Mortimer A. Kline; L.A. County Deputy D.A., Deputy Counsel
Mortimer A. Kline, 93, a deputy district attorney and deputy county counsel for Los Angeles County in the mid-1920s. He then became a member of the law firm Andrews, Blanche & Kline, which was retained by many Southland oil companies to fight the practice of slant drilling. During World War II he went to Washington as associate chief counsel for the Petroleum Administration for War and general counsel for the Petroleum Reserves Corp. After the war he returned to Los Angeles and established the firm Kline, Barton & Stanley, which drew up incorporation articles for Santa Fe Drilling Co., an employee-owned venture created from the drilling division of the Union Oil Co. of California. He left his firm to become senior vice president of Santa Fe, retiring in 1974. In Los Angeles on Feb. 18.
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