Los Angeles County
Biographies
JOHN T. GOSE
John T. Gose, who is widely recognized as one of the leading representatives of the legal profession in the city of Los Angeles, is one who came here with a national reputation, based on a solid foundation of achievement in his native state of Missouri and association with much litigation of country-wide import.
Mr. Gose was born in Monroe county, Missouri, of old Virginia and Kentucky lineage. He is a son of John S. and Margaret A. (Gillispie) Gose. John S. Gose, when a young man, came to the state of California in the gold rush, and here met with success, after which he returned to Missouri. Following the death of his father, Mr. Gose accompanied his mother to Shelbina, Missouri, where he attended the public schools, also a private academy. Next he enrolled at central College in Fayette, Missouri, in which he won conspicuous honors in essay, oration and scholarship and from which he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1894. Likewise, he was a scholarship at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, which institution conferred upon him the degree of Master of Arts in 1896. In the same year he was called back to Central College to act as an instructor in philosophy, but soon resigned in order to do post-graduate work at the University of Chicago. From here he went to the Culver Military Academy at Culver, Indiana, as professor of English and history. After this period of service, he entered the Illinois College of Law, from which he received the degrees of Bachelor of Laws, Master of Laws, and Doctor of Civil Law. Having completed his studies he then remained with his alma mater in the capacity of professor until he returned to St. Louis to take up the practice of law, which he continued there from 1903 until 1906. In the latter year, he returned to the town of his early youth, Shelbina, Missouri, where he became local counsel for the Burlington Railroad, general counsel for the Shelby County Railway and the Old Bank Trust Company. From 1912 until 1916, he was city attorney of Shelbina. While in Shelbina, Mr. Gose gained a wealth of training in the practice of law, and through a large diversity of cases obtained a broad comprehension of the profession he had chosen as his life’s work. His efforts were recognized as indicated by the fact that he was assistant attorney-general of the state of Missouri from 1917 until 1921. On account of the serious illness of his only child and upon medical advice, Mr. Gose brought his family to southern California in August, 1920, and later, following the expiration of his term of office in January, 1921, he joined them in Los Angeles. He has made a specialty of insurance law, and is local counsel for the Missouri State Life Insurance Company of St. Louis and the Kansas City Life Insurance Company. In may be noted in this connection that in October, 1932, the American Life Convention, composed of the life insurance companies of the United States and Canada, held its meeting in the city of Toronto, Canada, and at the request of the legal section Mr. Gose appeared and read a paper upon the subject “The Incontestable Clause and Redress for Wilful Fraud.” This paper was judged to offer a new mode of redress, never before attempted by insurance companies when the defense of fraud was barred by the expiration of the contestable period.
As a matter of interest, it is well to enlarge a bit upon the legal career of Mr. Gose. Prior to his appointment as assistant attorney-general of Missouri, he experienced twelve years of general practice which included much litigation in railroad, banking, municipal, corporation and individual affairs, and after assuming the state office he became intimately concerned with civil work. During the World war period, 1917-1921, he engaged in law work which comprised many phases of utmost importance to the commonwealth. Attacks on the constitutionality and validity of inheritance, income and franchise tax legislation were particularly bitter and frequent; legislation and commission orders affecting the conduct and rates of public utilities and private businesses with public interest were responsible for lengthy procedures in state and Federal courts. At all times, investigations through direct proceedings in the Supreme Court of the state were pending for inquiry into corporate combinations in restraint of trade and for the control of prices of the basic commodities. A principal one of these investigations was the so-called Coal Investigation, which involved a detailed inquiry into the production, distribution, cost and selling prices of coal produced by the coal operators of the middle west. Mr. Gose in the great majority of these cases personally made the briefs and argued them in the higher courts. During the World war and afterward, new and complicated legal questions were presented, and as legal advisor of state officers, boards and commissions he wrote many opinions, which were based on his own interpretation of the law applicable, as there were no guiding precedents. At times, emergency action on the part of the state seemed imperative in matters concerning which there was grave doubt as to the power of the state to act at all, and particularly insistent was the denial of the power of the state to act when such action involved interference with private business. On one occasion, when the coal operators, because of labor difficulties, were unable to produce the coal, and as a consequence people were suffering from lack of fuel, Mr. Gose was consulted in regard to remedial action. His advice was that the state should take over the coal fields and mine the coal. As a result, in about ten days coal was moving to the stricken areas of the state, the regular miners were again at work and the operators were again in control. When requested to cite his authority for this action, Mr. Gose indicated the state motto engraved into the stone over the main entrance of the capitol, which was “Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto.”
One of the most successful cases conducted by Mr. Gose for the state of Missouri was that in which the state resisted the imposition of a flat ten per cent increase in rates which the fire insurance companies of the United States announced as effective all over the nation. When the insurance commissioners of the United States issued their order to the insurance companies to show cause why increase should not be discontinued in all the other states where it was effective, Mr. Gose, upon the request of the Committee of Insurance Commissioners, appeared in behalf of the states at the hearing held in New York city.
In those same war and post-war years, President Wilson appealed to the state governors for support and cooperation not to increase prices, but to control the mounting cost of living. Upon the request of the President, the governors of the several states chose from their number a committee to confer with the President and the Attorney-General in Washington. Governor Gardner of Missouri was chairman of this committee and Mr. Gose attended the conference as legal counsel of the committee.
One of Mr. Gose’s most interesting cases, legally, which he conducted for the state of Missouri was then known as the Migratory Bird case. This involved the constitutionality of a treaty between the United States and Great Britain, and appears in the United States Supreme Court Reports as State of Missouri vs. Holland. The tendency toward centralization of power in the hands of national government and the ultimate reduction of the “sovereign an independent states” to the status of mere counties has been the subject of warnings from the ablest American statesmen before and since the information of the United States of America. This tendency toward centralization received a marked impetus during and just after the World war. The Migratory Bird case was at bottom an attempt by the state of Missouri to secure from the highest authority a definite recognition of the Tenth Amendment of the National Constitution, to check in some measure the drift toward centralization of power in the hands of the government at Washington and to preserve to the state its sovereignty in local matters and control of state property. The appeal which Mr. Gose made to the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the state was commended by a distinguished Federal jurist as follows:
“It impressed me as a powerful appeal for justice; dignified, forceful, and, to my mind, as conclusive and convincing as logic itself. I deeply regret, for some undefined reason, it fell upon deaf ears. However, he who prepared that instrument I can affirm is both a scholar and a lawyer. All lovers of our free institutions and the fundamental principles of our government as it was formed and intended to be carried forward during the entire span of our national life owe to him a debt of gratitude for his attempt to stem the oncoming tide.”
Mr. Gose has always been interested in educational matters and in the training of the younger generation. For several years he has been professor of constitutional law in the Los Angeles College of Law, and the University of the West (of which the law school is a department) has conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.
On the 21st of December, 1904, Mr. Gose was united in marriage to M. Eugenie B. Blocker, a daughter of Albert Butler and Eliza (Webster) Blocker of Marshall, Texas. They have one son, George Blocker Gose, who received the degree of Bachelor of Arts at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1931 and is now a senior in the School of Jurisprudence of the University of California at Berkeley, California. The Gose family residence is at 644 Heliotrope drive in Los Angeles. Mr. Gose gives his political support to the democratic party, and is a member of the Hollywood Country Club and the Kappa Alpha fraternity.
Transcribed by Joyce Rugeroni.
Source: California
of the South Vol. V, by John Steven McGroarty, Pages
195-199, Clarke Publ., Chicago, Los Angeles, Indianapolis. 1933.
© 2012 Joyce Rugeroni.
GOLDEN NUGGET'S LOS ANGELES BIOGRAPHIES