U.S. District Court Senior Judge Stanley Brotman

During the past quarter-century, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Stanley Brotman has seen everything the Virgin Islands has to offer.

He's enjoyed the beautiful scenery and lived through St. Croix's most devastating hurricane. He's sent murderers and rapists to jail, helped get St. Croix's District Courthouse built and presided over the territory's first grand jury.

He has pored over Danish documents referring to oral land transfers and helped settle millions of dollars in lawsuits. And he's found a second home in paradise.

There are few areas of Virgin Islands law that have not been influenced by Brotman, a New Jersey-based judge who has been presiding over federal court cases in the Virgin Islands since 1980. This week, Brotman is in the territory to sit on the bench one last time before becoming a judge on inactive status at the end of the month.

In honor of Brotman's accomplishments, Gov. Charles Turnbull has proclaimed Saturday as Judge Stanley S. Brotman Day in the Virgin Islands. On Saturday evening, the V.I. Bar Association will hold a gala tribute in Brotman's honor at Divi Carina Bay Resort on St. Croix.

Brotman was born 80 years ago in Vineland, N.J., a medium-sized town in the southern part of the state that he still calls home. He began pursuing his undergraduate degree in political science at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., in the 1940s. After World War II broke out, Brotman took a hiatus from his education and volunteered for the U.S. Army. The Army trained Brotman in the Burmese language as well as in South Asian customs, politics, economics and culture. He served in military intelligence in Burma until his discharge in 1945.

After his discharge, Brotman finished his undergraduate degree at Yale University. He then enrolled in Harvard Law School. His dream was to return to Vineland, N.J., and start his own law practice.

After graduating from Harvard, Brotman was called to duty with the Army again - this time for the Korean War. He served in Washington, D.C., as a military intelligence officer, then returned to New Jersey to begin his legal practice. His wife was his first secretary, and he described the first days of his practice as "the blind leading the blind."

Brotman's firm handled all kinds of cases, and as the years passed he was joined by other lawyers. By 1964 the firm had eight lawyers and 22 administrative staff members.

Brotman looked back on his career in an interview this week.

What about being a lawyer interested you the most?

I felt that I would be in a position where I could perform a service that will not only give me a good living but also be rewarding. I looked upon the law as an area where I can be helpful to people.

I say this modestly, but I felt I could do some good and help people with their problems. Law is not always in the courtroom. There are many areas of a person's life that a lawyer becomes involved with. I felt I could be of some assistance in that area.

A call that changed everything

One day I received a call from United States Senator Clifford Case from New Jersey. This was in August of 1974, I think. As a matter of fact, at that time I think I was president of the New Jersey State Bar Association, too. And he said he would like to submit my name to the president to be submitted to the Senate as a United States District Court judge for New Jersey.

I asked him if I could call him back the next day. I wanted to discuss it with my wife. Also I told Sam Shapiro, the person with whom I formed the firm. The first thing he told me was, "If you don't take that, I'll kick you in ..." I won't say that word, but it's the rear.

I came home and discussed it with my wife, and we thought it would be a real opportunity. I called Clifford Case the next day, and I said I would be pleased and privileged to have my name submitted.

It was supposed to be submitted by Nixon, but Nixon was in trouble. When he left, President Ford submitted my name. As a matter of fact, April 23 will mark my 30 years on the bench. It was April 23, 1975, that I was sworn in.

When did you begin taking cases in the Virgin Islands?

In May of 1980. I received a call from the Chief Judge of the 3rd Circuit at that time, Judge (Ruggero) Aldisert. And he asked me if I would help out in the Virgin Islands. The 3rd Circuit is composed of the districts of New Jersey, Delaware, the Virgin Islands, and the three district courts in the district of Pennsylvania. And he said that Judge (Warren) Young, who was sitting as a judge in St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, was very, very ill. He wanted to know if it would interest some of our judges to go down and help out. It would be about a month's tour at that time, and I said I would be very happy to do so.

I knew something about the Virgin Islands and some about the history of the Virgin Islands. I don't think I was ever there before, and I thought it would be a very interesting experience. Plus, I would be doing something useful.

What was your first impression of the Virgin Islands?

Beautiful, beautiful islands. I was coming into St. Croix, which is a lovely community. The Virgin Islands: The scenery was fantastic.

I come from a small town, a town of today 55,000 people. The Virgin Islands are very similar in that everybody knows everybody else. I felt very much at home when I came.

I had been a trial lawyer for some 23 years before I went on the bench doing everything. Our office did everything, and coming to the Virgin Islands, I would sort of have those same type of cases. It was a way of getting to know more people.

Why did you stay involved in the Virgin Islands?

Judge Young was replaced by Judge David O'Brien, who subsequently became the chief judge down there. There was very little activity requiring a judge to come in from the outside. Things were under pretty good control.

Then I was asked to pick it up again by the 3rd Circuit. It became more and more. By 1986, there was more work to be done. The filings became greater than ever. It picked up, there were more lawsuits. I think at one time we had almost 2,000 cases between St. Croix and St. Thomas.

I was asked to go down. I went down with a law clerk and my court reporter. And we hit those cases. I settled a tremendous amount of those cases. A lot of settlement conferences, one right after another.

Then I began being assigned. It became more common.

Nightmare to remember

It was in 1989 - when I was down getting ready to try a case in St. Croix - that Hurricane Hugo hit, and I was in the middle of that. My law clerk and my court reporter were with me.

We were staying out at Carambola at the time. We knew the hurricane was going to hit the next day, and they moved us up about a mile away around the golf course, in condos around the golf course. That hurricane started at 4 o'clock Sunday afternoon, and we didn't get out until late the next morning when it stopped.

I'd never been in a hurricane before, but it was something I don't want to go through again. The roofs were being blown off, windows were being broken, glass was everywhere, you could hear the tin being blown around, and a lot of the condominiums around us were just being blown apart.

We had a condo on the bottom floor. The one on top of us was getting destroyed and we heard cries coming from across the street; a condo there had collapsed. A woman was yelling for help. In the meantime, we were in a closet in our condominium. Fortunately things were holding up pretty well, but there was no electricity - no, nothing along those lines. ...

Shortly thereafter, the hurricane came right over us. When the eye comes over you, it stops. For about 30 minutes it was stopped. And during that time, (the court reporter) went out with some others, got the woman out of the condo from across the street, and brought her over to our place. We had other people come to our place. We were about the only ones standing. I remember a German couple who spoke almost no English, a Spanish couple who spoke very little English, and then a family came in with their son and a dog. We started off with three, and I think we had about 17 or 18 people there. ...

The next morning they took us out, and they brought us back to the beach area. We had to cut ourselves out. They gave us machetes and we had to make new paths to go from one building to another. ...

On Wednesday morning ... a Jeep came in with marshals who had been looking for me. They were told that Chief Judge O'Brien directed that they find me.

(O'Brien) was to leave the island. He was undergoing treatment for cancer, and he was not well. He happened by coincidence to be back from Georgetown University Hospital when this hurricane happened, and there was a plane at the airport that day waiting to take him and his wife back to Washington. He wouldn't leave until they found us. ...

And then I got back to Vineland. Landed in Philadelphia on Thursday, back in Vineland on Thursday. Friday, I talked with the chief judge of the 3rd Circuit, who was John Gibbons at that time.

I told him that the marshals wanted me out because some 200 prisoners had escaped from the jail on St. Croix. I felt that I didn't want to go, but they wanted me out. I told him, "Right now the courts, they're in disarray. We've been hurt by the hurricane and that's physical damage and everything else, and there has to be somebody there on a judicial level to help out."

We talked about it, and he agreed. I went back on Saturday. I was on a plane from Philadelphia to Miami, where an FBI agent met me and took me over to Homestead Air Force Base, where there was a marshals' plane waiting with a lot of marshals in SWAT clothes, and there were guns all over the plane because the looting was really going on in St. Croix at the time.

They had a seat for me, and off we went to St. Croix. When we got to St. Croix, people at the airport who saw me leave said, "What are you doing back here?" I said, "I'm back to see what I can do."

What was it that made you want to keep coming back?

I fell in love with the Virgin Islands and the people. I found the people very polite, concerned, interested, pleasant, conscientious. I felt very much at home on the Virgin Islands.

Changes on a grand scale

What was very interesting to me when I first started, on the criminal side, the cases were brought by way of a complaint signed by the U.S. Attorney. There was no grand jury. That's understandable. They just didn't have it that time.

As the courts developed and as law develops, you move up and you move to a point of having grand juries. I either signed the order or I had the first grand jury. I don't recall which.

The reason I was just so thrilled to have the grand jury was that this gave the people of the Virgin Islands the responsibility of, in effect, deciding who gets charged. ... They're the ones who vote on whether or not somebody should be indicted.

No longer can anyone say, "Well, I don't run these courts, I don't have nothing to do with who gets indicted, who gets charged under a crime, An attorney does it all the time." Now, each individual had that responsibility.

A new home and new responsibilities

After Hurricane Hugo, Judge O'Brien was in Washington undergoing treatment, so I was spending a lot of time in the islands. Judge O'Brien for years had wanted to move the court from downtown in that little space accorded it within the Government House and build a whole new courthouse. He worked hard for it and got the plans done. ... About a couple weeks before O'Brien died, I received word that it was all approved and it was a go. And I called him on the telephone - he was in the hospital in Washington -and I said, "David, you're going to get your courthouse." Well, he died two weeks later.

It was on Dec. 22, and that day I got a call from the chief judge of the 3rd Circuit asking me if I would become acting chief judge of the District Court of the Virgin Islands until a new judge is appointed. I said I would ... and that made my job even the more interesting.

Cases that shaped Virgin Islands law

I remember a very interesting case I had right after Hurricane Hugo when Gov. (Alexander) Farrelly was governor. There was a test of the curfew that he had enacted. People had to be off the roads at a certain time because at that time there was no electricity, there were no telephones, there were looters around and additional marshals had been brought in. That curfew of his was tested, and I had that case, and I upheld the curfew.

We also had injunctions, general negligence matters, wills and estates, assaults, rapes, attorney discipline matters, lender's cases, insurance cases, real estate titles.

I really had a tremendous amount of real estate title cases in St. John. We had to go back to Danish documents to verify how surveying was done and how certain parcels were surveyed if we could. A lot of land passed orally for a while because it was the only way that it could be done. Something may be so many feet from this type of tree or this type of tree. I had to go into the whole art of surveying.

There was also a very interesting case involving the Legislature, Brown vs. Hansen, in 1992. That was where one day the Legislature had one majority and the next day they had a new majority. The issue was whether or not that could be done and if the new majority was legal. And we ruled that it was.

I had a series of cases involving Tutu Wells. It was out in the Tutu area, right on the main road coming into Tutu from town. It's the contamination of a water aquifer, and Texaco, Esso and Exxon were named as defendants - as well as the people or the company that owned a building where they were dyeing textiles - and there's a collection underneath that of contamination. This litigation has been going on for years, and that has pretty much also come to a close. I've written, I would say, 20 to 30 opinions on that case.

Also, a very interesting case involved the Virgin Islands Conservation Society. That was against the Board of Land Use Appeals. At Salt River somebody wanted to build a grand hotel, and I, in effect, vacated the decision on the proposed construction of that hotel.

Although the agencies acted with good intentions, certain procedure shortcuts were taken that undermined the effectiveness of the Virgin Islands CZM protecting the coastal zone resources. I recall in the agreement there were provisions being made: "Yes, we'll approve this, and if it gets built, they're going to have to do certain other things." And I said, "You can't do that. They have to do those other things before it gets built, because how do you know once they build it they're ever going to do it."

After Hurricane Marilyn, in St. Thomas there was a lot of damage to homes and apartment houses, and the government decided that it had to have some temporary quarters for these people while their homes were rebuilt. It was out in the Nazareth area near Red Hook. They put in a temporary housing place. The people in the neighborhood fought that. They didn't want that there. And I got involved.

The first case was knocked out. Then they started another case on behalf of the hawksbill sea turtle and the tree boa, saying that these were endangered species, and the construction of temporary housing violated them. Very interesting case.

I also had the jail, Carty vs. Farrelly. As each new governor came in, the governor's name was substituted, so it's now Carty vs. Turnbull. That's an unconstitutional jail, and I've been working it out for close to 10 years. They even had an annex. Supposedly it was pretty well under construction, and then it was determined that it wasn't built properly. The inside of the current jail was overpopulated and had to be cleaned. We were allowed to get a lot done, but a lot of things that were supposed to be done were not done, and I think that I've held the governor and the attorney general in contempt a couple times. Not a pleasant thing to do, but what has to be done, has to be done.

New developments

I think the creation of a Supreme Court is great. What it does it gives to the people of the Virgin Islands their own appellate system. It means that cases will be appealed from the Superior Court to their Supreme Court. ... As far as the new constitution, that's become a very political thing. I would refrain from commenting on that because that's presently now being discussed by the legislators. There have been constitutional conventions that have been unsuccessful, but I would hope that the one that will be held here will be successful.

What changes do you see on the horizon?

Changes in the law are very hard to predict because a lot of laws are based on what the legislation is and what legislation is passed. Circumstances that may happen at any one time that requires new laws to be passed. I think there's a normal growth in that respect. In the Virgin Islands as well as any other place. Certainly the lawyers, too, have grown with the expansion of cases. These cases have become more difficult. They've become lengthy, and the lawyers, I think, have grown with it. ...

The people of the Virgin Islands have grown, too. ... I find that people have become much more sophisticated, and their being more sophisticated makes them more sophisticated jurors. In other words they're - and I have to say this, too - I find them very conscientious listeners. They take notes. In their deliberations it's obvious that they've thought out the case before them, and they understand the case.

What are your plans?

April 23 will mark 30 years on the bench for me, from the day I came on in the jurisdiction of my own court. I've taken a lot of photographs, 30 years of them over in our court. And I have 24 years of them in the District Court of the Virgin Islands. I've told the historical societies of both courts I'm going to go over all my pictures and try and pull out those pictures I think they would like and I will give it to the respective historical societies. That's what I propose to do.

My wife and I have always done a lot of traveling. We'd like to do some more traveling. I'm 80 years old, and I look upon myself as not being put out to pasture. I've still have a lot of energy and activity left in me. Wherever it leads me, I will go.

Do you have plans to return?

Absolutely. The Virgin Islands will see me in one capacity or another.