Here Comes the Judge--Finally : 2 Jurists Begin Hearing Cases in East County Courthouse

Nearly five years after they were expected, the first full-time judges arrived on the bench Tuesday in the East County Courthouse.

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But the question many court-watchers are asking is: “How long will they stay?”

“I’m glad to see that the two judges are volunteering to come out here,” said civil attorney Russell Takasugi, past head of the East County Bar Assn. “We’re hopeful that they will find that there is a need to [permanently] staff the East County Courthouse with a Superior Court judge.”

For years, lawyers and litigants from east of the Conejo Grade had been praying and pressing for judges to hold court in Simi Valley and save them the long drive to the County Hall of Justice in Ventura.

But about the only judge ever seen in the $11-million stucco building’s wood-paneled courtrooms was Stanley Weisberg, the Los Angeles County jurist who presided over the infamous Rodney G. King beating trial in 1992.

And until now, Ventura County court commissioners--jurists with lesser judicial powers--worked only part time there, hearing small claims suits, divorce battles and traffic beefs.

Then two events collided--a booming backlog in civil and criminal case filings and a suddenly full judicial bench--and swelled the County Hall of Justice beyond its capacity to handle the load.

Last week, Presiding Judge Melinda Johnson ordered that two judges be posted temporarily to Simi Valley to hear civil cases, and two men volunteered: Superior Court Judges Joe Hadden and Ken Riley.

If Johnson has her way, the Simi Valley judicial positions will become permanent by Dec. 31--the end of her tenure as presiding judge--and her successor will appoint two judges for the long term.

It appears to be the end of a long struggle over the courthouse’s identity.

Opened in March, 1991, the East County Courthouse was meant to serve all the communities east of the Conejo Grade.

Court commissioners heard traffic and family cases, and occasionally took pleas from misdemeanor offenders.

But the district attorney’s office eventually pulled out its representative, and the public defender’s office kept its presence to a skeletal one day a week.

There was even talk of closing the courtrooms in 1993, when Sheriff Larry Carpenter said that proposed budget cuts would bleed away money he needed to pay the bailiffs there.

What’s more, the Ventura County bench was holding out against posting judges to the East County Courthouse because the system worked so well in the Hall of Justice in Ventura, Johnson said.

“As long as we could contain ourselves in the building, we had tremendous efficiency of logistics,” she said Tuesday. “Every single judge was available every single minute. . . . We were able to shift cases around very efficiently, and that kept us busy every single minute.”

While commissioners were empowered to hear civil cases, many east county attorneys snubbed them, preferring to drive to Ventura to have their cases heard by full-fledged judges, said Ruth Morrow, East County Bar Assn. president.

But despite the bar association’s pleas, the Ventura County bench stuck to its guns.

Then Gov. Pete Wilson filled the last vacancies on the Superior and Municipal Court bench--four in one month--and the Ventura courthouse hit “critical mass,” Johnson said. She moved quickly to establish the new posts.

“We’re working on a permanent plan for a judicial presence in Simi,” Johnson added, “and I hope that we’ll have that very, very soon.”

On Tuesday, Hadden presided as attorneys began picking a panel of 12 jurors and five alternates for a lawsuit against a contractor by a group of Simi Valley homeowners who allege that their homes were shoddily built.

The case is expected to run for four months in the same courtroom where the acquittal of four white Los Angeles police officers in the beating of King, a black motorist, sparked the devastating 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Next door, Riley heard arguments from attorneys in the medical malpractice suit over the death of cancer victim Joyce Ching.

For months, witnesses, doctors and others in the case had driven all the way to Ventura for the trial, which ended in a $700,000 award to Ching’s family.

“It would have been much more convenient for a lot of the witnesses” had the trial been held in Simi Valley to begin with, defense attorney Mike Gonzalez said. The new location is fabulous, he added, “because it’s closer to my house in Los Angeles.”

During a break, Riley said: “I’ve always felt that we have so many people that live on this side of the Conejo Grade that we kind of owe it to them to be out here.”

The new judicial posts in Simi Valley were a long time in coming, Hadden said.

“It’s nothing that jumped out of the bushes with a mask on,” he joked. “It was an inevitability. We’re out of courtrooms, and this is the only alternative site.

“And it’s just about to blossom.”