Phillip (Chuck) Rouse – Rouse Frets White Goss Gentile Rhodes

Rouse Frets White Goss Gentile Rhodes is among the largest firms in Kansas City. For Chuck Rouse, one of the firm’s managing officers, that growth has come mostly from allowing one thing to lead to another.

“When you do a good job for a client on a piece of litigation, they think you can do their corporation because you’re a lawyer,” he said.

Rouse’s personal practice is a perfect example. His work generally has involved commercial transactions and business litigation, including insurance-coverage litigation stemming from the 1981 Hyatt hotel walkway collapse.

But in the past 15 years he has concentrated on regulatory compliance issues involving prepaid cards. Despite their ubiquity today, development of such alternative payment systems required buy-in from federal and state regulators with concerns ranging from consumer protection and privacy to tax and anti-money-laundering laws.

Not only has Rouse helped companies comply with those rules, he has worked with the industry to help write the relevant laws, as well as to develop new accounting standards to address the unique issues of prepaid cards.

Rouse, who studied math as an undergraduate at the University of Nebraska, also holds a patent related to prepaid cards and founded two companies involved in the processing of payment instruments for leading banks and retailers.

“Maybe that was part of the fun of it,” he said. “It was like, ‘Let’s experience things.’”

After earning his law degree from the University of Missouri in 1981, Rouse clerked for two years for U.S. District Judge William H. Becker in Kansas City. Rouse described him as a judge who could “make me sweat.”

“He’d tell me to line up the books. He was going to read the cases and see if they said what I said,” Rouse said. “He would say, ‘When you’re a lawyer, when you brief us judges make sure your cases say what they say, because they’ll come to know and trust your work, or they’ll come to know they can’t.’”

The experience not only taught Rouse research skills but also gave him a broad understanding of complex litigation matters. Apart from his district judgeship, Becker also served on the Temporary Emergency Court of Appeals, a special court that existed from 1971 to 1992 and, among other things, heard appeals involving oil and gas matters. Becker also served as a special master for the U.S. Supreme Court for Original Action No. 79, a dispute involving the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas.

“I had a 1-2-3 punch,” Rouse said.

His unusual experience landed Rouse an associate position at the then-fledgling Kansas City firm of Baker Sterchi Cowden & Rice, where he was just the sixth lawyer on staff. In 1995, following his “entrepreneurial bent,” he left to form his own firm, Douthit Frets Rouse Gentile.

The firm, which began with just five lawyers, now has 65 following a merger last year with another Kansas City firm to form Rouse Frets White Goss Gentile Rhodes.

“And we still having people wanting to come, so we’ll see where we go,” he said.