By Steve Byas

Almost to the very end of his life, Ward continued to battle for the causes he believed in, as he fought the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s plan to bulldoze hundreds of Cleveland County homes to make way for two new turnpikes.

He eventually lost that fight, but he won many others. Some he settled out of court for his clients, like former OU volleyball player Kylee McLaughlin, who said the coach ran her off the program because she held conservative political views at odds with the coach. She was required to watch the documentary “13th.” In the post-film discussion, she said the Netflix film was “slanted left,” and was slanted against then-President Donald Trump.

Not all of Ward’s crusades were courtroom contests. After the Oklahoma Legislature continued to raise taxes in the 1980s, Ward pushed for a statewide vote on his State Question 640, which limited the ability of the legislators to hike taxes without a vote of the people. It passed and has no doubt restrained the Legislature over the past generation.

But I have a personal experience with Stan’s litigation skills. When I ran for the House of Representatives in 1996, a poll conducted by the Oklahoma Republican Party two weeks prior to the election indicated that I was going to win. I had 46 percent, while my Democratic opponent had 34 percent. A Libertarian candidate garnered four percent, while 16 percent were undecided. The Party conducted polls on five other races, and all of those polls predicted the outcomes almost exactly.

Except mine.

The Saturday before the election, my opponent, Wallace Collins, caused to be distributed thousands of blood-red fliers claiming that I had said the U.S. government blew up the Murrah building. Of course, I had never said any such thing. I contacted Collins and demanded he stop distributing the fliers or he would face a second libel suit (he was sued by his Democratic primary opponent, Ken Adair, for libel). Collins refused.

On election day, Collins went from 34 percent in the poll to about 49 percent, and I went from 46 to 47. The Libertarian got the predicted four percent. Amazingly, Collins had captured all but one percent of the 16 percent undecided.

Following the election, I contacted Stan, who took my case, and developed the strategy that won before a Cleveland County jury by unanimous vote. Collins lost on appeal to the Court of Civil Appeals (by another unanimous vote), and the Oklahoma Supreme Court upheld that decision.

Through it all, I could tell that Stan looked at my case as more than just a job. He had a passion that I had been wronged, and he looked forward to achieving my vindication in court.

As Richard Labarthe (Ward’s fellow litigator in the case against the Turnpike Authority) said, juries connected with Stan, as he “could articulate things in a way that rang true with the common man, almost as if they were in the presence of a real life Jimmy Stewart tuype of character from a courtroom movie drama.”