New Presiding Judge Makes Case for Reform : Courts: Donald E. Smallwood says ‘a change in the legal culture’ is needed to improve the system’s efficiency.

Among his peers, Superior Court Judge Donald E. Smallwood has a no-nonsense reputation for telling it like it is. He has strong opinions, they say, and is quite willing to share them with just about anyone.

“The joke among the judges is, ‘Oh, is that so, Don, why don’t you tell us what you really think,’ ” Superior Court Judge C. Robert Jameson said with a chuckle. Smallwood’s frankness, Jameson admits, “is kind of refreshing.”

But Smallwood’s blunt demeanor, his colleagues say, might qualify him perfectly to confront the ever-increasing caseload and dwindling finances facing Orange County Superior Court as it enters the new year.

Chosen last week by his fellow jurists, Smallwood begins a year’s stint as presiding judge of one of the largest Superior Court systems in the state. During his tenure, he will be responsible for setting policy and overseeing about 54 judges and 12 commissioners hearing hundreds of civil and criminal cases at six county courthouses.

“He may be the right man at the right time,” said Leonard Goldstein, the outgoing presiding judge. “Personally, I’m very pleased with the person following me.”

Friends and co-workers describe the 63-year-old judge from San Clemente as well-liked, politically savvy and good at getting at the heart of the issue. Perhaps more important, Smallwood is a strong advocate of court reform to help the system run more efficiently.

But courtroom efficiency, Smallwood said as he packed his belongings to move into Department 1 in Central Court in Santa Ana, does not necessarily mean getting more cases resolved. Emphasis on the number of cases resolved is a “dangerous” trend, he said. “What’s more important is that justice be served.”

Part of his job as presiding judge, Smallwood said, “will be to educate the public” about court problems and to dispel the public perception that judges do not work very hard.

“There is only a finite number of cases that the system can handle . . . and I think that we have reached that point,” he said, noting that Orange County has not had a new judge appointed to the court since 1987.

What needs to occur, he asserts, is “a change in the legal culture.” Smallwood said society needs to “stop thinking of the courts as the first place to resolve a dispute. It should be the place of last resort.”

In a recent article he wrote for The Times editorial page, Smallwood stated that many of the problems facing the court stem from a lack of resources. Creative solutions, he wrote, are needed to ease the court’s swelling workload. One idea, he proposed, would be to give judges the discretion to award attorney fees to the winning side as a way to weed out nuisance suits.

If those who file lawsuits knew they might have to pay the legal bills of their opponents, they might be less willing to bring unwinnable cases to court, Smallwood wrote. Later in the article, he suggested that the number of jurors trying a case be cut from 12 to 8, to shorten jury selection, which can take a substantial amount of time.

Already Smallwood is showing an innovative spirit during his first week on the job. Today, for example, he will open the old courthouse in Santa Ana for a civil trial. The renovated building, which has been used occasionally as a movie set, is being enlisted to ease the seemingly endless load of civil lawsuits.

Despite his ideas, Smallwood said his role as the court’s top administrator will be mainly limited to “surviving” the difficulties and making sure things go smoothly for the other judges in the court. As Jameson put it--”He has to deal with (54) prima donnas.”

Smallwood, who will celebrate his 30th year as a member of the bar this year, embarked on a law career later than most of his peers. As a teen-ager in Detroit, he thought about becoming a lawyer, but his plans were interrupted by military service during the Korean War.

After his discharge, he married and started a family. He was 29 years old, working for a trucking company, when he decided that he needed a change. He enrolled in Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles and spent four years going to evening classes. When he passed the bar examination in 1962, he opened his own law office in Costa Mesa.

“In retrospect, I guess it was a hard way to go,” he said.

For 23 years, much of Smallwood’s practice focused on family law. He was also a trustee of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in the 1970s. Later, Smallwood worked on the Assembly campaigns of Republican Marian Bergeson, now a state senator from Newport Beach.

In 1983, Smallwood took the year off to travel and take it easy because, he said, he needed to get away from the stresses of family law, which can often involve combative divorces and child-custody disputes.

Shortly after he returned to his practice in 1984, then-Gov. George Deukmejian appointed him to the bench. “It came,” Smallwood said, “at just the right time.”