Briggs was born on April 26, 1881[1] in Kansas and came to Los Angeles in 1923;[2] In 1925 he was working at the Elliot-Horne Company as an attorney and was hired at Polytechnic High School to teach law at night.

[3] In 1929 he was on the executive committee of the Los Angeles Municipal League, and in August of that year he was the chairman of a meeting in Trinity Auditorium that urged the pardoning of Tom Mooney, who was serving a life term in San Quentin Prison for the bombing of a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco in 1916.

By 1932 he was dean of the Metropolitan University law college,[4] Briggs was the leader of the Ethical Society of Los Angeles in 1953.

[5] He died on July 25, 1969,[6] in Los Angeles and was survived by his wife, Leah; a daughter, Mary White of San Francisco; and two sisters, Rena Briggs and Gertrude Pefley, both of Parsons, Kansas.

Beebe retorted: I do not propose to be lectured by a dean of a law school, of which a State Bar publication reports that only one of 25 students passes the examinations.

Hampton retorted that such an action could be expected from "a former self-confessed ward-heeler of the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City.

"[17]Civil defense: He fiercely opposed the appointment of retired Army Colonel Halsey E. Yates to be "home defense coordinator" for Los Angeles, decrying the idea as the organization of a special police force to "run the affairs of the city in a secret and high-handed way.