Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Thursday, December 1, 2005

 

Page 3

 

Services Tuesday for Retired Superior Court Judge Garvey

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

Services are scheduled next Tuesday for retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Francis Garvey, who died Thanksgiving Day at age 92.

Garvey served on the court from 1969 to 1982, then worked as a private judge, arbitrator, and discovery referee. He was active with Inland Valley Arbitration Mediation Services until about a year ago, retired Superior Court Judge Sam Cianchetti, who had a courtroom next to Garvey’s in Pomona before working with him at IVAMS, said.

Garvey was “great, great guy” who was “very well liked by all of the judges and generally well received by the bar,” Cianchetti told the MetNews.

Garvey was a Chicago native and a graduate of Loyola University of Chicago, where he received his law degree in 1935. He practiced law in Chicago before World War II.

After leaving the Navy, he worked as senior attorney and chief of the Legislative Projects Division in the Office of Legislation at the Veterans Administration in Washington, D.C. He later returned to Illinois, where he worked with the state legislature before becoming a lobbyist for the American Dental Association.

He also consulted with various federal agencies on health-related issues and chaired the Planning Commission in the Chicago suburb of Skokie. He moved to Southern California in 1955 and was admitted to the State Bar that year.

“I was living in airplanes for all those years,” he once explained to a reporter. “I decided to return to private practice and California seemed a good place.”

He opened a solo practice in Covina, specializing in real estate law. He later helped form the law firm of Garvey, Ingram & Baker and served for a time as city attorney for Covina.

Then-Gov. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Superior Court, and he sat in Norwalk and Pomona, primarily hearing civil cases although he had a criminal law assignment for two years. He declined to seek reelection in 1982 and retired at the end of that year.

Tuesday’s services are set to begin at 10 a.m. at Sacred Heart Church, 314 West Workman Ave. in Covina.

Survivors include the judge’s wife, Connie Garvey. The family asked that any memorial donations be made to Loyola Law School in Chicago or to a charity of the donor’s choice.

 

Copyright 2005, Metropolitan News Company