Local News in Brief : Court Clerks Win in Holiday Dispute

Deputy Los Angeles County Counsel Lester J. Tolnai failed Thursday to persuade Superior Court Judge Kurt J. Lewin that 190 of the county’s courtroom clerks should work next Monday, when the county’s more than 300 state courts will be closed in observance of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

Lewin ruled that a new state law establishing a dozen uniform holidays a year in all 58 counties for California “officers and employees of the courts” is “crystal clear.” Clerks, the judge said, “are court officers, aren’t they?”

Tolnai argued that the 190 are actually county employees and that their bargaining unit never negotiated Lincoln’s Day as a holiday. As the courts will be closed, the judge told Tolnai that he would have to figure out something for them to do on Monday.

The county attorney insisted that the clerks would be performing “useful, substantive work that will benefit the citizens of the County of Los Angeles.”

He pointed out that Eric Weber, chief deputy county clerk and executive officer, had said that civil court clerks would be “reducing the chronic backlog of documents” and that criminal court clerks would be “moving files.”

“Sounds kind of like make-work to me,” Levin said.