ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 26, 1997 TAG: 9704280071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: MARLENE CIMONS LOS ANGELES TIMES
In 1974, William L. Osteen Sr. - then a private attorney in Greensboro, N.C. - worked as a paid lobbyist for a group of tobacco farmers. That year, in fact, he went to Washington to urge Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz to drop a plan to end federal price supports for tobacco.
So it was predictable that when Osteen - now a federal judge - was assigned to decide the tobacco industry's legal challenge of the authority of the Food and Drug Administration to regulate it, anti-smoking activists were incensed. He had an inherent conflict of interest, they argued, insisting he would never give their cause a fair hearing, especially in tobacco-friendly North Carolina.
Similarly, though tobacco industry executives and lawyers would never admit it publicly, they could not have been more pleased that he got the case.
Both sides were surprised Friday.
Osteen's key ruling in the dispute - that the FDA indeed has legal jurisdiction to regulate tobacco - may have shocked the case's combatants, but it made perfect sense to those who have known and worked for years with him.
Friends and former colleagues describe him as a man of impeccable integrity, unswayed by outside influences - or by the tobacco culture of his roots and upbringing.
``As a lawyer, he was always a strong advocate for his clients,'' said Ralph Walker, Osteen's former law partner and a longtime friend who is now a judge on the North Carolina court of appeals. ``But now, after six years as a federal judge, he is no longer an advocate for any side. I'm confident he didn't bring any biases from his background with him into this particular case. The fact that he lives in the heart of the tobacco industry in no way influenced him in this case.''
Osteen, 66, a former pipe smoker who quit in the late 1970s, grew up on a farm outside Greensboro, attended high school and college in the area and received his law degree from the University of North Carolina.
He has always been a staunch Republican. In 1960, he was elected to the state General Assembly, the first Republican to hold elective office in Guilford County since the Depression.
In a legislature dominated by Democrats, he became minority leader, a position he held for four years. He quit the legislature in 1964 and focused on his law career so he could spend more time with his family.
But in 1968, the lure of politics again beckoned. He ran unsuccessfully for Congress, losing ``in the cleanest campaign in North Carolina in this century,'' Walker said.
The following year, President Nixon appointed him U.S. Attorney for the middle district of North Carolina - the same area where his father, John Luke Osteen, had spent 29 years as a probation officer.
In 1973, he returned to private practice until his 1991 appointment to the federal bench.
One tale frequently told about Osteen to illustrate his high moral code concerns the time he and law partner N. Carlton Tilley - now a U.S. district judge - found themselves interviewing a client in a prison conference room. The accused told his lawyers he could find someone willing to lie for him under oath during his trial.
Osteen got up and left, telling the man: ``You can get someone else to represent you.''
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Osteenby CNB