This story revolves around a California Superior Court Judge who I tried a civil case in front of in the 19**s..
If I told you the precise year, you or he, might figure out
who he is. It could have taken place in the
1970s, 80s, 90s, or this century. Suffice it to say that it happened as I
recite it.
prehistoric beach markings below DogBoyz former residence
I will tell you that he was appointed by a Republican Governor trying to court favor with the gay community. So the Governor appointed a former prosecutor to the Bench where he could hear civil and criminal cases and make a judgment as to the rights, obligations, and duties of the respective parties.
Unfortunately, this fellow lacked the judicial temperament. He was too excitable, too hysterical, too effeminate in his demeanor. He was just too gay to be a good arbiter.
He was, in a Word, BENT.
I am not homophobic. Some of my best friends are gay. Some of my best friends have called me GAY. I even thought I might be gay, except my P.P.. never got excited when I looked at or spoke with or touched a man.
In my younger years, gays frequently solicited me in conversation as a pretext to their imaginable events. I never took offense to this and their dreams were never realized and some of them became close friends.
I preface this story with these remarks solely to lay the ground work for my unbiased view of the ensuing events.
Your reaction to the story, however, is beyond my control, so believe what you like.
BENT, as defined in the Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, is among other things: "1. curved, crooked, a bent bow, a bent stick 2. determined; set; resolved 3. Chiefly British slang a. morally crooked; corrupt b. stolen c. homosexual 4. direction taken as by one's interest; inclination.
Our Judge fell into 3.c of the dictionary definition.
Really not much of a civil case, except there was a lawyer as one of the defendants.
Lawyer represented a collection agency that sued a man and a woman for a debt owed to a doctor. The married couple hadn't paid the bill for the services they obtained from the physician. They didn't respond to inquires, and so the lawsuit was filed in the San Diego Superior Court. It was given to a process server to personally deliver to the defendants at their home. Well, the process server had years of experience in doing this. About eighteen years of dealing with deadbeats and people trying to evade service. Eighteen years of confrontations with people not wanting to be in court.
He says he knocked on the door, husband answered, he gave him the summons and complaint and asked if the wife was there. She was and he served her with the identical documents. Then he left.
The married couple tell a different story. Does that surprise you? Said the process server was snooping around their mail box for a few days before the service of process. Said he stole their mail from the box. Said he pounded on the door and when the wife answered, he yelled at her, demanding to know who she was. This took place at their home, on their property. Says the man told him he was looking for some deadbeats, that he had some bad address for them and he wanted to know if they lived there. Husband appears on the doorstep and tells the process server not to yell at his wife and to leave the property. Words fly back and forth and the process server throws documents at the husband and wife and then leaves, trampling the flowers as he crosses off the realty.
Case went to court, they lost and paid the judgment.
I wasn't there. I didn't see it happen. There was no video tape of the incident. No audio tape. No photographs. Just these three witnesses.
Their lawyer sued the process server, the lawyer who filed the case against them, the collection agency that was the plaintiff in the lawsuit, and the assignor doctor. Damages to be proved at trial, asking maybe $500k
Each party had their own lawyer. Plaintiffs had an irish lawyer, now dead, who had a severe problem with the bottle[s], plural. He died a few years after in a car accident where he was driving drunk, on the wrong side of the street. Same factual situation caused the death of my constitutional law professor some years earlier. I think he had german ancestry. Also bottle[s] lovers. He always mentioned that he graduated from Harvard, but undergraduate. And then he had to confess and condescend to attending the University of San Diego Law School.
Did I mention the ancestry of our learned Judge? No. Need a clue? Yes? Let it be known that he appeared also to like the bottle[s] from the flaming redness of his face. Of course, he may have been a black man or even a woman. We don't wish to offend anyone. Of course, he may be dead now from driving on the wrong side of the road. Shit happens. Happens everyday in court.
Too many lawyers. Too simple a case. Insurance company paid for the collection agency and assignor. Process server had his counsel. And I represented the lawyer defendant.
How did I get that job? It seems that I have the demeanor of an honest person. I tell it like it is. No bullshit. Just the facts. And in my twenty or so criminal jury trials in the seventies I won more than I lost and hung a few juries with my presentation of the facts and arguing these facts with the law to the triers of fact--the jury.
So when I tell you I don't lie to you--believe it. I have no reason to lie to you. I don't know you, you don't know me. My job as a lawyer is to give my client the best legal representation possible and to insure that the truth is presented in Court. If I do that, I have accomplished my job. I am not the Judge nor the Jury. I do not decide the case, I only present it. I am like a director of a play, bringing forth evidence and exhibits, maybe diagrams and video tapes and audio tapes, for the purpose of presenting my story to the trier of fact. They decide the outcome, not me. If we win, I may be happy. But if we lose, I will not cry.
Anyway, not too much in the facts for this case and it should have been heard in two days, but it stretched out to four because each of the lawyers had to ask the witnesses what they saw and heard and did. So the jury heard each witness tell their story four times over the course of the trial, never changing their testimony in a significant manner.
This pissed our Judge off.
He would call all of the attorneys back to his chambers and start screaming about the questions being repetitive and the jury getting bored and how he wanted things sped up and the lawyers not to repeat the questions previously asked.
That sounds reasonable to me. It didn't seem like a witness was going to recant his or her testimony and break down and admit to lying and fabricating their story and weep and tear their hair. So why repeat the same question asked by previous counsel?
Because the client, seated next to you in open court, instructs you to do so while he makes eye contact with the witness, hoping the witness will break down and confess to making up stories without any basis in fact.
Three days into this jury trial, and I'm standing at the podium which is located a foot from the jury box, questioning a witness. By coincidence, there is a male juror seated close to the Judge, with the same last name as the Judge. Let's call him Mr. Samename. Mr. Samename had the same reddish complexion as our learned Judge, probably from a close relationship with the bottle. He also had a tendency to sleep after lunch, a fact not lost on our sharp-eyed magistrate.
the Grape --- enhancer of good times and bad times
So I'm asking a question of the witness, a question previously asked by one of the other lawyers but which I am obligated to ask at the insistence of my client who might have rightfully thought that Mr. Samename was sleeping on the first offer of that question. Mr. Samename starts to nod off and the Judge prods him back to consciouness with a comment that he knows it is time for a break in the action, but that for the good of their last name, he should stay alert for several more minutes. And I, unable to stop the words emanating from the lower parts of my being, say, "It must be genetic." And the jurors seated close to me gasp in shock. I apparently said it loud enough for several of them to hear me, but not loud enough for the Judge to understand the words.
Well, after thirty seconds for the juors to calm down and the Judge to wonder what was spoken, I asked questions for ten more minutes and then we took a break. The jurors departed and then the Judge looks at me and says, "I didn't exactly hear what you said that made the jury titter, but I would like to know." And I told him exactly what I said, that it was accidental and I didn't know how it came out. Of course I knew why it came out, but I didn't tell him it was: As a reaction to his overbearing hysterical behavior not comporting with the judicial temperament that is necessary for the job. As a reaction to his ignorance of the California Code of Civil Procedure when he would hystericate all the lawyers in his chambers and cite some CCP section which he had a 95% idea of what it meant, and the attorney who I was defending could teach a Continuing Education of the Bar course on any section of that Code.
So the Judge lets us adjourn. An hour later the trial resumes, questions continue, we finally do our closing arguments, the Jury is instructed, deliberates and comes back shortly with a defense verdict. This surprised our learned Judge who implies that he would have found against us and awarded damages to the Plaintiff.
And that's why you have a Jury Trial in front of a person who is too emotional to be a Judge. If you have a good case, you want an unemotional trier-of-fact to listen to the evidence and to make a logical decision. If you have a weak case, you want an emotional trier-of-fact, whether Judge or Jury, who might rule in your favor because he gets pissed at the other side, or because he likes one of the parties, or he didn't get laid the night before, or [fill in with your favorite reason why you think you lost the case when you should have won it.]
Better yet, settle the case before you even get into the Court system.