamentary exactitude yet call everyone by their first name, company archives show.
He was the first chairman of Planned Parenthood of the Rochester/Syracuse Region Inc.; president of the American Red Cross – Greater Rochester chapter; board member of Hillside Family of Agencies; director of YMCA of Greater Rochester and trustee of the University of Rochester.
He was also on the board of Security Trust Co. and director of both the Rochester Hospital Fund Inc. and Rochester Community Chest Inc.
Wilcox retired from Harris Beach in 1975. He died in 1980.

Sol Linowitz (1913-2004)

When Sol Linowitz joined the firm in 1958-fulfilling a law school promise to classmate Edward Harris, grandson of the founder-he brought the opportunity for Harris Beach PLLC, then Harris, Beach, Keating, Wilcox, Dale and Linowitz, to represent Xerox Corp.
The two friends had promised to practice law together when graduating from Cornell Law School in 1938.
Linowitz had handled the adoption of various Xerox patents throughout the world, established Rank Xerox and Fuji Xerox, and eventually became Xerox chairman.
His relationship with Xerox started when his friend Joseph Wilson, president of the Haloid Co., was looking for a lawyer to help him acquire the patent rights to new electrophotography technology that evolved into xerography. Wilson did not take the work to the company’s regular attorney because it was the same firm that represented Eastman Kodak Co. and he wanted to keep the opportunity under wraps.
Wilson and Linowitz traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to negotiate Haloid’s first patent option in 1947. Together they witnessed the electrophotography demonstration, which did not impress Linowitz, he admitted later. But that patent option set Haloid on its way to developing the first practical and commercially viable copier.
The company’s first copier, the Xerox 914, was introduced in 1960. Harris Beach developed a plain-English lease agreement for the 914, which was featured in Xerox advertisements promoting the copier.
The son of Russian immigrants, Linowitz was born in 1913 in Trenton, N.J. His father was a fruit importer.
Linowitz earned scholarships and worked part-time jobs waiting tables and teaching violin to attend Hamilton College, southwest of Utica. He graduated in 1935 as salutatorian and went on to graduate first in his class at Cornell University.
Although courted by firms on Wall Street, Linowitz chose to work at Rochester law firm Sutherland & Sutherland.
He was charmed by the Sutherlands, Linowitz recalled in a 1995 interview with the Bar Report, a publication of the D.C. Bar. It was at that firm where he learned that law is a human profession.
“The greatest satisfaction I got as a lawyer was to see people come into the office feeling upset, anxious and fearful, and then have them leave with peace of mind. The Sutherlands had that kind of a practice,” he had said in the interview.
At the start of Wold War II, Linowitz wanted to participate in the war effort but a knee injury from a college soccer game kept him out of the military. He was able to help when he found a job at the Office of Price Administration in Washington, D.C. There he was in charge of appellate cases in the rent control program and worked with Richard Nixon.
In 1944, he received a naval commission and served until 1946, when he came back to Rochester.
Linowitz was partner at Harris Beach from 1958 to 1968. He served as of counsel from 1969 into the early 1980s.
He also served as president of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce Inc. in 1959.
In 1966, after 20 years of practicing law in Rochester, Linowitz accepted President Lyndon Johnson’s joint appointment as U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States and U.S. representative on the Inter-American Committee on the Alliance for Progress.
During the Nixon administration he returned to private practice in Washington as a senior partner in the international law firm Coudert Brothers LLP from 1969 to 1983. He was senior counsel until 1994.
In 1976, Linowitz chaired a committee on U.S.-Latin American relations in the Carter administration, and he co-negotiated the Panama Canal treaties. Linowitz once said it was the accomplishment he was most proud of.
He also served as President Carter’s personal representative for the Middle East peace negotiations from 1979 to 1981.
He co-founded the International Executive Service Corps, a volunteer program that sends U.S. executives to provide managerial and technical expertise to developing countries.
In addition to serving as chairman and general counsel of Xerox, Linowitz was a director of Time Inc., Pan American World Airways Inc. and the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York Inc.
He published two books, “The Making of a Public Man: A Memoir,” in 1985 and “The Betrayed Profession,” a critique of the legal profession, in 1994. His second book called for more ethics courses in law school, among other things.
In 1998 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom-the nation’s highest civilian honor-by President Clinton in a White House ceremony.
He and his wife of 65 years, Evelyn Zimmerman Linowitz, had four daughters. Last year Linowitz died at his home in Washington at the age of 91.
(Lynette Haaland is a freelance writer and a former Rochester Business Journal reporter.)
([email protected] / 585-546-8303)

07/07/06 (C) Rochester Business Journal