Paper Fires New Volley in Legal Feud : Courts: Publisher sues presiding judge of Superior Court, charging that he abused his authority by detaining three Metropolitan News-Enterprise workers.

A small legal newspaper that has been engaged in a running feud with the presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court has sued the judge in his own court, alleging that he abused his authority by ordering the detention of three newspaper employees who distributed a memo that lampooned him.

The lawsuit, filed Friday, is the latest twist in a contentious yearlong battle between Presiding Judge Ricardo A. Torres and the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, which has been attacking the judge in print since he cut back on court subscriptions last December.

The flap has been laced with invective. Once, the newspaper, circulation 2,000, went so far as to call Torres a “despotic twit.” Another time, publisher Roger M. Grace wrote an editorial calling the presiding judge “a petty and spiteful autocrat . . . the Queeg of Hill Street.”

The dispute stems from a policy Torres put into place in which the court’s administrative staff, as well as its 234 judges and 60 commissioners, must limit their county-paid subscriptions to one legal publication. Most have selected the Daily Journal, a larger competing legal newspaper.

Only 48 subscriptions to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise remain, down from 380. Grace said the loss has cost the paper $36,000 a year.

Grace contends that Torres ordered the subscription cutbacks because he did not like the paper’s aggressive coverage, particularly stories about another judge who had run afoul of the state Commission on Judicial Performance. “He just doesn’t like scrutiny,” the publisher said. “He wants everybody to do things his way. That’s fine if you’re a South American dictator, which he’d be excellent at.”

The judge, through his lawyer, says the cutback was a cost-saving measure that was not initiated by Torres, but were recommended to the presiding judge by the court’s executive committee.

“There’s a lot of saber rattling by a person unhappy with the court and Judge Torres, but it’s a one-sided battle,” said Deputy County Counsel Frederick R. Bennett, who represents Torres. “He (Grace) just happens to own a newspaper and so his views get a lot of publicity.”

The truth, says one veteran Superior Court judge who did not want to be named, may lie somewhere in between. “It has evolved into a rather personal thing between the two of them,” said this judge. “On a confidential basis, you might find both at fault.”

The latest skirmish stems from a July 14 memo, written by Grace, that the publisher says was intended to poke fun at the judge. The mock memo was written under Torres’ name and directed at Superior Court judges.

“It has determined,” the memo opens, “that the Metropolitan News-Enterprise contains material of a questionable nature. For example, use of epithets such as ‘despotic twit’ when applied to a judicial officer with august status, cannot be countenanced. Accordingly, it has been determined that henceforth, the possession of that publication . . . shall not be tolerated.”

According to the suit, Grace ordered three Metropolitan News-Enterprise employees to distribute the memo in downtown courtrooms. When Torres learned of the memo, the suit alleges, he ordered a deputy to bring the workers to his chambers.

The suit--which seeks a minimum of $285,000 in damages--accuses Torres of falsely imprisoning the newspaper staffers, causing them mental anguish and violating their civil rights. It charges that the judge held a “sham proceeding” in his courtroom in which he charged the employees with contempt of court and told them they could not call a lawyer.

Later that afternoon, the suit says, a hearing was held, at which the trio was represented by an attorney. Torres disqualified himself from the hearing and offered to drop the charges in return for a statement saying that the paper regretted any disruption it might have caused the court.

Torres was out of town Friday and could not be reached.