Cruise Probe May Affect Third Judge

For the third time, a judge who became entangled in the ethical issues involving a Mediterranean cruise arranged by trial attorneys for 11 active and retired judges apparently will lose or surrender his role in a case.

Previously, two judges who went on the cruise--Pasadena Superior Court Presiding Judge Coleman Swart and private judge Jack Goertzen--removed themselves from cases when questions were raised about their relationship with prominent Los Angeles attorney Thomas V. Girardi, an organizer of the cruise.

At issue now is whether Keith Wisot, a private judge who looked into the cruise in his role as an administrator for a private judging organization, should remain as a court-appointed discovery referee in a case involving Pacific Gas & Electric.

The cruise last August was organized by two attorneys, Girardi and Walter J. Lack, who had the year before won a $333-million settlement in the first phase of a toxic pollution case against PG&E; filed by hundreds of plaintiffs who blamed the utility for ground water contamination. The lawyers collected a fee of about $120 million.

Three of the five private judges who served as arbitrators or mediators in that first phase--Goertzen, John Trotter and Jack Tenner--went on the discount cruise for 90 people on the Cunard liner Sea Goddess II out of Monte Carlo. All said they paid or intended to pay $3,070 each for themselves and a like amount for their wives. The cruise included other lawyers, doctors and expert witnesses.

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Wisot, in his capacity with the Judicial Arbitration and Mediation Service (JAMS), cooperated with a Times request for information about the cruise, saying there was nothing unethical about the participation of the judges.

But Wisot also is serving as a court-appointed discovery referee in the second phase of the PG&E; case. As a result, PG&E; attorneys challenged his potential impartiality. At the same time, for other reasons, attorneys for the plaintiffs, led by Girardi, also asked that he be removed.

A three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeal agreed. It directed Superior Court Judge Frances Rothchild, who had initially refused to remove Wisot, to change judges or show cause as to why Wisot should not be removed. Legal experts familiar with the debate predicted Tuesday that Wisot will lose his referee’s position.

The Court of Appeal also ordered the unsealing of a confidential report by Wisot to JAMS general counsel Michael Young detailing his inquiry, his contacts with The Times and the judges.

In his Oct. 17 report, Wisot said he came to the conclusion that “none of the (JAMS) judges had done anything improper.” He noted that Girardi and Lack’s invitations to go on the cruise had come more than a year after the PG&E; settlement.

Wisot could not be reached for comment on the Court of Appeal action.

JAMS executive Young said, “We respect Judge Rothchild’s original decision in which she implicitly recognized the very limited role that Judge Wisot had in this controversy.

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“Judge Wisot did not go on the cruise, but only cooperated with The Times in its initial inquiries. As soon as Judge Wisot learned that PG&E; raised concerns, he immediately ceased any involvement in our JAMS inquiry . . . While the parties may have disagreed about some of his rulings on discovery matters, neither party questions his integrity.”

The other two judges, Swart and Goertzen, have both chosen to take themselves out of cases they were judging after questions about their relationship with Girardi arose.

Swart was hearing the case of Wolf Air et al vs. Associated Aviation Underwriters in October when attorneys for the defendants raised questions about a plaintiffs’ expert witness who had been on the cruise, and asserted Swart had a conflict.

Swart offered three times to disqualify the expert witness, Paul Engstrom, a law partner of Lack. But when the defendants’ attorneys went ahead and filed a motion calling for Swart to recuse himself, he quickly did so, citing what he termed “the interests of justice.”

Goertzen had done private judging in the case of the City of Long Beach vs. Exxon Oil, ruling in favor of Exxon. Girardi had a role as a defense attorney for another company that originally was named as a defendant in the case. According to the plaintiffs’ attorney, Girardi had suggested Goertzen as the private judge.

A Court of Appeal panel reversed Goertzen on his Exxon verdicts in an opinion unrelated to the cruise. A Superior Court judge subsequently ordered the case remanded to him for retrial.

In November, the plaintiffs’ attorneys, alluding to Goertzen’s supposed ties to Girardi, said they were considering filing a motion to disqualify Goertzen for the retrial.

Before such a motion could be filed, Goertzen sent word he was voluntarily giving up the case.

In an interview, Goertzen said the sole reason he gave up the case was that he was informed by plaintiffs’ attorneys, including Robert Bonner, a former U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, and John Arguelles, a retired justice of the State Supreme Court, that hearing the retrial would require 25 to 40 days of full-time duty.

Goertzen, 66, said he had other cases scheduled during that period “and I was not in a mood to try a case five days a week anyway.”

However, Goertzen acknowledged that in a conference call with Arguelles, Bonner and others that occurred before the judge gave notice he was bowing out, “I was advised that they were concerned with whether or not I felt there had been any problem with Girardi and with having gone on the cruise.

“I advised them that I did not,” he said.

Goertzen allowed that Bonner may have hinted in the conversation that the attorneys would seek to disqualify him if he did not step down.

Goertzen said he had not been aware that Girardi had had any role in the original selection of him as a private judge in the case, and that Girardi was not a counsel for either party in the case.

Girardi could not be reached for comment.