The Raider Logbook

This page is read only. You can view the source, but not change it. Ask your administrator if you think this is wrong.
{{::hayes-photo-times-advocate-19661119.png?nolink&150|}}\\
<fs x-small>Photo: //Escondido Times-Advocate//, November 19, 1966
</fs>====== William Hayes ======

William J. Hayes\\
Born 1909(?), Oakland\\
Died October 22, 1979, age 70\\

William Hayes, the Raiders’ first lead attorney, was born and raised in Oakland. He attended St Mary’s Prep in Berkeley before getting a degree at St. Mary’s College in Moraga in 1931. He then went on to get his law degree at Hastings Law College (now UC Hastings) in San Francisco. After passing the bar exam he went into private practice in Los Angeles before serving in the United States Navy during the war where he mustered out as a lieutenant commander.

After the war he returned to Oakland where he continued in private practice. In a case that garnered a fair number of column-inches in the local papers in 1957, he represented industrialist and soon-to-be Oakland City Council member Robert Osborne in a dispute with Osborne’s brother Don over bonus payments while Don was working for Robert at Malabar Manufacturing. Hayes’s association with Osborne at that time may have been the impetus for the team’s hiring on Hayes on February 4, 1960.

He continued to serve the Raiders as lead counsel in a low-key fashion throughout the decade while maintaining his private practice. He notably represented pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale in their celebrated holdout dispute with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1966.

In 1969 he was appointed by California governor Ronald Reagan to a newly created state superior court judgeship and by virtue of his new position, resigned his Raiders post. Hayes occupied the bench until early 1979 when health problems forced him to resign and he died later that year. 

====Professional Front Office Career====

|<35%>|
|1960|Oakland Raiders|Lead Counsel  | |

  * Feb 4 - Retained by the Oakland franchise as lead counsel.
The Raider Logbook

User Tools

Site Tools

Page Tools
