Judge Issuing Gag Order Should Have Disqualified Himself, Says NOW : Courts: Group says John H. Major was wrong in not disclosing that his home mortgage is held by the firm involved in the sexual harassment case.

A Superior Court judge who issued a controversial gag order in a sexual harassment case against a finance company should have disqualified himself because the firm holds the mortgage on his home, a women’s group has charged.

Judge John H. Major should have disclosed the $195,000 loan that the national financial giant Countrywide Credit Industries made on his Westlake Village home and given the plaintiffs a chance to seek a substitute judge, said Jan Tucker, a spokeswoman for the National Organization for Women’s San Fernando Valley-Northeast Los Angeles chapter.

Major acknowledged that he has a home loan with Countrywide but said there was nothing improper about him ruling in the two-year-old case, which accuses a former Countrywide manager of making obscene remarks and gestures to two female employees at the company’s Tarzana branch.

“I don’t have a financial interest in Countrywide--I bought a home and financed it like everybody does,” Major said in a phone interview Tuesday.

“You use the ‘reasonable man’ standard and if it’s something you feel should be disclosed, do so, and I didn’t feel it was necessary and still don’t.”

Several experts on legal ethics agreed, saying home loans are such routine and impersonal business transactions that they aren’t the sort of “financial interest” that might be construed as a clear-cut conflict.

Moreover, they said, unless the judge was in default and in danger of losing his home, it would be hard to show that he stood to gain anything by ruling in Countrywide’s favor.

“My sense is he really doesn’t have an economic interest likely to be affected . . . and that disqualification wouldn’t be required here,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law professor who specializes in ethics.

Others, however, said the issue is ambiguous because judicial ethics require judges to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and perform their duties impartially.

The local NOW chapter has written to the California Judicial Performance Commission seeking an investigation, and plans to picket today outside Van Nuys Superior Court, where Major sits.

“I would say recusal (withdrawal) is not automatically required under these circumstances, but it’s something the judge should think very strongly about,” said Jeffrey M. Shaman, a legal ethics professor at De Paul University in Chicago.

Ronald Martinetti, the Glendale attorney representing plaintiffs Tamla M. Longoria and Linda D. Wanek, said the loan “should have been disclosed in open court,” particularly since Major’s ruling affected the women’s free-speech rights protected by the First Amendment.

“If you were a working woman,” he added, “would you feel comfortable having your First Amendment rights taken away by a judge who owed money to the other party?”

The ethics dispute stems from a March 3 ruling that Major issued in response to complaints by Countrywide’s attorneys that Martinetti was using “abusive litigation tactics.”

According to court records, Martinetti mailed hundreds of copies of Wanek’s and Longoria’s complaint--and of a similar, Arizona-based lawsuit--to Countrywide offices throughout the country. He sent copies of those suits to the editors of Standard & Poor’s, the business organization that issues credit ratings.

Martinetti also placed copies of the lawsuits in newspaper vending machines in front of Countrywide’s Pasadena headquarters, court records say, and distributed leaflets there and at neighboring businesses urging workers to assert their civil rights and document any instances of sexual harassment.

Countrywide’s attorneys, the Los Angeles firm of Munger, Tolles & Olsen, is seeking nearly $35,000 in sanctions against Martinetti and his clients, according to court records. A hearing is scheduled for July 22.

A combative New York native who practices in a small, three-attorney office, Martinetti says the maneuvers may have been unconventional but they are legal--and the only way for a small firm like his to compete against a giant like Munger, Tolles & Olson, which he accused of “papering me and my clients to death” with frivolous pretrial motions.

But a lawyer with Munger, Tolles & Olson, D. Barclay Edmundson, said Tuesday that it was Martinetti who was pressuring Countrywide with “extra judicial activities” aimed at generating negative publicity. “Exactly what they’re doing here,” he added.

Major agreed with the large law firm and signed a protective order barring Martinetti, his clients, “or anyone acting on their behalf” from distributing copies of court records without first notifying Munger, Tolles & Olson. The order also prohibits any direct or indirect contact with Countrywide employees, customers and business associates, and organizations that regulate or rate Countrywide.

Martinetti said he did not appeal the order for fear that a conservative panel of judges would tighten the restrictions even further, and because he said he did not believe the order to be enforceable.

Major, 64, had not been assigned to the ongoing case but was brought in to rule on the protective order because he is the Van Nuys courthouse’s only “law and motion” judge.

He said Tuesday that he hears as many as 25 different issues a day, five days a week, and it never occurred to him that a home loan with Countrywide should prevent him from ruling on a single motion involving the company.

“Would a subscription to the Los Angeles Times preclude me from hearing a matter involving the Times company?” he said.

Legal experts including Shaman and Chemerinsky said the order itself was highly unusual for a civil case and seemed to infringe on the plaintiffs free-speech rights.

“You rarely get gag orders in anything except a criminal trial,” Shaman said.

Los Angeles civil rights attorney Dan Stormer, who handles many sexual harassment cases, said the order was a “significant ruling” with “major repercussions on litigation strategy, on the plaintiffs’ free speech, on their ability to prepare the case, and to get moral and financial support.”

“I have never had a judge issue a gag order in a case like this,” Stormer said.

Major declined to discuss the order itself, saying the matter was still pending.

The judge raised eyebrows among civil libertarians in April when he issued a 22-point injunction against a Blythe Street gang in Panorama City, barring members from engaging in otherwise legal acts such as standing on rooftops and carrying portable phones.

Though police and prosecutors said the order was necessary to help free the neighborhood from the grip of the drug-dealing gang, which they likened to an occupational army, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California called it “legally indefensible.”

The ACLU is still reviewing the Blythe Street order, and similar actions, for possible legal action, attorney Mark Silverstein said Tuesday.