Justices Reject California Bar’s Financial Plea

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected, at least for now, the State Bar’s plea that the court bail it out of its financial crisis and sent the issue back to the Legislature.

Supreme Court Clerk Laurence P. Gill, acting on order of the court, said in a letter to Bar President David Heilbron that the court “unanimously decided” to put off deciding the issue until February, 1986.

The action gives the Legislature, which will return to Sacramento in January, time to resolve the problem. But it also leaves the court with jurisdiction to act if the legislators cannot work out a solution.

With the Legislature in recess until January, the Bar, its dues authority set to expire at year’s end, turned to the court. In papers filed in recent weeks, it asked the court to rule that the Legislature did not have control over its dues and that the court had direct power over dues matters.

The State Bar, which has a budget of more than $20 million, was seeking authority to raise $18 million through dues in 1986. It is a state-sanctioned arm of the judicial branch of government. Among its duties, it must license and discipline lawyers who cheat their clients and are guilty of other malfeasance.

The fiscal crisis arose in September when Assembly Republicans, angry at the Bar for failings in its lawyer discipline system and for taking stands on legislation and judicial races, blocked the bill authorizing it to collect dues from the state’s 87,000 lawyers.