Judge Engages in a Bit of Funny Business on the Side

Let’s say you’re caught red-handed, and you don’t have a smart lawyer.

What’s the thing you need the most?

Exactly. A judge with a sense of humor.

If you wind up in Orange County Superior Court, you probably couldn’t be luckier than to get William Bedsworth, a 42-year-old judge with a funny bone so developed he’s been writing a humor column for the monthly Orange County Lawyer, the publication of the Orange County Bar Assn., since March, 1981.

I know what you’re thinking: How funny does a guy have to be to write a humor column for lawyers?

But sample Bedsworth on the problems of wading through the owner’s manual for his new car: “Three hundred twenty pages. Three hundred and bleeping twenty. It should have come with a truss. Dostoevsky didn’t die; he moved to Detroit and got a job writing owners’ manuals.”

Or this offering about the out-of-the-way places that newspaper travel writers recommend: “Now, tell the truth. If I didn’t tell you that Belize is that country east of Guatemala and south of the Yucatan, you would have thought it was the last name of the New York Mets’ shortstop, right?”

Pretty funny for a guy who can send you to prison.

All of this is not to say that Bedsworth installs whoopee cushions in the jury box or twists balloon animals during closing arguments.

“It’s a little disconcerting,” he said the other day over lunch. “People say ‘You missed your calling.’ Being a judge is the calling I want to concentrate on. I’m real serious about this job, and I want to do it well. I work real hard at it. It’s a little disconcerting that the attention I get is for the column or other humorous things I do.”

But his reputation precedes him. The other day, he said, he refused a defense lawyer’s request for a continuance. Instead, he took the case off the court calendar--a tough ruling against the attorney. “I never like doing that kind of thing,” Bedsworth said, “but (the attorney) nodded and said ‘It’s all right, Your Honor. I understand, and by the way, I love your column.’ ”

A lifelong sports fan, Bedsworth grew up reading the sports pages. “If I’d had a decent high school guidance counselor, I’d be doing play-by-play for the Lodi Crushers,” he said. Instead, he gravitated to law school, quit, then came back and finished up. A long stint in the Orange County district attorney’s office preceded his election to the bench in 1986.

That Bedsworth’s humor is so easy and genuine is a tribute to his pluck, for bad health as a youngster has followed him into adulthood. He was an asthmatic child, and there were a couple of years when he barely attained the minimum number of days of required school attendance.

Since 1988, Bedsworth, married and the father of three, has been treated for a kidney stone and had brain and heart surgery. These days, his left leg is in a cast because of a torn knee ligament.

Bedsworth referred to his recent health history as “a bit of a bad run.” Ironically, he said, his best-received column was written after he had brain surgery; it was an entreaty to his peers to enjoy the fleeting nature of life and their associations with family and friends.

For him, enjoying life means staying on the bench and pumping out the monthly column.

“For me, writing is almost malarial,” Bedsworth said. “It’s something that gets into you. It’s there forever--you can’t ever get rid of it--and periodically, it flares up and you’ve got to write. This column is largely a way to keep myself from being up all hours of the night writing a short story.”

In the best spirit of comedians and columnists, Bedsworth loves the accolades he receives but has convinced himself that much of what he does is utterly useless.

“It’s a tremendous rush when someone comes up and says ‘I love your column. My mother always reads it.’ I get a lot of that--apparently, mothers are being subjected to me a lot. But that’s a big ego stroke,” Bedsworth said.

Then the dark clouds rolled in. “I know there are people out there who think ‘Who does this guy think he is? Does he really think he’s funny?’ That bothers me,” he said, “because I kind of share that feeling with them.”