State Judicial Panel Lifts Curtain on Courthouse Feuds

It wasn’t the fake pot plant in her courtroom. Or the cigarette-smoking in her chambers. Or even the aborted courtroom wedding for infamous parent killer Lyle Menendez.

What really got Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Nancy Brown in trouble was kicking the bureaucrat out of her courtroom.

For four years.

A fact-finding panel for the state Commission on Judicial Performance has concluded that Brown’s banishment of court coordinator John Iverson was willful misconduct that violated judicial canons dictating that judges cooperate with one another and treat court administrators nicely.

Serving as special masters for the commission, Justice Gilbert Nares of the California Court of Appeal and Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James H. Chang concluded that Brown acted in bad faith because she did not like Iverson and, as Brown put it, did not want him “skulking around.” Iverson was in charge of scheduling criminal trials.

The panel’s report provides a glimpse behind chamber doors--portraying the downtown Criminal Courts Building as a soap opera stage populated by big egos who occasionally indulge in personality conflicts, power plays and temper tantrums.

It also paints a picture of a bench so dysfunctional that feuding judges at times did not speak to one another for months or years at a time.

Brown’s ban of Iverson came soon after a change of assignment that the judge strongly protested. She told the commission she was protesting Iverson’s rudeness and insensitivity toward another judge who also was transferred.

Brown’s behavior “imposed an unnecessary administrative burden” on the courts, the panel found. But a dissenting judge said Brown engaged only in improper conduct.

Brown’s lawyer, Ephraim Margolin, responded that she was never told there was a problem. “No one in authority approached Judge Brown to inform her of any havoc being wrought,” he said. He pointed out that Brown continued to telephone court administrators when her courtroom was available.

The special masters, appointed by the commission, act as advisors. The ultimate decision rests with the commission’s three judges, two lawyers and six members of the public--who are scheduled to take up the matter next month at a meeting in San Francisco. The commission later will issue written findings and perhaps impose sanctions.

Brown, who was appointed to the Superior Court in 1984, faces possible reprimand, censure, or perhaps even removal from the bench. She declined to comment on Wednesday, as did her lawyer.

The fact finders determined that there was no misconduct on Brown’s part in connection with the other complaints lodged against her regarding the fake plant, the cigarette smoking and the Menendez wedding plans.

The report disclosed that the complaint about the fake marijuana plant originated with court clerk Joseph Polido, whom Brown had transferred from her courtroom. The report cited testimony describing the clerk as officious and said he “sometimes referred to himself as a judge.”

Brown told the commission that the fake plant was a gag gift from another judge. She kept it in her courtroom among about 25 to 30 live plants. At times, she told the commission, people asked to touch it, then burst out laughing.

“So, it was to be humorous, for one thing; but secondly I wanted them to know what this substance looked like in its plant form,” she testified. It was removed when a prosecutor complained.

The tensions between Brown and her supervising judges--John Reid, James Bascue and Gary Klausner--were so great, the commission’s records show, that they did not speak. It apparently began with Bascue’s decision in 1994 to transfer Brown to a less prestigious assignment, and move her from her ninth-floor courtroom.

Bascue testified the transfer was partly due to a calendar crunch, but also acknowledged that Brown was a judge he “had concerns about . . . who I wanted to move out.”

Her reaction to the transfer was swift and unhappy.

“I am very deeply hurt and outraged,” she protested in a memo, saying she had “paid her dues,” the report said. She blasted the transfer as “cruel, sadistic, humiliating and inexcusable,” charging that it “smacks of sexism.” In a later letter of protest to Bascue, Brown said another such transfer would probably “put her in the funny farm” and objected to the lack of security in her new courtroom, saying she was the target of “a trained Lebanese terrorist.”

‘Stay Away From Here’

Shortly after the transfer, she initiated the ban against Iverson. On several occasions, she chased Iverson away, telling him, “Stay away from here. . . . You don’t belong here. . . . You’re not allowed here. . . . Stay away from me.”

In one of her missives to her supervisors, Brown made her wishes clear: “Please advise John Iverson that I will not permit or tolerate him in my courtroom. . . . If he comes within 25 yards of me or my courtroom or my chambers or the back hallway, he is likely to be a very unhappy boy.”

She later resorted to stronger terms:

“When I returned from lunch last Friday, I found John Iverson skulking around my chambers. . . . John Iverson is not not not not not not to be in my back hallway, my chambers, my courtroom.”

Brown’s supervising judges told the commission that they never knew why she had banned Iverson. But they never asked.

Bascue testified that he did not speak to Brown because he believed her “level of anger and hostility precluded having a productive discussion” with her, according to a legal brief.

Reid testified that Brown refused to lift the ban when he tried to talk with her. Several other judges attempted to intervene, to no avail.

Iverson did ask why he had been banned, the report said. Brown’s response to him: “Think about it.” After thinking about it, Iverson told the commission, he still could not come up with a reason. He retired earlier this year.