ticket caching coding errors?

In investigating an unrelated bug #441744: Better language support for multi-lingual (i18n) sites, I ran across a piece of code that puzzled me...

jobtrack.module @ line 282:

/**
 * Menu callback, load a ticket.
 */
function jobtrack_ticket_load($nid) {
  $tickets = array();
  if (!isset($tickets[$nid])) {
    $tickets[$nid] = db_fetch_object(db_query('SELECT * FROM {jobtrack_ticket} WHERE nid = %d', $nid));
  }
  return $tickets[$nid];
}

It looks like that's a typical coding pattern for a static variable where you want to cache all the $ticket ids ... but its missing the staticidentifier in front of $tickets = array();

There is another function (just above this one) that is nearly the same code pattern, but does have the static identifier....

/**
 * Menu callback, load a client.
 */
function jobtrack_client_load($clid) {
  static $clients = array();
  if (!isset($clients[$clid])) {
    $clients[$clid] = db_fetch_object(db_query('SELECT clid, name, path, status, integrate_email, server_name, server_username, server_password, mailfrom, mailbox, protocol, port, notes, autosubscribe, domains FROM {jobtrack_client} WHERE clid = %d', $clid));
  }
  return $clients[$clid];
}

Just curious about this bit of code if its a typo, or just incomplete. Furthermore, I'm no "pro" at PHP but I would think that doing something like static $clients = array(); would reinitialize the array each time, effectively defeating the purpose of the static identifier. ... again i could be wrong, AND IF SO, PLEASE POINT ME IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION :) ... but I would do something like this:

function jobtrack_client_load($clid) {
  static $clients;
  $clients = is_array($clients) ? $clients : array();
  //... proceed with rest of code ...
}

Am I completely off here? Again, im not trying to be a code snob, but just trying to learn and understand Drupal the best i can :)