In County Courtrooms, It’s Justice as Usual : Holiday: Ventura judges ignore the President’s proclamation of a day of thanksgiving for the end of the Gulf War.

While some courts around Southern California went dark Friday on a hastily arranged judicial holiday to honor the Persian Gulf warriors, Ventura County courts conducted business as usual.

Prosecutors prosecuted. Judges judged. And defense attorneys defended the accused as if Friday were any other day.

But it wasn’t. Ventura County was among many counties in California that ignored President Bush’s proclamation of a national day of thanksgiving for victory in the Persian Gulf War.

Word went out Thursday morning to all of California’s presiding judges. The letter from state Supreme Court Justice Malcolm M. Lucas told them that Friday was to be a judicial holiday.

Municipal courts in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange counties were scheduled to be closed, and about two-thirds of Los Angeles superior courts were closed.

But many other courts remained open, including those in Ventura County. The county’s judges decided Thursday afternoon that the notice was too short, and chose to hold court anyway.

Judges allowed those who insisted on a court holiday to postpone their cases until Monday but no one took advantage of the offer, said Superior Court presiding Judge Edwin M. Osborne.

“Common sense was the order of the day with everyone,” and no attorneys took advantage of the holiday to “willfully make a nuisance of things because there was a legal way it could be done,” Osborne said.

Defendants showed up in the usual number, Municipal Court presiding Judge Herbert Curtis III said. “It’s business as usual.”

“We didn’t figure we’d get the day off,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Rick Moeller, a bailiff, as he took his lunch break. “You can’t just stop court on a day like this. You’ve got all these people coming in, and subpoenas. You can’t just come to a screeching halt like that.”

It was better to finish the day’s work than postpone cases until next week and double the length of Monday’s court calendar, said Vince Ordonez, deputy executive officer of the courts. “It probably would have caused more headaches than anything else,” Ordonez said. “Those individuals who had planned to come to court to file or appear in court would have been inconvenienced, and we would have had a longer line Monday.”

But news of the holiday prompted shrugs, grimaces and raised eyebrows throughout the courthouse Friday among those who hadn’t heard about it.

“I didn’t know about it. Did anybody?” asked Tom Nygren of Ojai as he headed into Courtroom 10 to defend himself in a traffic case.

“I just think they should have let us know prior to coming to court today,” Nygren said. Then he shrugged. “Since we’re already here, what the hell.”

“What? Really?” Paul Anderson of Oakland said on learning of the holiday. “Well, I’m here anyway, so I might as well stay. I’ve got some stuff to take care of and I ain’t gonna take it lying down.”

With his wife and 4-year-old daughter in tow, Anderson had driven all the way from the San Francisco Bay Area to answer a ticket for driving with a suspended license. He questioned the value of having such a holiday.

“When you get right down to it, politics and oil--that’s what it was about,” Anderson said of the war. “They had nothing for the Vietnam vets . . . and now to make a holiday for people that went over there (the Persian Gulf) for nothing? That’s garbage, man.”

Ventura resident George Barrett applauded the troops but criticized the timing of the holiday, which he learned about Friday morning while helping his daughter look for a friend in the courthouse.

“Like so many things, the efficiency of our communicating things is a little less than lousy,” Barrett said. Given the day off, “What would I have done? Take a nap,” he said.