Judge Has a Phobia About Job, He Says

A Los Angeles judge testified at his disciplinary hearing Wednesday that he missed more than 400 work days in recent years because he has phobia about being a judge.

Superior Court Judge Patrick B. Murphy, taking the witness stand in the third day of a hearing that could lead to his removal from the bench, said a combination of illnesses, including chronic fatigue syndrome, yielded a job phobia.

“I was disabled by this phobia. . . . I was disabled by the bench,” Murphy said. “When I got into the court system, that would be the trigger for stress.” He testified that each day, including Wednesday, he takes an array of powerful pain killers and anxiety drugs for physical and psychological ailments.

Murphy, 45, is accused by the state Commission on Judicial Performance of malingering, willful misconduct and dereliction of duty for excessive absenteeism. He’s accused of secretly attending Ross University School of Medicine in the Caribbean last January while being paid his $122,000 salary.

“I absolutely admit the appearance of impropriety here,” Murphy testified. But he said he thought his attorney had submitted papers for his permanent disability retirement.

In December 1999, Murphy said, he decided to give up the judiciary and become a doctor. He signed a letter to be delivered by his attorney as part of a package seeking disability retirement, he said. That package, he testified, also stated he was going to the Caribbean medical school on Jan. 1, 2000. “Before I got on the plane I thought it had been sent off,” Murphy said.

But when asked to produce those documents, Murphy said he didn’t have them. His wife is divorcing him, he said, and her attorney has told him that all his documentation has been discarded at their home.

Murphy, who is acting as his own attorney, said that when he went to the Caribbean, he believed his disabilities were limited to his judicial duties. But after two weeks he quit medical school because of headaches and insomnia. Commission attorneys allege he left after a newspaper story said he was living out of the country.

When he returned, Murphy testified, he learned his attorney had not submitted the paperwork.

During cross-examination, Murphy said he “wouldn’t contest” that he is disabled. If the law dictates that an incapacitated judge should not serve, he said, then the commission should remove him from the bench.

Murphy said he doesn’t want to return to the bench, but is fighting the allegations because he doesn’t believe he malingered or committed willful misconduct.

The three-judge panel hearing his case will recommend to the commission what punishment, if any, the judge should receive.

Attorneys for the commission revealed Wednesday that when Murphy eventually filed for disability late last year, it was tentatively denied. Because he failed to contest that decision within 30 days, they said, he can no longer receive disability retirement. Murphy testified that because of his medical conditions, he had not realized that until Wednesday.

The judge and his doctor, James Eshom, testified that in 1996, Murphy’s thyroid was removed because of a noncancerous growth. Subsequently, Murphy said, he caught every flu and cold. Soon, he said, his life was filled with headaches, insomnia and pain. Doctors, he said, diagnosed him with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, two phenomena that his doctors conceded are the subject of some dispute in the medical community. By April 1999, Murphy said, his doctors told him he was permanently disabled.

When his health began to impede his work on the bench, he testified, he experienced panic attacks in court.

For a few months in 1999, he worked in the West Covina courthouse before going out sick. He returned in April 2000 as a Traffic Court judge in Los Angeles. But that also proved too stressful, Murphy said. He has not worked since June 8.

Eshom testified that Murphy had indications of Epstein Barr virus, which has been associated with chronic fatigue syndrome. The doctor, a friend who presided at Murphy’s wedding, said he had written dozens of sick slips for him over the years. But he didn’t know when he issued many of them in 1999 that the judge was taking 20 hours of premed classes.

State attorneys, however, showed that another doctor declared to the medical school that Murphy was in good health. Eshom testified that that doctor, a former partner of his, was “sloppy.”