Thursday, April 11, 2002
Page 7
PERSPECTIVES (Column)
Court Unification: a Controversy of the Past…and the Future
By ROGER M. GRACE
With trial court unification in place in Los Angeles County for more than two years, I found it interesting to look over a newspaper article which appeared back in the days when the idea of meshing courts was a sizzling controversy.
I’m not referring to a report in this newspaper, or even one published in recent years. The article, on yellowed and crumbling newsprint, appeared on this date in 1965 in a newspaper known as the Hollywood Tribune. It began:
“The Board of Supervisors has postponed action until next Tuesday on the issue of consolidating the county’s 23 municipal court districts into a single county-wide district.
“In a lengthy debate last week, the supervisors decided in favor of a public hearing prior to asking state legislators to back a possible court merger.
“Supervisor Kenneth Hahn had sought the consolidation which he said would streamline court procedures and save the county $18.7 million by 1980.
“He contends the present system prevents the transfer of court cases to equalize the workload among the county’s 102 municipal judges.
“ ‘We are maintaining judges who only work two or three days a week and clerks and bailiffs who have nothing to do when court adjourns except play chess,’ Hahn told the board.”
Supervisor Warren Dorn was quoted as scoffing that the governor “should not be able to select a judge from San Pedro to serve in a courtroom in Burbank.”
A separate article in the Sunday, April 11, 1965 edition of the long defunct Hollywood publication reported that Hahn had, the previous week, come up with a “compromise plan.” Under it, there would be “local nominations” of judges once the municipal courts were merged.
Only voters in, say, Beverly Hills could vote between or among candidates seeking to serve in Beverly Hills (who would have to reside in Beverly Hills) but there would be a county-wide vote in any November run-offs, under Hahn’s plan.
The newspaper provided this statistic:
“Only 10 per cent of the county’s incumbent judges have been opposed in 188 judicial elections over the past 10 years, and during that time, only three incumbents have been defeated.”
Well, that plan never went into effect. But consolidation, for better or worse, did come about in Los Angeles County 35 years later.
California voters in June, 1998 approved Prop. 220 which gave the trial court judges in each county the choice as to whether or not that county’s municipal courts would be folded into the superior court.
Legislative decisions are not generally delegated to members of the judicial branch, but that’s what the proposition did. Judges of the Los Angeles Superior Court, under one of the constitutional provisions created by the proposition, had the prerogative to nix unification—and in two rounds of balloting (in August, 1998 and June, 1999), they did just that.
But then Chief Justice Ronald George began twisting arms, threatening economic reprisals if the judges here did not give their assent. Then-Citrus Municipal Court Judge Michael Duggan, rather courageously, commented in an article in this newspaper:
“As much as it would be nice to have a statewide unified system of courts, the voters didn’t dictate that, and neither should the chief justice nor anyone else. If budgets are going to be cut to Los Angeles County courts for failing to unify, then someone ought to raise a high, holy stink which should extend beyond the Cal Supreme Court.
“I want unification, but I don’t want to be part of a shotgun marriage. Unification should be for the right reasons, and not because someone is going to hit us over the head with a checkbook if we don’t go along with their program. When the courts bow to political pressures we cease to be independent. I didn’t sign up for that, and although I disagree with my colleagues who voted against unification, I absolutely support the necessity of an independent judiciary, and I can live with their decision until they come to a change of view—for the right reasons.”
The Superior Court judges did not come to a change of view—clearly, the majority continued to favor retention of a two-tier trial court system—but they did come to a change of vote. Bowing to the pressures, 153 of them voted for unification, while 75 of them resisted.
On Jan. 22, 2000, 150 judges from 24 municipal courts in the county were sworn in by George as Superior Court judges.
On Feb. 8, 2001, Kings County became the last of California’s 58 counties to unify its courts.
And so, municipal courts are no more. Right?
Well, not quite.
All trial court judges bear the title “Superior Court Judge.” (This is, of course, an oddity; how can a court be a “superior” one when there are no courts that are lower?) But despite the equal title of all trial court judges, there is still a caste system.
There are judges who handle “real” Superior Court cases, and those who handle “limited jurisdiction” civil cases, preliminary hearings, and misdemeanors. Many of the “real” Superior Court judges regard, and treat, colleagues handling duties formerly performed in municipal courts as de facto Municipal Court judges.
I recently reported on an action of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Yaffe in acting to restrain proceedings in an unlawful detainer case in the courtroom of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brett Klein. Yaffe apparently did not catch the point that Klein is not a judge of a lower court.
This newspaper’s editorial production manager recently received a jury summons. He was told to report to the Compton Municipal Court. Attention Court Clerk/Executive Officer/Jury Commissioner Jack Clarke: the Compton Municipal Court has not existed since January, 2000. Maybe you should update your forms.
A judge challenged in the March primary was Floyd Baxter, who became a Superior Court judge upon the demise of the Newhall Municipal Court. He continues to sit in the Newhall courthouse, where the only matters that are handled are those previously within the jurisdiction of municipal courts. In all but name, the Newhall Municipal Court still exists. Cynthia Ullfig, a judge assigned to the Newhall Courthouse, declined to comment on the judicial race, saying that she was precluded from saying anything about a contest in her own court, on orders from a “Superior Court” judge.
Like it or not, unification did come into being. That happened more than two years ago. Isn’t about time that the court system in Los Angeles County “got with it” and recognized that municipal courts no longer exist?
Unification boosted the number of Los Angeles Superior Court judicial officers to 563. It must be assumed that in succeeding years, that number will continually grow, doubling in perhaps 20 years. This will no doubt result in administrative turmoil, with the advantages of a single-tier court system in the county being decisively outweighed by negatives.
Court reformers predictably will grapple with this problem. And 37 years or so from now, it could be that, after years of efforts, these reformers will, through the initiative process, bring about advancements.
Imagine, if you will, that’s it’s 2039. Implementation has commenced of the voter-approved Court Reform Measure of 2038. Certain courthouses are designated to handle only limited jurisdiction civil cases, preliminary hearings, and misdemeanor trials. Those courthouses are now separately administered—in fact, given a separate name from that of the Superior Court. They’re called—well, picking a name off the top of my head—“municipal courts.”
Those courts are centrally administered, for sake of efficiency (as urged by Hahn in 1965).
Aside from benefits relating to efficiency of administration, there is now the advantage of the governor being able to make appointments to the Superior Court primarily from among those who have already proven themselves on the lower trial court bench.
It all makes so much sense that there are those who wonder…
Why didn’t anybody think of this before?
HAPPY BIRTHDAY—On the day the Hollywood Tribune article appeared, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge-to-be William Seelicke, then a student at Hastings College of the Law, was celebrating his 24th birthday. Another future judge of that court, Irving S. Feffer, turned 34. He was teaching business law back then.
John McCone’s service as CIA director ended that day. President Lyndon Johnson signed the $1.3 billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, declaring: “No law I have signed or will ever sign means more to the future of America.” On that Palm Sunday, 36 tornadoes ripped through the Midwest; 253 persons perished.
Copyright 2002, Metropolitan News Company