Tuesday, December 16, 2008
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Services Saturday for Retired Judge Maurice R. Hogan Jr.
By a MetNews Staff Writer
Services will be held Saturday for retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Maurice R. Hogan Jr., who died this past Friday at the age of 84.
Hogan passed away after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, daughter Linda Breznay said.
Hogan was a Superior Court judge from 1978, when he was appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown, to 1992, when he retired from the court and joined JAMS, where he did private judging until 1998. Before his judicial appointment, he was a Superior Court commissioner for 6 1/2 years.
A native of the Kansas City area of Missouri, where his father was a lawyer, he came to California as a youngster and graduated from Dorsey High School. Hogan served in the U.S. Army during WWII, stationed in the Pacific.
He attended USC and earned his law degree at Southwestern Law School.
He joined the law firm of Getz, Aikens and Manning following his admission in 1952, focusing on insurance subrogation. He left the firm in 1957 and joined the insurance defense practice of veteran attorney Stephen Grogan, now deceased, where he remained until his appointment as commissioner in 1971.
He was voted to membership in the American Board of Trial Advocates, earning the rank of advocate, and also was an arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association from 1966 until he took up the commissioner’s role.
As a commissioner, he reportedly heard more than 3,000 settlement conferences. He continued to hear settlement conferences as a judge and was honored by the California Trial Lawyers Association with a 1974 “Special Award of Merit” for his settlement work.
He also received the first Roger Traynor “Award of Achievement” from the Los Angeles Trial Lawyers Association in 1978.
In addition to settling cases, he did civil trials as a judge, including a six-month trial over responsibility for damage to cameras resulting from a fire at a movie studio, and one of the first asbestos trials in the county. But he continued to derive his greatest satisfaction from persuading litigants to settle, he once told a reporter.
At the time of his retirement, he said he had “thoroughly enjoyed” serving on the bench, but had earned his maximum pension benefits and that “there comes a time to step down.”
He is survived by Breznay and two other daughters, Patrice Wyndhamsmith and Catheryn Flannery, and by two grandchildren.
Saturday’s services will be held at Forest Lawn, Glendale, beginning at 1 p.m. The family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Copyright 2008, Metropolitan News Company