PASSINGS: Paul Gutman, Anwar Chowdhry

Paul Gutman, 78, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge who ruled that L.A. schools could continue using a race-based formula for magnet school admissions, died June 13. The cause was complications from spine surgery, according to his family.

Appointed to the bench in 1993 by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, Gutman oversaw criminal cases before serving as a supervising judge of the Van Nuys-based Northwest District.

In his 2007 ruling on magnet schools, Gutman wrote that the Los Angeles Unified School District had been ordered “quite clearly and beyond dispute” in 1981 “to employ race and ethnicity to ensure that the magnet schools would in fact be desegregated.”

During a 2002 crackdown on area residents who failed to show up for jury service, Gutman ordered nearly 200 people to pay the maximum fine of $1,500 for failing to appear in his Van Nuys courtroom to explain why they could not serve. He called the fines “an awareness campaign … not punishment.”

Born in 1931 in New York City, he was the second of three sons. Gutman became interested in the law after his shoe-salesman father shared details of the federal court cases he watched for entertainment during the Depression.

Gutman earned his bachelor’s degree in 1953 and his law degree two years later from New York University.

After serving on a Navy destroyer for three years, Gutman moved to Los Angeles and began his legal career. He practiced law with several area firms and eventually specialized in family law.

Anwar Chowdhry, 87, who was ousted as president of the International Boxing Assn. in 2006 over alleged corruption and mismanagement, died of a heart attack Saturday in Karachi, Pakistan, Boxing Federation spokesman Obaid Awan said.

Chowdhry’s 20-year tenure with the organization known as AIBA had been marked by judging controversies, including at the 1988 Seoul Olympics when the United States’ Roy Jones Jr. dominated Park Si-hun but lost the gold medal in the light middleweight division by a disputed 3-2 decision.

In 2005, the International Olympic Committee froze payments due the boxing association because of misgivings over how matches were judged and concerns about management under Chowdhry, The Times reported.

Ching-Kuo Wu of Taiwan was elected president of the boxing association in 2006, defeating Chowdhry. The next year, Chowdhry was barred for life from any involvement with the governing body for allegedly mishandling hundreds of thousands of dollars in federation funds.

Chowdhry also had been head of the Pakistan Boxing Federation.

-- Times staff and wire reports

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