Judge Real Orders Clerk to Defy Appeals Court Over Assignment

Moving closer to a confrontation with a federal appeals court, Chief U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real has directed the chief federal court clerk in Los Angeles to defy an order removing Real from a case in which he imposed $250,000 in sanctions on an attorney.

Citing local court rules under which judges have sole authority for assigning cases, Real ordered District Court Clerk Leonard Brosnan not to comply with an order from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to select another judge to take over the case.

The appellate court’s direction “involves the orderly administration of the District Court,” Real wrote in a brief order issued late Wednesday. “It is ordered the clerk shall not transfer the case pending final disposition of the appellate process and upon further order of this court.”

Real also said he has petitioned for a rehearing of the appellate court’s order last week directing Brosnan to randomly select another judge for a case in which Real had imposed a $250,000 sanction against Los Angeles attorney Stephen Yagman.

To Seek Contempt Order

Yagman, who has clashed frequently with the powerful chief judge in recent years, said he will immediately seek to have Real held in contempt of the appellate court’s order.

In ordering Brosnan not to reassign the case, Real set the stage for the kind of direct confrontation that the appellate panel had apparently sought to avoid when it directed its reassignment order last week at Brosnan rather than at Real.

At issue for Real is the independence of trial judges and their authority to hear cases, free of the threat that litigants unhappy with a particular judge will seek intervention by the appellate courts.

In the present case, Real dismissed a $20-million defamation suit Yagman had filed stemming from the death of California State University, Long Beach, football star Ron Settles, calling it frivolous and imposing the sanction against Yagman for his courtroom conduct.

‘Chilling’ Effect

The appeals court overturned the fine, declaring that it constituted “an abuse of discretion” on Real’s part that could have a “chilling” effect on attorneys attempting to aggressively represent their clients’ causes in the courtroom.

While the three-member appellate panel found no bias or prejudice in Real’s conduct of the trial, the judges, perhaps responding to Yagman’s bitter verbal attacks against Real after the trial, ruled that the issue of sanctions should be assigned to another judge for rehearing.

Real refused, and the same appellate panel last week directed Brosnan to reassign the case.