Yule duel - continued - Jennings Osborne, of Little Rock, Arkansas, best known for his lighted Christmas displays with millions of lights, files bankruptcy - Brief Article

Nation's Business, Feb, 1996 by Michael Barrier

The old year has ended, and Jennings Osborne got through it without going to jail.

That may not sound like news, because, after all, the same could be said of most Nation's Business readers. But Osborne had better reason than most people to worry about a visit to the slammer in 1995.

He is the Little Rock, Ark., businessman whose dazzling Christmas displays engulfed his home in millions of lights and who was the subject of a Making It feature in this magazine. (See "What Life Is About," December 1994.) In 1994, his neighbors - irked by the traffic jams that Osborne's extravaganza produced - got the Arkansas Supreme Court to order the lights extinguished. Osborne, whose company tests new drugs on volunteers for major pharmaceutical companies, illuminated 174,600 lights anyway (including an angel shedding tears) and wound up fighting a possible jail term.

The Supreme Court found him guilty of contempt this past fall but suspended a 10-day jail sentence and ordered him to pay $10,000 in fines and court costs.

In the recent motion picture 'Field of Dreams,'" Chief Justice Bradley Jesson wrote, "it was said, 'If you build it, they will come.' Mr. Osborne built it, and they did come.'

Last year was a busy one for Osborne, who filed for personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July in response to suits against him by federal and state authorities over almost $500,000 in allegedly unpaid income taxes.

His bankruptcy filing showed he had plenty of assets to pay the claims, however, and his attorney, Robert Lowry, says that anyone to whom Osborne owes money will be paid "100 cents on the dollar." The idea behind the Chapter 11 filing, Lowry tells us, was simply to "prevent some overstepping by individuals in government offices."

Osborne is challenging the Arkansas Supreme Court's decision in federal court, on religious and free-speech grounds, and he still hopes to light up western Little Rock again. For now, though, most of those 3 minion lights have found a home - "on loan," Lowry emphasizes - at Walt Disney World, where audacious displays are far more common than in Little Rock.