Dave Bach, the Joking Judge, Dies of Cancer

North Municipal Judge Dave Bach Jr., whose quick wit and humor from the bench made him popular with many Orange County attorneys and court officials, died Monday afternoon after a four-month bout with cancer. He was 57.

Bach, the recipient of a kidney transplanted from a 4-year-old boy last summer, would have celebrated his 20th year on the Fullerton bench in December.

“He was our pal, one of a kind,” said Robert R. Rill, North Court administrator. “We’re sure going to miss him.”

‘The People’s Court’

Bach, a former presiding judge in North Court, in the past year still handled business ranging from small claims cases to homicide preliminary hearings. He often joked that he had too much fun in “the people’s court” to seek appointment to the Superior Court.

Five years ago he suffered kidney failure and began going twice weekly from the courtroom to a dialysis center for four-hour treatments. Then a kidney from a 4-year-old boy killed in Tennessee allowed him to resume a more normal life. Family and friends say it is unknown if the transplanted kidney was related to his cancer.

It was rare when Bach did not cause his courtroom to erupt into laughter with a string of one-liners from the bench.

If an attorney was late for a court appearance, Bach always got a laugh by telling the spectators, “He’s in the restroom smoking a joint.”

Bach once told a burglary suspect that he would not lower the bail because the house that had been robbed belonged to the judge’s brother-in-law. He was joking, but the defendant was not sure for a while.

‘Not All Bad’

“There is method to my madness,” he said in an interview last October. “Most of the people who come in here, it’s their only contact with the system, and I represent the system to them. I want them to feel good about the system. I want them to know it’s really not all that bad.”

But there was another reason. Bach said that over the years he had seen so many murder, rape and child abuse cases that humor often was a release.

“Judges are only human. All that can get to you. . . . I see so much tragedy, it helps if I can have a little fun in some of the less serious cases,” he said.

While some attorneys were bothered by Bach’s stream-of-consciousness chatter from the bench, others were supportive.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael W. Nunn, who appeared before Bach hundreds of times, praised Bach for his knowledge of the law. “He knows when to be serious,” Nunn said in an interview last year.

Rill praised Bach as “a damned good judge” and “a hard worker.”

Bach, who lived with his wife Colleen in Fullerton, where they raised two daughters, was appointed to North Court by Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown in 1966. He easily retained his seat in subsequent elections.

Before joining the bench, Bach was a prosecutor in the Orange County district attorney’s office for eight years, and before that was in the Imperial County district attorney’s office for two years.

He was admitted to the California Bar in 1954 after graduating from the Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles. He also had served with the U.S. Army in Korea.

At his request, his official biography in the “California Courts and Judges Handbook” noted about him: “Enjoys playing the harmonica.”