Staton, Whaley & Price
company · active 1945-1946
Also known as Staton & Whaley
The Snow Hill law firm that wrote Ocean City's zoning. Its printed letterhead - 'JOHN S. WHALEY / WILLIAM H. PRICE / STATON, WHALEY & PRICE / ATTORNEYS AND COUNSELORS AT LAW / SNOW HILL, MD.' - appears on correspondence filed with the town's minutes through 1946. Price drafted the enabling bill that became Chapter 787 of the Acts of 1945, advised the Zoning Commission, ran the public hearings of December 1945 with his own stenographer, sat with the council through its April 1946 revisions, and on 4 May 1946 sent the clerk the text of the minute to be taken on 7 May. Whaley handled the boundary side: he cited the deeds that settled the North Division Street question on 2 April, drew the resolution the council passed on 28 May, carried the 925-against-927-foot discrepancy back and forth with the surveyors, and would not risk the mails with the rewritten ordinance under 'the present transportation situation'. The firm billed the town $1,324.24 for the zoning work, paid on 16 July 1946, and used file number 16,250 for the zoning and 16,724 for the survey. On 9 September 1946 John S. Whaley was appointed City Attorney of Ocean City.
In the record (7)
1946 · 1946-04-11
On 11 April 1946 Ocean City's council made three named changes to its zoning commission's final report - a block rezoned B-40-A, a twelve-month rebuilding right, and the density put back to sixty families an acre.
Meeting with Attorney Wm. Price, the council decided to make the following changes from the Commission's final report: from lots 10, 11 and 12 in Block 9 north, to lots 7, 8 and 9 in Block 10 north inclusive, east of the alley in said blocks, to be zoned B-40-A; paragraph 11 on page 13 amended to permit rebuilding within twelve months for a non-conforming use higher than B.B. business use; and paragraph 18(d), density of population, 'changed back to 60 families per acre'. All three survive into the adopted ordinance: Par. 11 is the twelve-month fire clause, and Par. 18(d) caps a B-Area district at sixty families to the acre. On 25 April the council read a letter from Price about the change it had made on the rebuilding clause and the redrafting of the paragraph on damaged buildings, accepted his idea of it, and had the secretary write him that his draft was O.K.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-03
On the evening of Friday 3 May 1946 Ocean City read its zoning ordinance through one last time, declared it 'as they wanted it', and fixed its passage for the following Tuesday.
The full board met with Wm. H. Price, attorney for Zoning, and the engineer. 'The entire Zoning ordinance was read over and changes in map were noted. Council agreed that the Ordinance was as they wanted it, and Attorney Price was instructed to prepare the Ordinance so it could be finally passed at next regular monthly meeting to be held on May 7th 1946.' The meeting rose at 10:30. The sequence from there is complete: the commission's report signed over 20 November 1945, public hearings 19 and 22 December 1945, the council reading and amending on 3, 4, 11 and 25 April 1946, the final read-through on 3 May, counsel's draft minute on 4 May, and passage on 7 May. This is the meeting at which the town's mayor is first written 'D. Trimper Jr.' in the 1946 book.
The engineer of the 1946 zoning map is printed CLARKE GARDNER on the map and written 'Clark Gordon' by the clerk four days earlier - almost certainly the Clark Gardner who had been Ocean City's consulting engineer since 1935.
Daniel W. Trimper, Jr.John B. LynchCranford O. SavageRudolph DolleClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-04
Ocean City's whole boundary fight came down to two feet between a deed and a plat - and the lawyer drafting the fix put 977 feet in his own resolution because, as he wrote, he had inadvertently added fifty.
Two letters of 4 May 1946 from John S. Whaley of Staton, Whaley & Price, both under the firm's file number 16,724, are filed with the minutes. To George B. Cropper - 'Dear Bert' - he reports that Robert C. Walker has called his attention to a typographical error on the ninth line of page 4 of the tentative resolution circulated about 10 April: the distance of 977 feet should have been 927 feet, and 'I did not check the resolution carefully before it left my office as to distances, etc., as I was confident that there would be some changes to be made before the resolution was finally drawn'. To Walker at Bronxville he sets out the arithmetic: 'An attempt is, of course, being made to show that there is a difference of two feet in the distance along Atlantic Avenue, as shown on said Plat, and as shown in the description of the deed prior to the Plat... Apparently I inadvertently added fifty feet. I have checked the deed, and the distance given in the deed is 925 feet. Unless I have made another error in addition, what is supposed to be the corresponding distance as shown on the Plat is 927 feet.' The two-foot gap between the deed and the Sinepuxent Beach Company plat is the same error Pitts measured in the field on 13 March, and it is what the 28 May resolution was drawn to settle.
The deed says 925 feet and the plat says 927 - the two-foot difference Ocean City spent the spring of 1946 arguing about.
Sinepuxent Beach CompanyJohn S. WhaleyG. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-04
Ocean City's lawyers wrote the minute of the zoning ordinance's passage three days before the meeting - attendance, mover, seconder and the word 'unanimously' all typed in advance, with 'Ordinance No. 99' filled in by hand.
On 4 May 1946 William H. Price of Staton, Whaley & Price wrote to the Mayor and City Council: 'Pursuant to your instructions last evening, we advise as follows with respect to the minutes to be taken of your regular meeting next Tuesday night. The minutes should begin in form somewhat as follows:' - and then set out the attendance line naming Trimper, Lynch, Dolle, Savage and Mumford with the hour left blank, followed by the passage minute in full: the President laying the ordinance before the council 'as recommended by the Zoning Commission and revised following public advertised hearings', the motion by Dolle, the second by Savage, and the ordinance 'unanimously passed', with the number 99 written in by hand on the typed blank. The letter then explains why the whole ordinance had to be copied into the minute book: 'in the event of a contest the only admissible evidence as to the Ordinance is the record of the minutes of the Mayor and City Council.' The 7 May minute follows the draft. It is counsel's text, not an independent record of what was said in the room - and the reason the campaign can read Ordinance No. 99 at all.
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-05-24
Ocean City's lawyer would not put the town's rewritten ordinance in the post in May 1946 - 'under the present transportation situation' he had it carried by hand instead.
Writing to George B. Cropper on 24 May 1946 - 'Dear Bert' - John S. Whaley thanked him for his letter of 11 May, told him 'I have rewritten the Ordinance, and enclose herewith a copy of the Ordinance as rewritten, embracing your suggestions', and then: 'Under the present transportation situation I shall not risk mailing the rewritten Ordinance to Mayor and City Council of Ocean City, but shall see that it is in some way delivered in person. I shall send at least two copies thereof to the Mayor and City Council, so that the Mayor and City Council can give Mr. Walker one copy. I shall also send a copy of the rewritten Ordinance to Bill Pitts.' The date is the height of the national railroad strike. It is the only trace in the whole 1946 minute book of the post-war disruption reaching Ocean City's paperwork - and it puts at least four copies of a rewritten ordinance into circulation by hand, which is four chances that one of them survives.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
John S. WhaleyG. Bertrand Cropper
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-06-04
Ocean City appointed George Bert Cropper its first Building Inspector on 4 June 1946 - the engineer who had spent 1939 trying to give the town a building code got the office four weeks after zoning gave him one.
'On motion by J. B. Lynch, seconded by R. Dolle, Geo. Bert Cropper was appointed Building Inspector to carry out the Zoning ordinance.' Ordinance No. 99 had created the office in function on 7 May and named nobody to it; every permit, every certificate of occupancy and every referral to the Board of Zoning Appeals runs through it. Four days before the appointment, William H. Price had ended a letter to the clerk on an unrelated sewer question with a postscript: 'Will you please write me the name of the Building Inspector under the Zoning Ordinance when appointed?' Cropper was already the town's working surveyor - it was his field notes that started the boundary fight in March, and the same meetings that made him Inspector sent him out to give the grade for a sidewalk and to mark the line of 6th Street. By 22 October the council had told him to go ahead towards making a unified grade for the streets of the entire City.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
G. Bertrand CropperJohn B. LynchRudolph Dolle
Source · checked 2026-08-15
1946 · 1946-07-16
Ocean City's zoning ordinance cost it $1,324.24 in legal fees, billed by Staton, Whaley & Price and ordered paid on 16 July 1946.
'Bills of Staton, Whaley & Price were read on Zoning of $1,324.24 and ordered paid.' It is the whole legal cost of the instrument in one figure, covering work that runs back at least to 23 January 1945, when the council asked Attorney Wm. Price to prepare the enabling bill for Annapolis, and through the drafting, the December 1945 hearings with Price's own stenographer, the April 1946 amendments, the rewriting, and the letter of 4 May telling the clerk what to put in the minute. The same meeting set the town's tax rate at $1.40 and gave the firemen $100 towards a band.
Source · checked 2026-08-15