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Retired Judge Morton Rochman, 90, Dies
By a MetNews Staff Writer
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MORTON ROCHMAN 1932-2023 |
Private funeral services were held last weekend for retired Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Morton Rochman whose judicial career lasted a half a century plus one year.
His daughter, Sue Rochman, said yesterday that her father—“AKA Dad, Grandpa, Uncle Mort, Family Patriarch, and #1 Dodgers Fan—passed away peacefully on Sunday, September 17, at 12:55 a.m., surrounded by love.”
She noted:
“He was a mere six days short of his 91st birthday.”
Rochman was appointed to the Los Angeles Municipal Court on March 30, 1971, by Gov. Ronald Reagan. He served that court as presiding judge in 1984.
Gov. George Deukmejian elevated him to the Superior Court on Dec. 23, 1985. Through the years, Rochman primarily handled juvenile cases and served as supervising judge of the San Fernando Juvenile Court.
He retired from the bench last Nov. 1, at which time he was not only the court’s senior member, in terms of length of service (and age), but, according to a July 23, 2017 article posted on the Judicial Council website (and no longer available), he was “the longest-serving trial court judge in California.”
The article noted that “Rochman has been on the bench since the advent of the personal computer” and “has even spent most of his career in the same courtroom” in Sylmar.
Born in Chicago to Russian immigrant parents who were illiterate in English, Rochman obtained his law degree from the University of Illinois in 1956, where he had also undertaken his undergraduate studies. After two years in the Army, he relocated to Los Angeles.
“He arrived just two years after the Dodgers made Los Angeles their home, and, like many other Angelenos, he quickly became a Dodgers devotee,” Sue Rochman noted. “However, Mort’s first baseball love was the Chicago Cubs, and in 2016 he cheered in awe when in Game 7 in extra innings they won the World Series for the first time since 1908.”
Rochman passed the bar exam and became a Los Angeles deputy public defender.
He retained that post until his appointment to the Municipal Court.
Copyright 2023, Metropolitan News Company