Justice must have been blind

Justice usually is portrayed as a lady in flowing robes, blindfolded

and holding a set of scales. When I was in law school, I understood

the scales. A lady was a little harder to understand, since we had

only one woman in law school.

The blindfold, however, completely escaped me -- until I started

practicing law in Orange County in the 1930s.

The county then was a checkerboard of judicial townships and city

courts, and each administered its own brand of law west of the Pecos.

For example, Seal Beach was always wide open, and the district

attorney never won a gambling case in the Seal Beach Justice Court.

Fullerton was surrounded by the orange groves of the big families,

and the penalties for stealing oranges were horrendous in the court

of Fullerton Justice of the Peace Halsey I. Spence.

Then there was the Anaheim Township/Orange Township mess. The

boundary between the two was Manchester Boulevard. Uncle Charley

Kuchel was justice of the peace in Anaheim. His standard disposition

for driving under the influence was an apologetic $50 fine when the

going rate in the county was $250.

On the other hand, Cal Lester, justice of the peace in Orange,

invariably gave six months in jail, even for a first offense. I don’t

know what he did to repeaters, since six months was the maximum at

the time.

I once asked him why he always gave six-month sentences. He

flipped open the vehicle code. “It says right here in the code -- six

months.”

I pointed out that it really said, “Not to exceed six months.”

“That’s just surplusage,” Cal replied.

Which brings us to our own area and a similar problem. Newport

Beach and Huntington Beach townships also shared a boundary.

If you got a traffic ticket in Huntington Beach Township, you were

home free. Justice of the Peace Chris Pann was a kindly man who

simply couldn’t bring himself to assess a heavy fine no matter what

the offense was. We called him “Minimum Chris.” Sometimes, if you

told a sad enough story, old Chris would reach into his own pocket

and pay the fine on your promise to repay him when you got the money.

Forget kind hearts and coronets if you were cited in Newport

Beach. Justice of the Peace Donald J. -- for Jail -- Dodge drove an

ancient Dodge touring car that would go 40 mph flat out, and he

somehow decided that should be the limit. Anyone caught going faster

got the maximum penalty -- 50 bucks.

Clearly, where you got the ticket meant a big difference in the

outcome of your case. That would seem a simple situation since the

boundary between the townships was generally along the Santa Ana

River, but in those days, the river meandered quite a bit. Only the

county surveyor knew with any precision where the boundary was.

Somehow, in the case of those tickets handed out in the no man’s

land along the border, you seemed to land in the justice court that

was consistent with your attitude toward the cop. If the ticket said,

“Attitude of Driver -- good,” you usually ended up in Huntington

Beach in front of “Minimum Chris.” If it said, “Attitude of Driver --

bad or argumentative,” you were on your way to Judge Dodge’s court,

and because it took a surveyor to find the boundary, you were stuck.

Oh, there was a provision of the law under which you could get

cited to the county seat, but Justice of the Peace Kenny Morrison was

so tough that no knowledgeable person ever chose that alternative.

So then I knew why justice wore a blindfold. If she had seen how

justice was administered in Orange County in those days, she might

have dropped the scales from shock.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.