Rented Judges Speed Cases, Raise Concern of Some Critics

With nasty allegations flying and millions of dollars on the line, actress Valerie Harper and the Lorimar studio wanted their legal battle last year resolved as quickly as possible.

But in Los Angeles, where the courts are as congested as the freeways, it would take about five years before a civil trial could begin to decide whether Harper was wrongly fired or wrongly quit the “Valerie” television series.

So the lawyers took a shortcut. For $50,000, they got their own judge, bailiff, clerk and court reporter for a trial held in a leased public courtroom before a jury selected from the public.

Within a year, the jury awarded Harper $1.85 million in general damages and a cut in Lorimar’s future profits that could be worth as much as $15 million.

Other Courts Take Longer

In contrast, the recent civil jury trial seeking damages for Marc Christian from the estate of the late actor Rock Hudson was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court almost four years ago. It only recently concluded, and with a lopsided judgment of $21.75 million in favor of Christian that is certain to be appealed.

With the civil court system seriously backlogged across the country, thousands of litigants are finding that they can afford to rent their own judge.

Retired jurists are returning to the bench by the thousands for fees ranging from $150 to $250 an hour. Private companies arranging rent-a-judge cases are reporting record business. And litigants and lawyers say the private proceedings are the best thing to come along in the American legal system since the Bill of Rights.

But the proliferation of so-called rent-a-judge cases has caused many in legal circles to object. Critics say private adjudication often discriminates against the poor, raises profound constitutional questions and may be luring fine judges off the bench for a lucrative retirement.

Cause for Concern

“I’m worried that we’re getting a two-tiered system of justice: one for the group of people who can afford to hire a judge and one for the group of people who cannot,” said Robert Raven of the American Bar Assn.

Attorneys for the poor and minorities want the legal Establishment to take a hard look at private adjudication and implement what they consider long overdue reforms in the public system.

“No one who is powerful enough in the public system is going to want to change it if there are other options. We’re getting a deluxe justice system for the rich and a deteriorating form for the poor,” said Robert Gnaizda of Public Advocates, which provides legal service for the poor and minorities.

About 800,000 civil cases will be filed in the United States this year, 100,000 of them in Los Angeles County, where 60,000 cases are backlogged and the wait for trial routinely stretches three to five years. The average wait nationwide is 18 months.

This legal gridlock creates an expensive waiting game that generally ends when lawyer fees mount and nerves crack. More than 95% of civil cases are settled out of court, many of them within hours before the scheduled start of a trial and after years of waiting.

With such problems, rent-a-judge firms offer an attractive alternative.

Speed Is Emphasized

The wait for a hired judge is about a month, many disputes are settled in a matter of hours, and satisfaction is practically guaranteed. Fewer than 10% of rent-a-judge decisions are appealed.

“We’re getting busier and busier every month,” said John Trotter, retired presiding justice of the California Court of Appeals and now vice president of Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Services in Santa Ana.

Judicial Arbitration, which has 80 retired judges, hears more than 600 cases a month. Its competitor, industry leader Judicate, predicts it will hear 10,000 cases this year, up from 4,000 last year.

Companies that arrange rent-a-judge cases offer a similar product: fast and efficient dispute resolution, usually in the informal setting of a company office.

Cases move smoothly because many trial rules are discarded and both sides have agreed on the judge. Litigants also agree beforehand whether the judge will act as a mediator or issue a decision.

Heart of the Matter

If the judge makes a ruling, the lawyers can file an appeal in the public court system, getting a big jump on everybody else.

“We cut right to the problem,” said Trotter. “We don’t have the formalities, the requirements, the pretrial rigmarole of the public system. We’re highly effective.”

These were the kind of benefits that attorneys in the Harper-Lorimar dispute had in mind when they hired retired Superior Court Judge William Hogoboom.

“Things went smoothly. We selected a very competent judge, were able to set a time schedule that we could stick to and rely on, and set up whatever procedures were convenient,” said Harper’s attorney, Barry Langberg.

Lorimar wanted the dispute settled quickly out of fear it would not be allowed to use the name “Valerie” in the title while the suit was pending, and Harper feared that allegations from Lorimar that she was a temperamental star would cost her work elsewhere.

“She wanted a quick trial and we wanted a quick trial. It worked out perfectly,” said Lorimar attorney Donald Engel.

Harper’s battle with Lorimar has become one of the best known rent-a-judge cases, second perhaps only to the daily disputes aired nationally on “The People’s Court,” essentially a televised form of private adjudication.

But the Harper-Lorimar trial was unique in that it had a jury and all the other judicial trimmings. Most rent-a-judge cases cover such matters as insurance claims or disputes between companies over trade secrets and are heard by a lone judge.

Proponents of private adjudication say that these are the kinds of disputes that fall within that 95% of cases that would probably have been settled out of court anyway.

“We’re really not in competition with the courts,” said William MacQueen, vice president of the Philadelphia-based Judicate. “What we’re doing is in fact an alternative to a settlement negotiated by the parties. We are able to provide what people intended in the first place.”

Another benefit of the rent-a-judge system comes to litigants seeking to keep their trial proceedings out of the public eye. Unlike public trials in this country, the news media can be barred from rent-a-judge courtrooms if both parties agree.

The ABA’s Raven and other skeptics concede there may be a place for the rent-a-judge concept. They say many disputes do not have to wallow in the public system waiting for a trial that may not be necessary.

But rent-a-judge skeptics say they want this kind of shortcut available to everyone, not just to those who can afford it, and it should not come at the expense of the public court system.

“It’s always been my dream as an attorney to try a case before a judge whom I got to choose and who makes my case and my client his priority,” Gnaizda said.

Raven said that the ultimate solution is to make the public system better and eliminate much of the demand for rent-a-judges.

“It’s the attorneys who should be taking the lead on this,” he said. “They should be shouting like hell.”