Rick S. Brown, 1942-2024

Rick (Frederick) S. Brown, who spent 26 years on the Santa Barbara County courts, and then another 15 as an assigned judge, kept working to make trials more efficient, advocating a different way to handle expert testimony.

Brown, who was a judge from 1976 to 2003, died Jan. 2 at 81. A memorial service will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 11 at St Mark’s In-The-Valley Episcopal Church in Los Olivos, where Brown opened his sole practice in 1971, with his office in front and his living area in back.

“Judge Rick Brown was the consummate legal scholar and gentleman,” Santa Barbara County Judge Jed Q. Beebe wrote in an email on Monday. “He had a remarkable career beginning as a judge of the Justice Court, then the Municipal Court and then the Superior Court, where he handled some very significant trials. He was a great help to the court even after retiring. Rick had gifts as well as a fine jazz pianist. He is much missed.”

“All of the adjectives or phrases describing a truly great judge can be given to Judge Rick Brown,” Santa Barbara County Judge Kay S. Kuns wrote in an email Tuesday. “I probably had more trials (both civil and criminal) before Judge Brown than any other judge in the county. There was integrity in his decision making, and he always strived to be fair and just within that role.”

Kuns added that Brown “had the courage to reverse his own prior decisions when he recognized that an error was made, and he had the courage to make difficult legal decisions that may not have been popular, but which he believed to be right according to the law.”

In his later years, Brown became an advocate for Juxtaposed Expert Testimony, a system to make complicated evidence easier for the fact-finder to understand and compare, and to save trial time and costs. All the experts would appear at the same time, in person or on video, give their qualifications, and be asked the same questions.

“That is an issue most of us would like to be able to pull together on but it looks like it’s not going to happen,” Santa Barbara County Presiding Judge Tom Anderle commented in an interview Monday. “He was extremely conscientious, very user friendly, worked with lawyers and self represented litigants and did it with style.”

Anderle described Brown as “an in the trenches kind of judge. He worked every day, worked his cases, did it conscientiously, with thoughtfulness.”

Born June 3, 1942, Brown grew up in the Santa Ynez Valley, attended Stanford University and graduated from UCLA School of Law in 1967. He studied international law at the University of Paris, then returned to California. He worked for a year as a trial deputy for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office and another year as a sole practitioner.

He returned home and opened his practice, handling criminal defense, appellate, probate litigation, personal injury, and family law matters, including Marriage of Brown, 15 Cal. 3d 838, 126 Cal. Rptr. 633 (1976) as amicus counsel, appearing before the California Supreme Court. The court held that retirement benefits “do not derive from the beneficence of the employee.”

Brown was also lead trial and appellate attorney for plaintiffs and respondents in Estate of Gebert, 95 Cal. App. 3d 370, 157 Cal. Rptr. 46 (1979), “a case of first impression regarding severance of a joint tenancy,” he wrote in an autobiographical statement provided by his family.

Five years later, he was elected in a three-candidate race to the Solvang Justice Court and became a North Santa Barbara County Municipal Court judge in a consolidation. He was elevated to the Superior Court by unification in 1998.

Former Santa Barbara County judge Zel Canter was one of the candidates in the 1976 election. “He won. We‘ve been friends ever since,” Canter wrote in an email Tuesday. “When the county decided to close by then the Municipal Court in Solvang, we teamed to get the community involved to oppose it. Initially, successful, but the supervisors later voted on a rehearing to close it.

“Rick was a kind and gentle soul, but when duty called for sternness, he stepped up,” Canter said. “He was humorous. I recall the dilemma a very negligent attorney caused concern for all of us. I heard that when he bumbled his way through a proceeding before him, Rick asked for his bar card and told him he was keeping it. The lawyer was effectively disbarred by a Justice Court judge. Of course Rick gave the card back. But he shocked that lawyer into straightening out, at least for the short term.”

Canter added, “I smile when I think of Rick and that, perhaps, is the best compliment to bestow. He’ll be missed.”

Brown’s court in Santa Maria was the site for many news making and gruesome murder cases, where he sentenced convicted defendants to long prison sentences — 55 years, 75 years, life — or death.

Mag Nicola, who prosecuted a special circumstance case in Brown’s court involving the beating and torture death of a 2-year-old girl, described him in a 2002 Daily Journal profile as an intelligent judge. “He made tough calls on complicated evidentiary matters … and there were a lot of expert hearsay rulings, which he called right,” Nicola said.

Brown said he would be the gatekeeper, sifting expert testimony — including relatively recent bite mark evidence that the defense objected to — and decide what the jury would hear, according to news accounts at the time. People v. Moreno, 1023104 (Santa Barbara Super. Ct., filed April 2002).

Brown sentenced the defendant, Librado Moreno Jr., to life without the possibility of parole for killing his stepdaughter, Natacia Valle, and an additional 55 years for torturing the toddler, who suffered bite wounds and a burn on her finger caused by pressure on a hot surface.

Brown’s family was the antidote to the vicious crimes replayed in his courtroom, he said in the 2002 interview. “You go home and hug your children and wife,” he said. “You just get into your family activities.”

Another antidote was music. “Piano is one of my big releases,” Brown said. Brown’s love of jazz began as a young boy listening to his father play for fun with a band. “Growing up, we always had instruments in our house,” Brown said.

Anderle described Brown as” always bending over backward” to help self-represented litigants convey “what they really wanted. That takes time. He clearly didn’t have any leaning to one side or the other, but he wanted the self-represented litigants to be understood.”

“He was dedicated and he wanted to get to the truth,” Anderle explained. “He wanted to pull away all the extra words and … find out how to resolve it. He was a very pragmatic guy. He didn’t kick the can down the alley.”

Brown’s position on the Solvang Justice Court, which he served from 1976 to 1990, allowed him to launch an interesting bench career, because the courthouse was not very busy. So he filled in as needed in courts throughout the state.

He continued his peripatetic career after his retirement in 2003. As an assigned judge he spent the next 15 years working in Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and San Diego counties.

“He treated everyone in the courtroom with respect, regardless of their role or title, including criminal defendants,” Kuns recalled. “There was never a question as to the love he had for the law and his profession, but those of us who also knew Judge Brown outside the courtroom realized that his love of family surpassed all else. He will be missed by so many.”

The late judge is survived by his widow, Pamela Kaplan-Brown, a retired estate planning attorney; his sons, Benjamin, a psychiatrist, and Theo, a musician.