Law Firm Founder Known For 'Enormous Sagacity'

James M. Verner, 94, founder of the powerful Washington law firm Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand, died of heart disease Oct. 6 at his Arlington County home.

Mr. Verner started the firm in 1960 with Berl Bernhard. The enterprise, originally specializing in transportation law, gradually added partners and established offices in Houston, Miami and Honolulu, employing 191 lawyers and lobbyists in 2001. Known for hiring "rock stars" -- lawyers and public officials after their turn in the national political spotlight -- the firm ran into financial troubles after the loss of its tobacco industry clients and the economic decline after Sept. 11, 2001. It merged with DLA Piper in 2002.

Among the lawyers attracted to the firm were Lyndon B. Johnson's former personal attorney, Harry McPherson, as well as former Senate majority leaders George J. Mitchell and Robert J. Dole, ex-Treasury secretary Lloyd M. Bentsen, and past governors James J. Blanchard of Michigan and Ann W. Richards of Texas.

Although many of those political celebrities arrived after Mr. Verner's retirement, the standard he had set provided the newcomers with a high level of comfort, said McPherson, who joined the firm in 1969.

"He was a man of enormous sagacity about law and enormous probity about doing the right thing in respect to clients and people who worked in the firm. He was fairness itself," McPherson said. "I don't know of a more balanced, effective lawyer with any greater sense of what was moral in law practice than Jim Verner."

In 1972, Mr. Verner was one of the key negotiators for the U.S. airline industry; the bargaining resulted in the first commercial flight between the United States and China since 1949. After the federal government deregulated the airline industry in 1978, followed by the deregulation of the U.S. trucking industry, Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand faced a crisis. The transportation law firm expanded its practice into other areas and became even more successful.

In 1998, after Mr. Verner had retired, his law firm led an $8.2 million effort on behalf of the cigarette industry for legislation to enact a tobacco lawsuit settlement with states and give the industry limited liability. That legislation failed, and state attorneys general reached a historic out-of-court settlement with the industry.

James Melton Verner was born in Selma, Ala., and raised in Asheville, N.C. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1936 and received his law degree there in 1938. He worked briefly in North Carolina before moving to Washington in 1940 to take a job as a lawyer with the Civil Aeronautics Board.

During World War II, he served in the Navy as a legal officer for the Naval Air Transport Service. After the war, he worked for the Chicago and Southern Air Lines, the Air Transport Association and the aeronautics board, where he was executive director from 1950 to 1953. He became a partner at the Washington law firm of Turney and Turney in 1953 and stayed there until he started his own firm.

He retired in the mid-1980s and enjoyed traveling with his wife, swapping political gossip with his neighbor, columnist David Broder of The Washington Post, and staying in touch with the law firm's issues through regular dinners at a Northern Virginia Chinese restaurant he liked, one that was also a favorite of a former U.S. president.

"It was the only thing he and George H.W. Bush agreed on," McPherson said of the resolutely Democratic Mr. Verner.

Mr. Verner was a longtime member of the Cosmos Club and an avid carpenter who enjoyed lively conversations, debates and low-stakes poker games.

His wife of 65 years, Gretchen Gores Verner, died in 2004. A son, William Melton Verner, also died in 2004.

Survivors include two children, Ann Verner Picardo of Pottersville, N.J., and James Singleton Verner of Hertford, N.C.; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.