Justices Uphold Broad Scope of Judge’s Immunity : Jurisprudence: U.S. Supreme Court dismisses suit by a Los Angeles public defender who alleged that he was manhandled by officers on orders of jurist.

The Supreme Court, dismissing a complaint filed by a Los Angeles lawyer who said that he had been “slammed” against a door in a Van Nuys court, ruled Monday that a judge may not be sued even if he orders an attorney to be roughed up in his courtroom.

On a 5-3 vote, the high court said that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Raymond Mireles cannot be sued for allegedly ordering two police officers to “bring me a piece” of public defender Howard Waco.

The judge was said to have been angered that Waco was not in court when a hearing was to begin Nov. 6, 1989. In response to his order, two officers grabbed Waco from a nearby courtroom, dragged him down a hall, slammed him against a doorway and carried him before Mireles, the attorney claimed.

Even assuming that the accusations are true, the Supreme Court said, a judge may not be sued for any such “judicial action,” even if it is undertaken in “bad faith or malice.”

The unsigned opinion reversed a decision by the U. S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which would have allowed Waco’s complaint to go to trial. Without hearing arguments in the case, the justices acted on an appeal filed by Mireles and reversed the appellate court ruling.

Waco called the high court’s ruling a “bad signal,” saying it creates “an open-door policy where a judge could lose control and create a situation to do harm to an attorney and then have the courts give him free rein to do so.”

Los Angeles attorney Hugh R. Manes, who represented Waco in his damage suit against the judge, called the ruling “an absurd, ominous decision.”

“It authorizes the excessive use of force by a judge and I think that’s atrocious,” Manes said.

After the incident involving Waco, public defenders in Van Nuys refused to try cases before Mireles, who later transferred to the downtown Criminal Courts Building. The state Commission on Judicial Performance rebuked the judge for what it said were careless remarks that “appeared to authorize the use of force.”

The doctrine of judicial immunity, which dates to the 19th Century, is intended to protect judges from being personally sued for their courtroom decisions. The high court in 1872 said it is essential that a judge “shall be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself.”

In recent years, courts have expanded the judge’s protection beyond judicial decisions to include actions that could be “improper and erroneous.” In 1978, the court in Stump vs. Sparkman said that an Indiana judge could not be sued for having erroneously authorized the sterilization of a mildly retarded woman.

The justices relied on that precedent Monday in dismissing Waco’s suit.

“If judicial immunity means anything, it means that a judge will not be deprived of immunity because the action he took was in error . . . or was in excess of his authority,” the court said in the case (Mireles vs. Waco, 91-311).

The five-page opinion said a judge loses his immunity only for actions that are “non-judicial” or are taken in “complete absence of all jurisdiction.” Joining this opinion were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Byron R. White, Harry A. Blackmun, Sandra Day O’Connor and David H. Souter.

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, saying that “ordering a battery has no relation to a function normally performed by a judge.” Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy dissented separately, arguing that the justices should not have decided the case without hearing full arguments.

Assistant Los Angeles County Counsel Frederick Bennett praised the ruling as helping preserve one of the bedrock principles of the U. S. judicial system--that judges be allowed to carry out their duties without fear of being sued by disgruntled litigants.

“The only way to ensure that neutrality is to make them absolutely immune,” Bennett said. “This case was very important in that the Supreme Court did not cut away from the absolute protection enjoyed since the inception of this country.”

In his complaint, Waco sought $350,000 in damages from Mireles for “bodily injury” and humiliation. He also sought $25,000 in damages from each of the police officers. The part of the lawsuit that names the police officers can proceed, Manes said, but the officers are likely to claim that they, too, are protected by the immunity granted the judge.

In other actions Monday, the court:

* Announced that it wants to hear a reargument in the high-stakes case involving whether tobacco companies can be sued for misleading advertisements. The brief order in Cipollone vs. Liggett Group probably means that the justices split, 4 to 4, after the case was heard Oct. 8. If so, the decision rests with new Justice Clarence Thomas.

Anti-smoking advocates say juries should be permitted to hear the evidence and decide whether tobacco companies deceived smokers into using cigarettes. Lawyers for cigarette makers say mandatory federal warning labels preempt any such claims in state courts. A court spokesman said the second round of arguments probably will be heard in January.

* Refused to hear an appeal by white police officers in Bridgeport, Conn., who said they could lose promotions because of “quotas” imposed by federal courts. A federal appeals court ruled in May that Bridgeport officials had used tests that discriminated against blacks and Latinos. It ordered the use of a promotion system that was not biased against minorities.