Surfer Hangs 10 on the Legal System : Justice: Teen-ager’s handwritten letter finds its way to appellate court, which surprisingly overrules his traffic fine.

Bart Matthew Larson lived a teen-ager’s dream. He fought authority--all the way up the legal ladder to the rung just below the state Supreme Court--and won.

Charged with speeding and ordered to traffic school, Larson came back one day late with the certificate showing he successfully had paid his debt to society.

The traffic referee, however, refused to take it, saying Larson was a day late and would, as a consequence, be finding himself many dollars short. The referee imposed a $166.50 fine--too much money for a 17-year-old high school senior who barely scraped together the $24 it took to go to traffic school.

Larson protested, sending a handwritten letter that made its way to the 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego.

The court treated the letter as a formal appeal from an accused offender unable to afford a typewriter or a lawyer. The state attorney general’s office weighed in with an officious brief on behalf of the referee. Last week, a three-judge panel of the court unanimously reversed the referee and ordered the traffic ticket dismissed.

“I kind of expected to be, I guess, screwed by the traffic system,” Larson said in an interview Tuesday night. “I was really surprised, quite surprised, to see they had reversed it.”

An avid surfer and student of Italian sports cars, Larson, now 18 and a college student, said the case taught him an important lesson. But not about civics or government or justice--he learned something practical.

“I still drive the same way,” he said. “I drive with the flow of traffic. I go smoothly. Except now I look in my rear-view mirror a lot more.”

The case had sparked quiet outrage among clerks at the 4th District court’s office. Asking to remain anonymous, the clerks said they considered the contest of the appeal by the state attorney general’s office a misuse of scarce court resources.

The 4th District court, the busiest of six mid-level California appeals courts, is swamped with criminal and civil appeals ranging from murder cases to complex civil suits. It’s extremely unusual for the court to take up a traffic ticket.

Judge Daniel J. Kremer, the presiding judge of the court’s San Diego division and the judge who wrote the unanimous opinion issued Jan. 30, said he could not comment directly on the merits of the appeal because of an ethical rule barring judges from speaking about cases they handle.

But he said it did appear to be “one of the extreme examples of a case that should have been terminated earlier, one way or another.”

Actually, as of Jan. 1, the Legislature eliminated pleas to the Courts of Appeal in cases like Larson’s. An accused traffic offender in Juvenile Court can ask that court’s presiding judge to look over a referee’s decision, but that’s as far as the appeal can go, said Glen Spearman, supervising traffic hearing officer at the San Diego Juvenile Court.

The irony of the whole Larson case, Spearman said, is that it was sent to the 4th District court as a mistake--the result of a clerical error.

Because of Larson’s case, and two others that also were misdirected in recent months to the 4th District, Spearman said, the Juvenile Traffic Court has reworked its procedures this week to make sure that appeals go not to the appellate court but to the presiding judge of the Juvenile Court--who will rule on the appeal.

The unfortunate thing about the case, Spearman said, is that, by generating publicity, it is likely to create a misleading impression about a court that serves, for many teen-agers, as an introduction to the justice system.

“Their view of what a court is like is defined largely by television and by what they see in our court,” meaning the Juvenile Traffic Court, Spearman said. “Most of these young people are never going to be inside a courtroom other than our court.

“So we really try to work hard and work with the young people,” Spearman said, noting that hearing officer Frank L. DuPont had even given Larson a two-week extension. He added about the 4th District ruling: “I would couch it as a kid getting lucky.”

Larson said he appreciated the extra two weeks. But he said the $166.50 fine was unfair, and that’s why he persisted. “I didn’t want to be punished for doing the best I was capable of at the time,” he said.

With his shoulder-length blond hair and a small earring displaying the yin-yang symbol, the ancient Asian expression for harmony, Larson said his San Diego surf-zombie looks make him appear to be interested only in waves and trouble. Maybe, he said, that’s what the California Highway Patrol officer who gave him the ticket believed.

Waves, sure, he said. But no trouble. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke and lives at home while he studies Italian at Mesa College and dreams of designing Lamborghini sports cars.

Now, he’s even gainfully employed. He works part-time at the Pannikin cafe in La Jolla, mixing exotic coffee drinks for the international set from the nearby UC San Diego.

This week’s “Keith Richards special” at the cafe is Larson’s own creation. Named for the guitarist in the Rolling Stones rock band and his well-publicized experiments with chemical stimulants, it’s four shots of espresso--completely legal and equal in caffeine to eight cups of regular coffee.

On Nov. 25, 1989, when Larson was an unemployed senior at Serra High School, he was driving his mother’s 1982 Audi 4000S south on Interstate 5, en route to Tijuana for the night with four buddies, when he was pulled over at 9:25 p.m. for going 75 in a 55 m.p.h. zone. He also was cited on the same ticket for not wearing a seat belt.

At the first court hearing, on Jan. 23, 1990, DuPont, the hearing officer, said Larson could attend traffic school in lieu of a fine. The tickets were Larson’s first--and only--violations, according to Department of Motor Vehicle records.

On March 23, Larson returned to tell DuPont that he had been unable to put together the $24 it cost to go to traffic school. DuPont gave him until April 6, a Friday, to attend.

Larson cadged a job from his dad, Gary, at $5 an hour, stocking shelves in his father’s warehouse. On April 7, a Saturday, he completed the eight-hour Whee-L Make U Laff Great Comedians Traffic School, he said.

The very next court day, April 9, a Monday, Larson went back with the school certificate to DuPont. “He just said that it’s too late” and assessed the $166.50 fine, Larson said.

DuPont also told Larson that he could appeal, and so, on April 10, Larson wrote a one-page letter. “Dear Presiding Judge,” it began. The letter explained the two-week extension and his attendance at traffic school, and asked that his certificate be accepted.

“I put in everything I had to do this on time and I was one day off,” the letter said. “My tardiness was not the result of negligence.

“I don’t feel it is necessary to wreak havoc upon everything I have been working for, as small as this may seem, it will do great damage to me,” it said.

According to court records, DuPont wrote Napoleon A. Jones Jr., the Juvenile Court’s presiding judge, an April 19 memorandum explaining his decision.

“I refused to accept the certificate since (Larson) had been given 73 days to complete an eight-hour school, and he failed to do so,” the memo said. “Most youngsters are given no more than 68 days to complete the school.”

DuPont could not be reached Wednesday for comment. The court files contain no response from Jones.

Meanwhile, because of the clerical error, the case was routed to the 4th District. On May 22, Kremer, that court’s presiding judge, invited the state attorney general’s office--which represents state officials, such as judges and referees, in certain appeals--to explain in a legal brief whether Larson’s tardiness “warranted more than a reprimand.”

On June 1, the attorney general’s office spoke: “If, at 17, (Larson) chooses to ignore the speed laws of this state and drive at an excessive rate of speed, he must understand the consequences of his actions,” said the attorney general’s brief, signed by Steven H. Zeigin, supervising deputy attorney general.

Zeigin asked the court to affirm the fine, saying that Larson was “given more than two months to complete an eight-hour course, but trifled with the court’s directive.” Zeigin is out of town and could not be reached for comment, his secretary said.

But, as Kremer’s May 22 briefing invitation had clearly signaled, the three-judge panel sided with Larson. Since Larson did not act “disrespectfully” toward DuPont or his authority, “a reprimand should have sufficed,” Kremer said in the Jan. 30 opinion.

Kremer ordered DuPont to accept the certificate and to dismiss the citation. Judges Patricia Benke and Gilbert Nares concurred.