Wednesday, May 28, 2003
Page 3
Services Set for Late Supreme Court Justice David Eagleson
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Services are scheduled this Sunday for retired California Supreme Court Justice David N. Eagleson, who died Friday at the age of 78.
Eagleson, a member of the state high court from 1987 to 1991, died of cancer at his Long Beach home.
Tributes to the justice, who practiced law in Long Beach for 20 years before serving on the Los Angeles Superior Court, Div. Five of this district’s Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court for another 20 years, continued coming in yesterday.
Retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Wapner, who was presiding judge when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed Eagleson to the Superior Court in 1970, called the late jurist “a very fine person of great integrity and honesty and legal ability, without peer [as an] an honorable human being.”
Former District Attorney Robert Philibosian said Eagleson, one of three justices appointed to the high court after the late Chief Justice Rose Bird and Justices Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso were voted out of office in 1986, set a standard as “one who unerringly followed the law and let the chips fall where they may.”
Philibosian, now in private practice in Los Angeles, said he became close to Eagleson through their mutual friend, former Gov. George Deukmejian. Eagleson, he said, “was very engaging and a good and loyal friend.”
Sunday’s services are set to begin at 2 p.m. at St. Timothy Lutheran Church, 4645 Woodruff Ave., in Lakewood. Eagleson is survived by his wife and two daughters.
The family has asked that donations in the justice’s memory be made to Jonssen Cancer Center Foundation at UCLA, 8-950 Factor Building, Box 951780, Los Angeles CA 90095-1780.
Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company