Waiting Game : Ask Not for Whom the Court Beeper Beeps--It Beeps for You

More than nine years after he filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Records, jazz record producer Creed Taylor last May had reason to believe that he would finally get his day in court.

Instead, he got a $300 bill for a beeper that has become an omnipresent symbol of civil court congestion in Los Angeles.

The problem was that while Taylor’s lawyer and Warner Bros.’ lawyer were ready for trial, so were lawyers in at least 100 other cases.

No courtrooms were available, so the lawyers had a choice. They could wait at the courthouse for a courtroom to open up or see the “beeper clerk.”

Because waits are long--four to six months are typical--almost no one waits at the County Courthouse downtown.

“No lawyer could afford to sit and wait,” said Los Angeles County Bar Assn. President Larry Feldman.

Instead, they rent beepers from the Bar Assn. for $25 a day or a maximum of $300 a case, then go about their business waiting to be beeped by a court clerk.

When the Bar Assn. began renting beepers as a humble project a decade ago, lawyers decided proceeds from the rentals should go to provide legal services for the mentally disabled.

But they were in for a shock.

“Nobody had any idea . . . how much money would be raised,” said Bernard E. LeSage, chairman of the Bar Assn.’s beeper committee. “We thought this would be a little contribution.”

Instead, as court congestion built, beeper rental proceeds topped $200,000 a year. The Bar Assn., which believes its program is the only one of its kind in the country, decided to keep 30% of the money for itself to reduce dues.

It also pays the salary of a county employee: beeper clerk Lilly Cruz.

A certain beeper culture has developed.

When a lawyer rents a beeper, he has to sign a pledge to phone Cruz within 10 minutes of his being beeped to make a crucial decision: Will he accept the judge whose courtroom has come open?

Each side in a civil case gets only one chance to veto--or affidavit--a judge.

“Those of us who know what we’re doing, we wait for nine minutes and 48 seconds to make that call,” said Bar Assn. President Feldman, a plaintiff’s lawyer. “You want to be the last one to call so that you know if the other side has exercised its affidavit.

“There is an art to this,” Feldman continued, tongue in cheek. “Inexperienced people get a little overanxious when that beeper goes off after six months. . . . There is also a real art to making sure the batteries haven’t run out.”

The lawyer who signs up for a beeper also has to promise to get to the courthouse within an hour of being beeped, ready for trial, or face a fine.

Taylor’s lawyer, Francis C. Pizzulli, signed the standard contract, promising to report to the courthouse within the hour. Then he snapped his beeper on his belt and went about his business.

Seven months later, Pizzulli was still waiting for his beeper to go off.

His adversary, Howard P. King, had his beeper go off twice--by mistake.

“You jump nine feet, and you make your call only to be informed by the clerk, no we didn’t beep you,” King said.

Later, King analyzed the problem.

“I think it was my wife’s garage door opener that set it off,” he said.

Being on an hour’s notice for so long restricted the lawyers’ practice, they said.

King said he turned down “a very interesting case.” Pizzulli said he had to postpone depositions and shorter hearings several times for fear the beeper would go off in their midst.

Pizzulli said he thought the beeper might go off because of his case’s place on the “trailing calendar”--a list of cases maintained by an administrative judge in which lawyers for both sides have declared they are ready for trial.

These cases, in which settlement efforts have failed, are typically 4 to 5 years old. Taylor versus Warner Bros., in which Taylor alleges that Warner Bros. stole the services of guitarist George Benson from him, was twice that old because it had been dismissed once, appealed and reinstated.

By July, in part because of its extraordinary age, Taylor versus Warner Bros. had risen to the No. 1 position on the trailing calendar.

Taylor, who lives in New York City, made four trips to Los Angeles.

“False alarms,” he said by phone. “It’s a terrible strain financially, psychologically. You know, everybody gets burnout. You get all revved up for a contest and nothing happens.”

But the biggest problem is keeping witnesses ready, lawyers said.

Pizzulli said: “It’s kind of difficult to have witnesses take you seriously . . . when you ask them not to take vacations (so they’ll be available when the beeper goes off). You tend to lose credibility after awhile.”

Besides, no matter how persuasive you are, some remain out of reach.

“We’ve had two witnesses die while we’ve been on the trailing calendar,” Pizzulli said.

But things are looking up.

Pizzulli and King turned in their beepers this month.

They got word from Richard P. Byrne, assistant presiding Los Angeles Superior Court judge, that their case would be made part of an experiment to reduce court congestion.

Rather than being bounced around from judge to judge, the case would be assigned to one judge who would handle all pretrial and trial matters.

Pizzulli and King got a firm trial date.

Taylor versus Warner Bros. Records, which had its 10th birthday as a case Thursday, is scheduled to go to trial in March.