Will the fourth time be the charm?
PRESIDIO AND BREWSTER COUNTIES — It took an all-day hearing at the Brewster County Courthouse last Thursday with at least seven attorneys to accomplish two things between members of a West Texas ranching family: a process for paying bills at the historic Brite Ranch in western Presidio County, and a general agreement between warring parties in several lawsuits over the ranch that they would give mediation another shot.
Acting 394th District Judge Tryon Lewis of Odessa presided over the hearing. Lewis reminded the court that eight lawsuits are currently swirling around the conflict between the White family siblings — Mac, Beau and Hester Ann on one side, and Jim White III on the other, with some of Jim’s children, principally Cuatro White, also intervening with lawsuits on Jim’s behalf.
Lewis said only three of those eight legal actions were in his court but that he felt the mediation he was ordering might as well cover “all issues,” since the parties had worked so well that day figuring out how to pay bills. “This is the most agreeable everyone has been,” Lewis said.
Attorneys on both sides actually agreed to mediation before the judge ordered it, although one party was not overly optimistic and noted that it would be the fourth time the parties would go before a mediator. The parties agreed to come back with a proposed mediator for the judge’s approval in 10 days. The process would allow the parties to try to compromise on proposals without a court deciding a final order.
The Brite Ranch is estimated to be worth at least $60 million, but court records show the legal squabbles also center around differences in ideas about how to preserve or profit from the land. The ranch, nestled in the heart of western Presidio County north of Capote Peak, played an important role in the county’s history. Lucas Brite settled the land in 1885 and eventually established a 125,000-acre, thriving Highland Hereford cattle ranch. The ranch headquarters became a town of sorts with a store, post office and school.
Jim had pleaded in court filings that he was handling all the bills at the Brite Ranch when they should be split among the siblings, as the court last summer declared them all “co-tenants” of the land. Bills read in court included electric, well service and repair, and payments on equipment. A sizable bank account of about $420,000 from hunting leases and cattle sales assigned to the ranch as a whole will provide the foundation for a court registry that will control the funds to authorize bill payments. After a run-through in court of current bills to be paid, that sum would be knocked down to about $345,000 and would continue to dwindle with further obligations to pay.
Some of the attorneys at Thursday’s hearing were under the impression that the court would be hearing testimony on an attempt by Mac, Beau and Hester Ann to obtain a declaratory judgment with a “motion of governance” seeking to redefine the siblings as “co-trustees” of one big trust instead of sole trustees of each of their individual trusts for the ranch. However, Lewis said those pleadings and others would be handled in the future and said he was focused on how to pay bills. He set a hearing on the other pleadings for October 28 at the Brewster County Courthouse.
The legal battles began in 2018 when Mac and Beau sued Jim for breach of fiduciary duty, claiming he — as a designated trustee to manage the land — was operating the ranch to enrich himself while not generating enough money for his brothers as beneficiaries of the trust. A jury in that case rendered a verdict last June agreeing with the plaintiff brothers, and the court eventually ordered the removal of Jim as trustee. Jim, however, has appealed the ruling to the Eighth District Court of Appeals in El Paso. Additionally, that ruling established that the siblings would be co-tenants with equal rights to use of the land.
The accounting work done all day Thursday was intended to keep the ranch afloat while at the same time allowing for a final accounting by an interim Brite Ranch trustee, Susan Combs, who requested to resign this spring.