Federal Courts Suspend Rights Lawyer Yagman From Law Practice for 2 Years

A panel of three federal judges has suspended Venice civil rights lawyer Stephen Yagman for two years from practicing law in federal courts in seven Southern California counties, including Orange County.

The suspension stems from Yagman’s criticism of U.S. District Judge William D. Keller, whom the attorney accused of being anti-Semitic, drunk on the bench, “dishonest . . . a bully and one of the worst judges in the United States.”

Yagman violated local court rules by “impugning the integrity of the court, and by interfering with the random assignment of cases to the judges of this court,” according to the order signed Friday and issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judges Edward Rafeedie, John G. Davies and David W. Williams.

“In essence, (Yagman) attempted to reduce the pool of judges to whom his cases could be assigned by publicly making false and inflammatory statements,” the order states. Yagman “hoped that such accusations would compel the judge to recuse himself to avoid an appearance of impropriety,” the order says.

Yagman, who practices almost exclusively in federal court, specializes in representing plaintiffs accusing law enforcement personnel of brutality or other misconduct.

Yagman is well known to police in Orange County, particularly Newport Beach, partly due to a ruling on the use of excessive force that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand in 1991. In that celebrated case brought by Yagman, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the Newport Beach police went too far when they handcuffed a drunk-driving suspect to a Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian chair and allegedly held him by the shoulders as a nurse drew blood from him.

In another high-profile Newport Beach case in 1993, Yagman won $285,000 in damages from the city for an advertising executive who was beaten during a 1986 traffic arrest.

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In the Keller controversy, Yagman maintained in papers filed earlier that he had violated no ethical rules. Rather, he said, he had only exercised his First Amendment right to criticize a public official.

Keller, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1984, is viewed as sympathetic to law enforcement.

In imposing the stiff suspension, the judges said Yagman has “steadfastly refused to acknowledge the wrongfulness of his conduct.”

Yagman declined comment Tuesday, but he is expected to appeal.

The three-judge panel said Yagman’s allegations against Keller, “particularly the accusations of dishonesty, drunkenness and anti-Semitism, lacked an objectively reasonable basis in fact.” The judges said Yagman “acted at least recklessly in impugning the integrity of the court.”

In explaining its reasons for the two-year suspension--nine months longer than recommended by a 12-lawyer federal court disciplinary committee--the judges referred to American Bar Assn. standards. The standards, the judges said, require them to consider the duty violated by the attorney, the lawyer’s mental state, the actual or potential injury caused by the lawyer’s misconduct and the existence of any aggravating or mitigating factors.

The judges said they found no mitigating factors and several aggravating factors, including prior disciplinary offenses. They said that in 1981 Yagman had been found guilty of judge-shopping; he was suspended for 30 days and fined $500. In addition, in 1989, he was suspended by the California State Bar for six months for charging “unconscionable fees” to one client and other offenses.

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The panel also cited other cases where attorneys had been sanctioned “for misconduct involving improper attacks on the integrity of the courts.” For example, it cited a Virginia federal case where an attorney was disbarred after he contended that a judge had made a decision based either on incompetence or because of “a Jewish bias in favor of the (opposing attorney).”

The suspension is scheduled to become effective Friday. In order to be reinstated after two years, Yagman would be required to pass the California Professional Responsibility Examination administered by the State Bar of California.

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Times staff writer Len Hall contributed to this story.