Peers recall retired judge’s keen mind

After more than a quartercentury deciding custody disputes, interpreting wills and deciphering complex legal issues as a circuit judge, Ellen Brantley is looking forward in retirement to world travel and light laundry.

Friends and colleagues say Brantley’s departure takes with it a keen legal mind and an incisive wit from the 6th Judicial Circuit bench.

Her successor, Chip Welch, has known Brantley since high school and said he will have to work hard to live up to the standards she set.

“I’ve been a longtime admirer,” said Welch, who was sworn in on New Year’s Day. “She’s going to be a hard act to follow.”

Brantley is respected by fellow judges statewide, said Vann Smith, Judicial Council president and administrative judge for the circuit - which covers Perry and Pulaskicounties.

“She has an uncanny ability to grasp difficult legal issues and make a decision that is clear and concise,” he said.

Part of Brantley’s legacy is the Pulaski County Courthouse’s third-floor room for children who are waiting to testify, Smith said.

“She saw the need to protect children and provide a safe place for them to stay until they had to testify in court. Judge Brantley was the primary mover in obtaining funds for the project from the Pulaski County Bar Foundation, and then to have it decorated so it would be inviting for all kids,” Smith said.

“If you walk by the children’s room on almost any day of the week, you will see kids drawing or coloring or watching movies - it gives kids a moment of peace before having to talk to the judge.”

Smith also touted Brantley’s sense of humor, a common denominator among her friends and admirers. Gary Sullivan, an assistant attorney general who was Brantley’s law clerk in the 1980s, recalls Brantley as a shrewd observer of character.

“Judge Brantley was keen when it came to assessing peoples’ credibility,” he said. “My favorite quote of hers is ‘He’d tell a lie when the truth’s a better story.’”

Robin “Robbie” Mays, a Pulaski County circuit judge from 1989 to 2002, said Brantley was one of the first women elected to the bench. Her intellect is “off the charts,” she said, adding that her friend’s smarts are rivaled only by her wit and forthrightness.

“Ellen thinks and talks faster than the rest of us. Sometimes you have to just stop and process for a minute to determine what she has said. I used to say Ellen and I think a lot alike, she just does it faster,” Mays said.

“Ellen always stood for what she believed to be the right course for the judiciary and the public, not necessarily for what benefited her or a colleague.

“If she disagreed with you, it was generally a good idea to reassess your position, rather than try to change her mind, and it would more often than not turn out she was right.”

Frank Arey, counsel for the Legislative Audit Division, is a former Brantley law clerk and student. He always hoped that she’d take her penetrating insight to a seat on the state’s highest court, he said.

“Her integrity is unimpeachable,” he said.

“I’ve often thought it was the state’s loss that she didn’t serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court. She has a knack of seeing to the heart of a matter and ruling accordingly - and that’s a skill not in great supply.”

Looking back on a career of primarily deciding domestic issues, like divorce and custody cases, Brantley, a mother of two, said she has seen the best and worst in people, particularly when their children are involved.

“You cannot underestimate how petty people can be or what a huge factor anger is in people - and how unable or unwilling they are to control it,” she said.

“And I’ve learned how hard people work to take care of their children.”

Brantley was a 38-year-old law school professor in 1986 when Gov. Bill Clinton appointed her to the bench to replace a retiring judge.

Brantley, who had been an assistant attorney general when Clinton was attorney general, said she took a leave of absence from teaching because she didn’t expect to serve more than the two years left on that unexpired term.

Instead, she found herself called to the bench and gave up teaching for a career as a judge.

“I really decided this was better suited to my abilities,” Brantley said.

Domestic cases “are kind of like a puzzle, and you’re trying to put it together and figure out what’s true,” she said.

Judges have to retire at age 70 or lose retirement benefits. But, at age 64, Brantley said her work is done.

“It’s time,” she said. “Twenty-six years is long enough.”

Brantley said she plans to volunteer at the Clinton Presidential Center, and she definitely won’t be going into private law practice.

She will be available to serve as a special judge, substituting for judges who are sick, on vacation or have a conflict of interest in hearing a case, she said.

Recently returned from a trip to India, she said 2013 holds visits to Australia, New Zealand and Iceland with her husband, Max.

Although her primary assignment on the bench has been domestic law, she has presided over several notable lawsuits.

In December, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed her judgment in a trial involving Arkansas Children’s Hospital that awarded $11 million in damages to a man, Cody Metheny, who had the wrong side of his brain operated on at age 15 at the hospital.

But Brantley may best be known to the public for the week-long trial in December 1993 that ended with her curtailing flamboyant millionaire Jennings Osborne’s multimillion-light Christmas display at his west Little Rock home.

Some neighbors had sued Osborne, who died in 2011, over the lights display, complaining that it had become dangerous because of the large crowds flocking to see it, beginning in November of each year.

Brantley’s ruling limited the display to 15 days and required that Osborne hire security officers and traffic-control officers.

Osborne appealed her ruling to the Arkansas Supreme Court - something he would later publicly regret because the high court decision led to the display being shut down.

Osborne was always publicly appreciative of Brantley’s rulings in the case. He later donated his lights to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., where they are part of the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Also landing on Brantley’s plate was her 1998 ruling that upheld a Beebe woman’s year-long suspension from competitive horseback riding after her husband admitted in court that, without his wife’s knowledge, he had substituted his urine for the horse’s for drug-testing purposes. The urine had tested positive for caffeine, which was prohibited for the horse to compete.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 01/02/2013

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