O.C. judge scolded for several remarks

Orange County Superior Court Judge James M. Brooks, no stranger to scoldings by the state judicial commission, was publicly admonished Wednesday for demeaning and intimidating a husband and wife involved in a civil case, and making prejudicial comments to a Syrian woman involved in a separate property dispute.

The commission’s action against Brooks follows previous advisories for referring to Latino defendants as “Pedro,” and for telling a defendant in a sexual molestation case how he would react if the victim had been his daughter: “I would go down and punch the defendant’s lights out.”

Brooks also has been privately admonished for characterizing the owners of a mobile home park as “Nazis.”

The Commission on Judicial Performance said it considered the previous reprimands in determining whether a public admonishment was appropriate this time.

The disciplinary action carries no fines or suspensions but is one of the commission’s highest sanctions, and can block future judicial appointments. Only in extreme cases does the commission remove judges from the bench.

Brooks could not be reached for comment Wednesday. He is on vacation this week, according to a clerk in his courtroom.

Brooks, 69, worked as a prosecutor in Los Angeles and Orange counties before being elected to the Orange County bench in 1987 as a municipal judge. He was named judge of the year in 1989 by the California Judges Assn., according to his biography on the county courts’ website, becoming a Superior Court judge in 1998.

The recent conduct cited by the Judicial Council refers to cases he handled in 2004 and 2005.

In the first case, Palacio Del Mar Homeowners Assn. vs. McMahon, Brooks was presiding over a hearing regarding defendant Elizabeth McMahon. During the proceeding, her husband, Arnold McMahon, told the judge that he awoke at 3:30 a.m. with chest pains on the morning of his scheduled deposition. He went to his doctor, who sent him to the nearest hospital after finding abnormalities. “Gee, I wonder what’s going to happen when we put you in jail, Mr. McMahon?” Brooks said. “Your little ticker might stop, you think?”

Then, after ordering Elizabeth McMahon to appear for a new deposition date, he told her lawyer that if she didn’t show up, he would double the contempt fine of $5,000 as punishment. “I’d mention jail but it might give her a heart attack,” he added.

The council found his remarks to be in violation of a judge’s canons, including one requiring judges to be “patient, dignified and courteous to litigants and others with whom the judge deals in an official capacity.”

In 2005, Brooks was issuing a tentative ruling in Vinci Investments Co. Inc. vs. Johar, a case seeking damages for the defendant’s failure to transfer ownership of a certain property, when he referred to her as “Mrs. Johar, the mother, Sosha, or whatever her name is” and said she “probably doesn’t know how much she owns.”

In a supplemental ruling in that case, Brooks wrote that one defendant transferred much of the property into the name of defendant “Joe Johar’s wife, who, in her native Syria (?) probably wouldn’t be able to own property.”

The remarks violated canons requiring judges to refrain from speech that would reasonably be perceived as biased and prejudiced, and to act in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, the commission stated.

christine.hanley@latimes.com