State Bar Veils Swipe at Quayle : Attorneys: Delegates approve watered-down resolution defending lawyers and criticizing the vice president for his criticism of members of the legal profession.

Carefully avoiding mention of his name, members of the State Bar took issue Sunday with Vice President Dan Quayle’s recent criticism of the legal system and his suggestion that the nation suffered from too many lawyers and lawsuits.

Professing concerns over “lawyer-bashing,” the 500-member Conference of Delegates, convening here during the annual meeting of the Bar, adopted a resolution defending the lawyer’s role in protecting the poor and the victims of negligence and discrimination.

Adoption of the resolution came on a loud voice vote. Although delegates were jokingly warned against using “the Q-word,” discussion was conducted with a picture of a quail projected on a screen atop the podium.

The resolution represented a watered-down version of an earlier draft proposal that had criticized Quayle by name.

A Bar screening committee on Saturday decided that a stronger resolution criticizing the vice president would violate a 1990 U. S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting the Bar from using lawyers’ mandatory dues for political activity without their consent.

The resolution Sunday, proposed by Santa Monica attorney Jerry P. Gordon, chairman of the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, was simply revised to endorse the remarks of American Bar Assn. President John J. Curtin Jr., who had objected to Quayle’s remarks at the national group’s annual meeting in August.

In his speech to the ABA, Quayle had called for sweeping reforms in the legal system and said America’s ability to compete was being impaired by costly and time-consuming litigation. “Does America really need 70% of the world’s lawyers?” asked Quayle.

The vice president presented a long list of recommendations by the President’s Council on Competitiveness that urged, among other things, limits on punitive damages and requiring losers to pay the legal fees in certain cases.

Curtin, taking affront, had responded: “Drastically reducing the lawyers in America’s courtrooms will not make America more competitive in the marketplace.” Without lawyers, he asked, “who will protect the poor, the injured, the victims of negligence, the victims of racial discrimination and . . . violence?”

In Sunday’s proceedings, no lawyer rose to defend Quayle’s call for reforms, although some delegates suggested that even addressing the issue would provide fodder for “lawyer bashers.”

Gordon urged passage of his modified resolution, even though it had been sanitized to avoid mentioning the vice president by name. “I hope your vote will be heard in faraway cities and in high places,” Gordon said.

Other speakers at the State Bar’s annual meeting here struck a slightly different note.

John M. Seitman of San Diego, the group’s new president, succeeding Charles S. Vogel of Los Angeles, urged attorneys to try to help solve legal problems without going to court.

“As lawyers, we must take the lead in spurring this nation to drop its fixation with litigation and focus on the other less costly, less time-consuming ways to resolve disputes,” he said. “A law degree should not be viewed simply as a license to litigate,” he said.

He urged, among other things, that lawyers in California be required to inform clients of dispute-resolution options.

Superior Court Judge Warren C. Conklin of San Luis Obispo, outgoing president of the California Judges Assn., told the lawyers that many judicial functions could be better carried out by court magistrates, commissioners and referees.

In most metropolitan areas, he pointed out, there is an average of 100 cases per judge awaiting trial.

Conklin suggested that court commissioners select juries and that divorces could be accomplished through mediation procedures rather than lawsuits.