Vicissitudes of Life, Few Yuks Found in Civil Suits

Our courts chronicle the follies and the hazards of modern living.

Sometimes, the subject matter is not far from the courthouse itself.

Among the tens of thousands of lawsuits on file in Orange County, one of the strangest involved a visitor to the courthouse in Santa Ana.

She took a seat in a courtroom. The chair collapsed.

Of course, she found a good lawyer and did what comes naturally: She sued the courts and is seeking unspecified damages for her injuries.

With all those lawsuits to argue about, the courts in Orange County provide a pretty fair living for more than 5,000 lawyers.

Recently, three of them spent the better part of an hour debating a case that doesn’t exist.

The scene of the debate was a hearing that served as an involuntary reunion of lawyers for the City of Santa Ana and an X-rated movie house they tried for 10 years to close, the Mitchell Brothers Theatre.

The city spent more than $500,000 in legal fees fighting the theater. Noted anti-pornography lawyer James J. Clancy was hired to lead the battle.

But after 42 lawsuits brought nothing but bills, the city decided to call a halt. In a deal to end the litigation last January, the city dismissed all its lawsuits and paid the theater’s owners $200,000.

Clancy didn’t agree with the deal and tried to sabotage the settlement in court. He was fired on the spot by City Atty. Ed Cooper.

Ten months later, Clancy was back in court, trying to persuade a judge that the lawsuits could not have been dismissed without his approval.

Lawyers for both the theater and the city disagreed. Judge Harmon G. Scoville, who had spent many dozens of hours with Clancy earlier, decided that he lacked the authority to rule on a case that no longer existed.

“It’s been a long time with all of you, hasn’t it?” Scoville said after the hearing.

“It’s not over yet,” Clancy replied.

Perhaps the roughest justice of all in the civil courts is dispensed in harassment cases.

They involve claims that an ex-spouse, ex-lover or ex-friend has bothered or threatened the claimant, physically or mentally.

Many are the results of the sort of family disputes that traditionally account for more deaths of officers than any other single category of police calls.

Usually, no attorneys are present when the harassment cases are heard. Judges must seek out the best solutions without their assistance.

But they are not all so explosive, or so complicated.

Last January, a woman attached nearly 100 photographs to her complaint against an ex-boyfriend.

He was less anxious to split up than she, and his disappointment was causing her trouble.

He allegedly was circulating copies of the color photographs, showing her in various stages of undress, to all her friends. She wanted an order stopping him from humiliating her further and attached the pictures so the judge would know exactly what she meant.

The judge set a hearing, but by the time the day rolled around, the two were back together and the lawsuit was dropped.

The couple retrieved their snapshots.