Retiring Washington County judge wouldn’t let lawyers ‘push her around,’ colleagues say

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
Updated ·6 min read

An Anoka County jury had already ordered Burlington Northern Santa Fe to pay $21.6 million to the families of four people killed in a 2003 car-train collision in Anoka when Judge Ellen Maas, who presided over the six-week trial, ruled that the railroad should be penalized an additional $4.2 million for its conduct.

According to Maas, the railroad company destroyed, mishandled and tampered with critical evidence, and made so many misrepresentations to the court and attorneys of the victims that she “lost count.”

“The breadth of (the railroad’s) misconduct in this case is staggering; beginning within minutes of the accident, up to and through the trial,” Maas wrote in her 2009 ruling.

The case, which proceeded to the Minnesota Supreme Court, involved the “largest award in the country against the railroad” at that time — and was the biggest of her career, said Maas, who retires Friday. Presiding over the highly publicized and controversial trial also led to her being named “Trial Judge of the Year” in 2011 by the Minnesota Chapter of the American Board of Trial Advocates.

“She’s the perfect judge to try a high-stakes case like that because of her legal knowledge and her work ethic,” said retired Washington County District Court Judge John Hoffman, a longtime friend. “She will not allow lawyers to push her around.”

Maas, 66, of Birchwood, was appointed to the bench in 1995 by Gov. Arne Carlson. She previously had been a trial attorney at Popham, Haik in Minneapolis, but was interested in following in the footsteps of her father, Washington County District Court Judge Kenneth Maas, who died in 2007 at the age of 75. He swore his daughter in on Jan. 13, 1995; she was 38.

The Maases were the first father-daughter trial judge team in the country. “He taught me to be prepared, to listen, to not interrupt and to treat all people with respect,” Ellen Maas said. “I tried my best to follow in his footsteps.”

In her letter to Gov. Tim Walz announcing her retirement, Maas wrote that she was proud of her contributions while on the bench and serving on the Board on Judicial Standards for almost 13 years. She also noted the many changes in technology she experienced over the years.

“It’s been a mind-bending experience,” she wrote. “It does not seem that long ago, I was sitting in front of an IBM Selectric typewriter, typing bench memos for Justice Glenn Kelley, while working as his first law clerk on the Minnesota Supreme Court. Now, we are holding court on cell phones.”

Maas grew up in Birchwood and graduated from White Bear Lake High School in 1974. She graduated from Drake University in Des Moines in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in music and public administration and received her law degree from the University of Iowa Law School in 1981.

Colleagues say Maas will be remembered for her compassion on the bench.

“Nobody comes to us unless something has gone wrong in their life,” said Washington County District Court Judge Greg Galler. She has a lot of compassion to make a good decision, well reasoned, so that people can then order their lives and move forward more positively.”

Maas also is passionate about making sure that the judicial system “is the best it can be to serve the citizens,” Galler said. “It’s just mind-boggling to me how much time she puts into the decisions she writes.”

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Maas served in Anoka County District Court before transferring to Washington County District Court in 2008.

While in Anoka County, Maas was instrumental in helping design and implement the one-judge/one-family calendaring plan, which set the stage for blocking complex civil cases to one judge, said Hoffman, who served with Maas in Anoka and Washington counties.

“She’s brilliant – that’s one of the things that makes her a good trial court judge,” he said. “She treats people really well. She is willing to ask questions, so she has a full and complete understanding of the dilemmas of any litigant that comes before her.”

Weddings, marathons, boats and bassoons

Maas said her favorite judicial duty is getting to marry people. She estimates that she has presided over more than 2,000 weddings, including one at a mortuary on Halloween. “Dad and I used to keep score, and it took me a long time to catch up to him,” she said. “I just love doing weddings. I plan to keep doing them after I retire.”

During the pandemic, Maas said she married about 50 couples at the end of the City Pier in White Bear Lake. “Everything was shut down, and we couldn’t do weddings at the courthouse, so I figured that was a good option,” she said. “It’s a great spot. It might be 20 below, but people still needed to get married.”

Maas is an accomplished bassoon player who plays in a number of local orchestras, including Kenwood Symphony in Minneapolis, Northern Symphony in Anoka and Mississippi Valley Symphony in Inver Grove Heights. “Everybody needs a bassoon,” she said. “We’re a rare commodity. We’re in demand. It’s a weird instrument.”

Maas also is a competitive sailor and a distance runner, having completed 22 marathons, including 10 Boston Marathons. She started racing X-boats on White Bear Lake in 1965 and raced an M-16 named “Little Women” with her mother, Jibby Maas, for 22 years.

Passion for loons

Maas is married to Len Pratt, the president of Pratt Homes. The couple met at Pazzaluna restaurant in downtown St. Paul in 1999 when they were both out with friends; three months later, he proposed. They got married in 2000; Maas has three stepchildren and two grandchildren.The couple, who live on White Bear Lake, share a passion for loons. Every spring, Pratt installs artificial nests to help the loons establish their families. Maas photographs them and writes “The Loon Chronicles,” a bi-weekly column for the “White Bear Press” from late March through November.

“When the lake levels dropped, it became almost impossible for the loons to have successful hatches,” Maas said. “Len did quite a bit of research and had an artificial nest made. For the last six years, we have had some success stories on Len’s nest. We go out at the crack of dawn every morning, once the ice is out, to follow our beloved loon parents. Their behaviors are absolutely fascinating.”

Looking after the loons helped make her time on the bench more manageable, Maas said in an interview for the Garden Club of America that was filmed in 2022.

“If you were to take everything we see and read too seriously, you would crumble,” she said in the video, titled “The Loon Whisperers.” “You savor just watching the papa loon deliver the fish. It makes the murder trial that you’re supposed to start next week just a little bit more manageable in your mind because you have these stolen moments of joy. You just have to celebrate each stop along the way that you can.

“It makes you realize how fragile and precious life is,” Maas said. “It’s amazing how much people love these birds. Complete strangers send us cards and emails. It touches something deep.”

Judge Ellen Maas open house

An open house to celebrate Judge Ellen Maas’ retirement will be 2 to 3:30 p.m. Friday in Courtroom 203 at the Washington County Courthouse in Stillwater.

The reception is open to the public; a short program will be held at 2:30 p.m.

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