Judge Countersues in Battle With Small Legal Newspaper : Courts: Jurist accuses publication of forging his signature on mock memo. The Metropolitan News-Enterprise sued him for allegedly detaining employees behind hoax.

A longstanding battle between a small legal newspaper and the presiding judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court escalated Thursday when the judge filed a lawsuit in his own court that accuses the publisher of fraud, deceit and false impersonation.

In his lawsuit, Presiding Judge Ricardo A. Torres accuses Metropolitan News-Enterprise publisher Roger M. Grace of reproducing a “forged” and “counterfeit” depiction of an official signature stamp to distribute a mock memo under the judge’s name.

Torres’ suit was filed to counter a suit filed this month by Grace that accused the judge of abusing his authority for allegedly ordering the detention of three Metropolitan News-Enterprise employees who had distributed the memo lampooning the judge.

Torres’ lawsuit seeks a minimum of $50,000 in damages. “Judges usually refrain from commenting on their judicial functions, but now that (Grace’s) lawsuit has been filed, this gives him the opportunity to clear up the record,” said Assistant County Counsel Frederick R. Bennett, who represents Torres.

The judge has been a frequent target of the newspaper, which once called him a “despotic twit.” On another occasion, Grace referred to Torres in an editorial as a “petty and spiteful autocrat.”

Grace says the ongoing flap stems from efforts by the judge to put pressure on the newspaper to change its “aggressive coverage of the courts.”

When the newspaper refused, Grace said, Torres established a policy limiting the court’s administrative staff, as well as its 234 judges and 60 commissioners, to one county-paid subscription to a legal publication.

As a result, Metropolitan New-Enterprise subscriptions at the court fell from 380 to about 80, Grace said, adding that the newspaper’s circulation is about 2,000.

“This was a policy that was instituted through the budget committee of the courts,” Bennett said. “It was not a policy of ill will against Roger Grace or anybody else.”

According to Grace’s suit, Torres ordered three of the newspaper’s employees detained in his chambers after learning that they were distributing a memo poking fun at him. The mock memo was directed at Superior Court judges.

Grace’s suit, which seeks a minimum of $285,000 in damages, accuses Torres of falsely imprisoning the newspaper employees and causing them mental anguish.

“It was intended as a gag,” Grace said of the memo. “Most judges would have looked at it, tossed it in the basket and that would have been that. Instead, he hales them all in his chambers and interrogates them.”