Great moments in law: The state Court...

Great moments in law: The state Court of Appeal recently reversed a decision in which a law firm was fined $2,500 in L.A. Superior Court because the typewritten lines in its filing were 1 1/2-spaced.

Superior Court Judge Edward Kakita had insisted upon double spacing. Not only did he levy a fine in court that day, but he moved the case off the calendar, forcing it to be rescheduled.

The Court of Appeal, however, noted that the California Rules of Court say that “the lines on each page shall be one and one-half spaced or double-spaced.”

The line-spacing verdict, reprinted in the L.A. Daily Journal’s Daily Appellate Report, came 33 months after the fine. A long time, sure. But then you may have heard that the courts are quite clogged these days.

Actually, you can breathe in the stuff on almost any Southland street: Val Rodriguez noticed an over-abbreviated sign, at right, for a smog-inspection station in Signal Hill.

Well, it isn’t easy wading through American prose: On a family visit to Ashland, Ky., Walter Gillespie of L.A. stopped by the library to return an overdue copy of George Maybery’s “A Little Treasury of American Prose.”

Clerk Betty Prince accepted it and turned to other business.

“Don’t you think you should check and see if it’s overdue?” Gillespie asked.

“No worry--there’s no charge this week,” said Prince, referring to an amnesty during National Library Week.

Then she looked at the card in the book and exclaimed, “Oh my goodness!”

It had been checked out by Gillespie’s late brother-in-law on Feb. 6, 1949. At 1949 rates--2 cents a day--Gillespie would have owed more than $320.

We’ll bet anything the delay was due to the fact that the book was one-and-one-half spaced.

Big news for Port of L.A. aficionados?Don Way snapped a notice, above, in an L.A. photo shop that seems to announce an historical exhibit on the port.

Dueling bumper stickers: William Gaillard of Redondo Beach saw a political debate on the Glendale Freeway--on the rear bumper of a large truck. A sticker on the left side said: “Economic Recovery Is Just Around the Corner.” A sticker on the opposite side warned: “Caution: This Vehicle Makes Wide Right Turns.”

Another rock star with a busy afterlife: You may have heard of the current legal battle in L.A. between a groupie-turned-pop artist and a music publisher, each claiming the rights to the plaster casts of the genitalia of 25 rock stars. One of the stars is Jimi Hendrix, the rock guitarist who later died of an overdose of sleeping pills.

But even more shocking is the news that a Seattle group planning a museum to honor Hendrix recently compared notes with the curators of a Southern California shrine: the Richard M. Nixon Library and Birthplace. But then Nixon and Elvis were a strange pair too.

miscelLAny:

The smallest cities in the county, in terms of residents, are Bradbury (population: 829), the City of Industry (631) and Vernon (152).