The San Francisco call., 1895-10-13
The Original Plaintiffs Were
Once Millionaire Mining.
Brokers.
ONE NOW IN PAUPER ALLEY
The Other Tried to Commit Suicide
and Now Tends a Small
Cigar Stand.

this City and down among the archives of
the Superior Court of San Luis Obispo
are mass of musty plants,
amended complaints, answers, stipulations,
orders of the court, decisions and what not
in the line of legal documents-ail bearing
the legend, "Schultz VS.. Mclean"
They are the accumulations of ten years
of litigation. 1t would take a week of
Sundays to read them all, and they would
not repay, in human interest, the waste Of
an hours time.
Last week, October to be exact, the Su-
preme Court added another and the very
last document to this musty hoard. The
case of Schultz versus Mclean is ended.
The document added by the Supreme
Court is purely a technical one, upholding
the lower court in revoking its change of
venue, and defining the grounds upon
which the revocation was valid. The opin-
ion itself has gone to Los Angeles TO be
filed there, while a copy of it has gone
to the printers. On the clerks book in
this City there is only this simple entry
Schultz V. Mclean, judgment and order
afirmed-Los Angeles"
a most prosaic announcement this; al
most as dry and commonplace as the rec
ords themselves, and on their face worth
al most a dozen lines in the daily prints.
But there is a world of romance behind
the musty records and a wealth of human
interest in the bare words Schultz vs.
Mclean" to those who can read in them
the unrecorded history of those ten long
years of litigation.
The dry records themselves give no
linking of the fact that those who started
the suit were once millionaires and are now
very poor men; they give but the barest
hint of the long line of famous LAWYERS
that have at different times appeared in
the case. They are silent about the per
sonal enmities the different phases of the
case have engendered among some of
those we'll known at the bench and bar of
California, and reveal but scant glimpses
of the fraud and dupIicity that actuated
and kept alive, all these years, the case of
Schultz VS.. Mclean.
Three times the courts of San Luis
Obispo County have tried and adjudged
the cause, and four times the Supreme
Court has passed upon its merits. There
are seven written decisions of the Superior
and Supreme courts in the case, and al
most every one of them reverses its i'm
mediate predecessor. If an example OF
the "law's delays" were needed-but
none is.
George Schultz and Henry Won Bargen
were the original plaintiffs, claiming a vast
tract of land in the Carissa Plains of San
Luis Obispo County that is now worth
about 100000. To-day George Schultz is
one of the many Impoverished habitues of
the stockholders buck bishops, and can
hQ fnnnd oil Ioy
Alley. Henry Won Bargen keeps little
cigar-stand out on Hayes street.
Once these two men were mlllionaires
and among the leading mining brokers of
Montgomery street. They had immense
dealings in the Comstock, and balance in
the Nevada Bank almost as great. That
was before the suit of Schultz VS.. Mclean
began.
But the causes that led to it were then
brewing. They began as early as July of
1873, when Schultz &5 Won Bargen, in the
course of their large dealings, became
pinched for ready cash and were forced to
borrow $4,000 from A. E. Davis. Schultz
& Won Bargen had previously invested
some of their spare cash in big plat OF
land in San Luis Obispo County. This
was the Carissa Plains tract-very fertile,
but remote from the railroad. Schultz &
Won Bargen bought 1925 acres at the
Government price. They bought it as a
speculation, and to make it secure from
possible creditors of the future they decided
it to Louis Schultz, brother of the senior
partner of the firm, who held it as q
naked" trustee for the partners.
Along came the stringency of funds and
the loan from Mr.. Davis. The latter was
not in the loan business entirely as recre-
alton, and demanded interest and security
both. The interest was never paid by
Schultz & Won Bargen, but before they OBJ.
tained the principal they mortgaged the
Carissa Plains tract to the obdurate money
lender.
Mr.. Davis, for one consideration or an
other, turned over his claim on the land
to James B. Haggin, who had a ranch ad-
joining the Schultz & Won Bargen acres.
Mr.. Haggin had sheep on his land and had
no fence around 1t. The ovines wandered
across an imaginary boundary line and eat
their fill of the Schultz & Won Bargep
grass, and therein lay the base for dam
age suit by Schultz & Won Bargen against
Haggin, which was never brought but
which has ever since played its part in the
decade OF litigation involving the acres OF
Carissa Plains.
Well, the years rolled along, as years
have a trick of doing. Father Time pointed
his bony finger to the month of October
and the year of 1881. Schultz & Won Bar
gen were still short of cash. Neither any
of the principal nor interest of the $1,000
loan had been paid. Mr.. Haggin had use
for some ready cash-or did he want to
wipe out the imaginary line which his
sheep had crossed?
History has no answer to this question
but it records the fact that Mr.. Haggin, in
this month and year, brought action in
foreclosure against Louis Schultz and
Schultz & Won Bargen for the satisfac.
ton of his claim, which now amounted tc
nearly $4,000.
Now then there enters into the drama ot
all these years Cornelius P. Robinson, who
has been from the beginning one of the de.
PENDANTS in the case of Schultz vs. Nc
Lean. Mr.. Robinson's friends speak oi
him as gentleman of Oriental views. He
was at that time one of the successful law.
yers of San Francisco. He is a son of the