George Hudson Painter

George H. Painter, beloved father, sibling and uncle, passed away on November 8, 2014 at a Los Angeles residential home near his son, Douglas Painter. Throughout his 35-year tenure as an administrative law judge at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), he was featured in over 60 newspaper articles, including those from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, for his outspoken belief that his agency did not adequately protect small commodity investors from broker manipulation and fraud. The cause of death was congenital heart failure. He was 87.

Memorial services will be held at 2:30 p.m., December 6, 2014, at the Old Chapel North, Forest Lawn Memorial Park Hollywood Hills, 6300 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90068.

George Hudson Painter was born on December 10, 1926, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was one of thirteen siblings. In high school, he was class president and captain of its basketball team. He held strong convictions at an early age about the pernicious effects of racial discrimination, refusing to drink out of "whites-only" water buckets on the farms at which he worked and protesting the unjust treatment of blacks.

He served in the U.S. Merchant Marine from 1945-1946 and the U.S. Army from 1950 to 1952. He received his B.S. from the University of Missouri in 1954. In 1955, he married his first wife of 42 years, Armida; due to Missouri's laws against miscegenation in effect at the time, the couple had to marry in Kansas (Armida was Chinese). After obtaining his law degree from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, he served with the Veteran's Administration from 1959 to 1966.

In 1966, he moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he lived for over 40 years. From 1966 to 1975, he was a hearing examiner with the former Department of Health, Education and Welfare and then the Department of the Interior. In 1975, he joined the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as an administrative law judge; he later became the agency's chief judge amongst a dozen or so fellow judges. In 2010, after over 50 years of federal service, he announced his retirement and moved to Los Angeles to live near his only son, Douglas.

His 35-year tenure at the CFTC left a legacy for the legal decisions he issued and for the awareness he raised when he believed his agency had become captive to political or industry concerns. Many of his decisions established law that protected investors; in one, he ruled that brokerage firms could no longer escape liability for wrongdoing by having advisors disclaim an agency relationship with them, in another, he ruled that certain kinds of futures contracts were nothing more than a fraud on investors and hence illegal.

He was not shy about identifying injustice, frequently criticizing the CFTC in his written decisions and in media interviews. In a 1992 article in the Wall Street Journal, he stated the CFTC made it difficult for a defrauded customer to recover: "[the] customer not only has to prove that brokers lied and cheated, you have to go in now and prove you're stupid." When the commission reversed one of his cases in which over 95% of an elderly couple's investment was used to pay brokers' commissions, he stated in a 1995 Washington Post article that the action was "a green light to those in the industry with a proclivity for churning and otherwise taking advantage of the elderly and unsophisticated." He called for commodity exchanges to modernize their "horse-buggy-era record-keeping systems" in which floor traders scribbled orders on tickets, explaining that "automated trading cards would do wonders to curb the temptation to place personal profits ahead of a customer's best interests."

In 2010, in announcing his retirement, he issued a final order requesting that his pending cases be re-assigned to administrative law judges outside of the CFTC. According to the order, the reason for this request was his observation, reported ten years earlier in the Wall Street Journal, that the sole remaining judge at the CFTC had never ruled on the merits in favor of an investor.

George was known for his dry Oklahoma wit, self-effacing demeanor and endless generosity. He opened his door to all who wished to visit or needed a place to stay. He frequently sang and played guitar for his friends as a form of social interaction. He was an avid tennis player, his team placing fourth in the 1988 USTA Tennis League National Championships. Many of his law clerks and colleagues have kept in close contact with him, crediting him for helping start their careers and, in some cases, families.

He is survived by his son Douglas Painter, his siblings Iris Painter, Charlotte Bell, Jon Painter, Joe Painter and James Painter, and numerous nieces and nephews.