Judge Disputes Allegations of Improprieties : Judiciary: Judge Adams rejects complaint, involving attorney friend, being investigated by state panel.

Superior Court Judge G. Dennis Adams on Friday angrily called “outrageous” suggestions that he improperly favored a La Jolla attorney with a $5-million civil verdict, an action under investigation by the state Commission on Judicial Performance.

“I’m an East County judge just doing the Lord’s work,” he said. “I don’t go out of my way to make enemies, but the longer I sit on the bench, the more I make. I have no idea where this thing is going to end up or what the accusations are going to be, but I have never abused my office. That’s outrageous.”

Adams is one of three Superior Court judges under investigation by the state judicial panel, which scrutinizes complaints of improper judicial conduct. The commission makes recommendations to the state Supreme Court, which can reprimand or remove a judge.

Although Adams refused to disclose details of his interview with investigators, The Times has learned that Adams and Superior Court Judges Michael I. Greer and James A. Malkus are under scrutiny for their ties to personal-injury attorney Patrick Frega, 47.

Adams, who turns 51 next month, reported on required financial disclosure forms that in 1987 and 1988 he received $1,400 from Frega for a dinner and use of Frega’s computer for a book the two are working on about World War II.

Malkus reported getting $450 worth of gifts from Frega in 1985, including a charity dinner and the use of Frega’s Jeep. Greer reported getting $1,520 in gifts between 1986 and 1991 from Frega.

The commission also is trying to determine whether Burlingame, Calif., attorney Joseph Cotchett has improper ties to Greer, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Greer’s disclosure statements indicate that Cotchett bought him a Super Bowl ticket worth $100 in 1988 and waived $8,326 in attorney fees for Greer and his wife.

Judges are required under the California Code of Judicial Conduct to disclose personal relationships with lawyers or clients who appear before them and either remove themselves from the case or have all parties agree in writing that the information is not relevant.

In Adams’ case, investigators are examining a 1986 lender-liability case in which both parties waived the right to a jury trial and left it up to Adams to decide whether Security Pacific Bank fraudulently caused a former San Diego car dealer to lose dealerships in San Diego and Los Angeles.

Three months into the trial, Adams ruled in favor of Frega, who was representing car dealer James Williams.

“I didn’t do anything inappropriate,” Adams said. “I had no inappropriate contacts. The opinions made were my own and I said so. I thought it was an outrage the way Frega’s client had been treated and I expressed it every way I could in the decision of 50 pages.”

On Friday, Adams also expressed admiration for Frega during the Security Pacific case.

“There may be, in my 17 years on the bench, a more brilliant trial lawyer, but I can’t remember one,” he said. “When he cross-examines someone, he’s incredible to watch. It’s a show.”

After the trial ended and while the case worked its way through a state appellate court, Adams accepted Frega’s dinner invitation in July, 1987, to make up for missing a trial lawyers’ dinner at which Frega was honored for his work in the Security Pacific case. The dinner was the first time Adams had received a gift from Frega, the judge said.

Adams’ decision eventually was upheld by the California Supreme Court.

Later in 1987, the two became closer. Adams asked Frega, a Vietnam veteran who suffered a severe leg injury as a Marine running reconnaissance missions, to help him with a book he had been writing for years.

Entitled “Bitter Triumph,” the book, about the fall of France during the Battle of Abbeville in 1940, is up to 160,000 words and Adams needed Frega’s advice on how to write the battle scenes.

“Frega’s forte is not the king’s English, but he would have insights on the soldier’s life that I didn’t have,” Adams said. “I was having a deuce of a time with those battle scenes. Couldn’t get them to ring true. Still can’t.”

The two men exchanged draft after draft, rewriting each other’s copies until they became furious with one another. At one point, Adams decided his computer wasn’t quick enough for the relentless drafts he would add each morning starting at 2 a.m. and usually ending by 6:30 a.m., when he would leave for court.

Frega let him have his computer for a time.

Since the Security Pacific case, Adams said, he has neither heard a case involving Frega nor accepted any legal advice from him. Nor has Frega had an influence on Adams’ fiancee, Superior Court Judge Barbara Gamer, Adams said. The two judges are planning to marry in August.

Certainly, Adams admits, he attends Frega’s annual Christmas parties. And he has been to a couple of Frega’s boat parties, which usually attract about 200 people. One year, Frega had the boat pick up Adams and drop him off at two unscheduled stops, the judge said.

Adams is keenly aware that his friendship with Frega is under question not just from the state judicial commission, but from other judges and lawyers as well. But Adams does not apologize.

“I have some dear, dear relationships with lawyers and they are priceless to me,” he said. “You walk this bridge every day and it’s difficult, but Patrick Frega is my friend and I told him long ago: ‘I can’t handle your cases.’ ”

Adams was appointed to the El Cajon Municipal Court in 1975 by then-Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and served four years before being elevated to the Superior Court in El Cajon.

In a recent questionnaire about his pet peeves on trial court procedures, he was asked what type of behavior was most irritating.

He wrote: “Attorneys who have no sense of the drama of the courtroom and act as if it is their divine right to bore everyone to death.”