Raymond S. Franks II
Email: rfranks@cdkrlaw.com
Big cases have a way of finding Ray Franks, especially on appeal. Only a few months out of law school, as a law clerk for Judge K.K. Hall of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, Ray assisted Judge Hall in sorting through a succession of appeals filed on behalf of Shannon Faulkner, clearing the way for Ms. Faulkner to be the first woman admitted to the Corps of Cadets at The Citadel. Not long afterward, Ray took the reins of an intricate appeal of an unprecedented salvage award granted a team of entrepreneurs who recovered the remains of the S.S. Central America. The vessel had been laden with California gold and lost in a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857, as recounted in the New York Times bestseller Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea. Ray also worked closely with Judge Hall on the landmark Robinson v. Shell Oil case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the en banc Fourth Circuit (adopting the reasoning of Judge Hall’s vigorous dissent) and unanimously held that former employees are entitled to protection under Title VII. Ray did a serviceable enough job as Judge Hall’s last law clerk to be the first law clerk hired by Judge Hall’s successor, Judge Robert B. King.
Later on, as General Counsel of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and Chief of its Office of Legal Services, Ray drafted the principal brief on appeal before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, defending the DEP’s decision to withhold permits for oil and gas drilling below the surface of Chief Logan State Park.
Ray would thereafter become familiar with the inner workings of West Virginia’s highest court, clerking for Supreme Court Justice Brent D. Benjamin. After leaving the Court’s employ, Ray returned to private practice and soon became highly sought after whenever a difficult appeal had to be conceived and pursued. Ray spearheaded a massive appellate effort by the West Virginia Investment Management Board to recover $100 million in teachers’ retirement funds from a national insurance company. Ray has regularly briefed complex issues in state and federal appellate courts, including co-authoring one brief as a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, to defeat a petition for certiorari in a dispute over attorney fees in the Transvaginal Mesh MDL.
Most recently, Ray briefed and argued the winning side in Reynolds v. TD Auto, in which the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia held that a merger clause in a Retail Installment Sales Contract that did not provide for arbitration subsumed a purported duty to arbitrate set forth in a prior credit authorization. The Reynolds decision placed West Virginia in accord with the majority of jurisdictions that have decided this hot class-action issue during the past several years.
A proud native of Preston County, Ray was graduated from West Virginia University in 1990 and from the WVU College of Law in 1993, where he was admitted to the Order of the Coif. While serving as Class President during his second year of studies, Ray’s law review article on the AIDS epidemic and the constitutional rights of accused sex offenders was selected as a finalist in the SCRIBES National Law Review Competition.