Referee Quits in Ethics Dispute

A retired state Supreme Court justice has resigned as a court-appointed referee in a civil lawsuit after some ethics experts criticized him for failing to disclose his recent ties to an attorney in the case.

The retired justice, Armand Arabian, said in a letter to the court dated Thursday that he quit because he feels “betrayed and abused” by those who questioned his ethics.

“I have always been an advocate of full disclosure and am troubled by this attack upon my ethics and integrity,” Arabian wrote.

The Times reported Sunday that Arabian was appointed in December by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael S. Luros to resolve pretrial disputes in a lawsuit over construction of a Palmdale office building.

One of the lawyers in the case is R. Rex Parris, who two months earlier had been co-counsel with Arabian in an unrelated slander lawsuit before the state Supreme Court.

Citing state judicial conduct rules, some ethics experts said Arabian should have told the other lawyers in the construction suit that he and Parris had recently worked together.

In the letter, Arabian wrote that, at the time of the appointment, Luros knew of his three prior contacts with Parris, including the Supreme Court slander case and two previously undisclosed cases in which Arabian acted as a mediator.

Arabian wrote that he understood that Parris had discussed their previous dealings at the court hearing when he was appointed. But court transcripts do not indicate that such a discussion took place.

Arabian said in an interview last month that he was not legally or ethically required to disclose his prior relationship with Parris.

“To my dismay, I now find myself defamed and cast in a questionable light by a leading newspaper,” Arabian wrote, referring to The Times article.

Arabian’s office provided The Times with a copy of his withdrawal letter.

Arabian, who charges $500 an hour as a private judge, said in the letter that he would not charge the parties for the three two- to three-hour sessions that have been held in the case.

An employee in Arabian’s office said the resignation letter was posted to the court Thursday, but a court clerk in Lancaster said it had not arrived in Friday’s mail.

Arabian did not return telephone calls seeking comment. Lawyers in the civil case refused to comment, and the Commission on Judicial Performance and State Bar officials could not be reached.

Luros did not return a phone call placed Friday to his courtroom. In an earlier interview, he said, “If there was a conflict, I might well have considered other suggestions” about whom to appoint as a referee.