Getting Back on the Bench : Retired Judges Take Up Superior Court’s Vacation Slack

There will be many familiar faces in their old places today in Orange County Superior Court when five retired judges with close to 100 years of accumulated experience return to the bench for two weeks this summer.

The judicial encore will help the court keep up with its workload as current judges head for vacation or special conferences and will be “a real benefit to the court,” Presiding Judge Everett W. Dickey said.

The judges, who volunteered their time, said they are eager to return to the bench.

“I think most judges when they retire would like to keep on judging from time to time,” said Mark A. Soden, 69, who retired June 30 after 14 years on the bench.

Whether the retirement has been two weeks or five years, the sentiments seem the same.

Robert Gardner, 74, who retired from the state Court of Appeal in 1981, said judging trials--he also served as a municipal and superior judge in his 44-year career--was always his first love. He said he will return out of “loyalty for my old court.”

Martin Moshier, assistant executive officer of the Superior Court, said the ex-judges will provide the sort of relief the court needs. “We would lose 10 solid weeks of trial time without them,” Moshier said.

Volunteering for a second summer in a row is William S. Lee, 71, who retired three years ago after 21 years on the bench.

“I gave them a couple of weeks last year,” said Lee. “They asked me again. They tell me they need my help for the program, and I’m glad to help. It’s nice to see all my old friends.”

J. E. T. Rutter, a family law specialist who retired two years ago after 14 years as a judge, said the slow summer months--”with clerks sitting around staring at the ceiling”--can interrupt the flow of cases.

“I like the feel of being back on the bench and I enjoy seeing my colleagues,” Rutter said. “I’m fresh and rested and I can go in and do battle, twist arms, settle some cases.”

Gardner, Rutter, Lee and colleague Newell Barrett won’t have a lot of brushing up to do. Each is associated with the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service Inc., the six-year-old brainchild of yet another retired judge, H. Warren Knight.

Knight, 56, who retired in 1979 after eight years on the bench, said his group offers “a private forum for the resolution of civil disputes.”

The service, now made up of 13 retired judges, is dedicated to the proposition of alternative dispute resolution. For the lawyers who hire the ex-judges, that means discovering “how to keep your clients out of the court system,” Knight said.

A range of services are offered to that end--from short, informal hearings in which the two opposing parties get the benefit of an ex-judge’s nonbinding view of the strength of their case, to full-blown “private trials,” sanctioned by the Superior Court in which an ex-judge hears the case and issues a decision with the full force of law.

Knight acknowledged that the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service would be out of business if there were no backlog of civil cases in Superior Court.

“Given the system that we have down at the courthouse, its unreasonable to assume that 50 men and women (Superior Court judges) can look after the needs of 2 million people crowded into a 50-square-mile radius with 6,000 lawyers,” Knight said.

With another round of relief by the retired jurists tentatively scheduled for August, Knight said he expects most of his 12 associates to volunteer.

Gardner said he is “looking forward to it.”

“We’re happy to get back,” said Soden.