Appeals Court Rejects Judge’s Libel Lawsuit : Media: Ruling against former presiding jurist cites long tradition of satirizing the judiciary.

The presiding judge was not amused.

There, in a memo on Los Angeles Superior Court letterhead no less, he was pompously describing himself as “a judicial officer with august status” who was suspending “the election of my successor until such time as I determine it to be appropriate to hold such election.”

The memo was phony, circulated in July, 1992, as a joke by the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, a 2,000-circulation legal newspaper embroiled in a long-running battle with then-Presiding Superior Court Judge Ricardo A. Torres--a judge it had once called a “despotic twit.”

Torres did not laugh. He sued for libel, among other things. The newspaper sought to have the libel allegation thrown out, and appealed when a judge refused to do so.

On Wednesday, an appellate court agreed with the newspaper, ruling that the phony memo was an obvious parody and ordering that the libel portion of Torres’ suit be dismissed.

“From the Pickwick Papers of the 1830s to Colorado of the 1890s to Monty Python of the early 1970s, judges and the judiciary have been fair game for satirists,” Presiding Justice David G. Sills wrote for the 2-1 majority on the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana.

If the basis of humor is exaggeration, Sills wrote, “the formality (and, no doubt on too many occasions, outright pomposity) of judges and legal proceedings . . . provide rich ground for mockery and parody.”

The newspaper’s conflict with Torres can be traced to its aggressive coverage of his tenure as presiding judge, News-Enterprise Co-Publisher Roger Grace said Thursday.

“Torres threatened our general manager with economic retaliation if we didn’t reform our coverage to his liking,” Grace said.

In 1992, Torres informed the court’s administrative staff, 234 judges and 60 commissioners, that the county would pay for only one subscription to a legal publication. Most selected the Daily Journal, a larger competing legal newspaper.

Grace said the loss cost his paper $34,000 a year.

“We were peeved,” Grace said. “We lost $34,000. We thought it interfered with our freedom of the press.”

Grace said he tried “hard-hitting, straightforward commentary, but that didn’t work.” While sitting in his rocking chair one Saturday afternoon, he said, he was inspired to write the offending memo.

He said he showed it to his wife, and they agreed that “no judge on the court would take it seriously. This memo was to caricature Torres. We thought it was an obvious parody.”

Three News-Enterprise staffers were sent to the courthouse to distribute the mock memo to other Superior Court judges, Grace said, but Torres heard about it and had bailiffs bring the newspaper employees to his chambers.

“It was unbelievable that Torres had these women interrogated,” Grace said. “We had no idea they were being put in any kind of jeopardy (by distributing the memo). I knew the guy was a jerk, but I didn’t know he was a sadist. He brought contempt charges against these women.”

The newspaper sued Torres, and Torres countersued, accusing the newspaper of libel, fraud, deceit and false impersonation. The impersonation allegation is still pending. Torres could not be reached Thursday for comment.