North Court Judges Opt Out of Holiday

A mini-rebellion erupted in one of the county’s five municipal courts Tuesday over an opinion that the judges should take next Monday off to commemorate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

The presiding judge of North Municipal Court in Fullerton, Arthur D. Guy Jr., said the judges had scheduled hundreds of cases in anticipation of the courts operating that day, only to receive an opinion Monday from County Counsel Adrian Kuyper that all courts were to be closed Jan. 21.

Guy said the 10 judges and two commissioners in the Fullerton court felt “it would be unfair to those people in custody and those people who had counted on going to court not to have our services.”

The judges meant no disrespect to the memory of King, Guy said, and would allow anyone scheduled to appear in court on Monday to have the case postponed.

Alan Slater, executive officer of the Superior Court, said that court and its employees would take Monday off, but that the late notice had created “kind of a complicated mess.” Judges had expected to be working Jan. 21, and had told defendants and lawyers to be in court that day, he said.

Slater said the judges believed the law passed by the Legislature last summer, designating the state holiday honoring King, had exempted the courts. But, he said, Kuyper checked with the attorney general and found that Gov. George Deukmejian’s executive order setting the third Monday in January as a holiday, beginning last year, applied to employees covered by state holiday laws, including judges.

Clerks at the Central, Harbor, and South Municipal courts said those courts would be closed Monday, and cases scheduled for that day would be postponed until Tuesday. At the West Municipal Court, two of the 10 judges will be on hand to reschedule cases, court clerk Richard J. Wack, said.

Last year, the county’s Municipal Court judges, who had the day off, sued the county to get King’s birthday designated a paid holiday for their employees. In an out-of-court agreement, the employees got the pay but were told they would get the holiday in the future only if comparable county employees also received it. Since the county has not designated a King holiday, the Municipal Court employees will be working, whether the judges show up or not.

The out-of-court agreement was worked out by the Municipal Court judges’ personnel committee, headed by Judge Robert E. Hutson of the Fullerton court.

Hutson disputed Guy’s and Slater’s contention that a late interpretation of the law by the state and county counsel had left judges with cases already scheduled.

“It’s only the confusion that the judges themselves created,” Hutson said, adding that they should have remembered the holiday. But, he conceded, “it’s not one of those days, like the Fourth of July, that you have burned in your mind that it’s going to be a holiday.”

In fact, he said, he too had forgotten and scheduled cases in his own court for next Monday.