Opinion ID: 1132505
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Presence and/or Degree of Misconduct in Petitioner's Attorney Fees Collection Practices

Text: (2b) The commission made a blanket finding that petitioner engaged in a course of conduct concerning attorney's fees as set out above ... which constitutes wilful misconduct in office and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute. The conclusion applies to all the findings discussed hereinabove under the headings, Making Attorney Fees Payable Before Fines, Ordering Appearances for Fee-Collecting Purposes, Mervin Anderson Incident, Recording Fee Orders as Apparent Condition of Probation, and Extraction of Attorney Fees from Bail Deposits. The masters, on the other hand, concluded that none of those acts constituted wilful misconduct but that the following acts were conduct prejudicial: leading defendants to believe that payment of attorney's fees was required as a part of compliance with criminal sanctions imposed and, in the Mervin Anderson case, threatening to increase another judge's fee order. The masters further concluded that petitioner's practice in ordering payment of fees first from bail without the consent of the defendant, while legally erroneous, was neither wilful misconduct nor conduct prejudicial. The masters bolstered those conclusions with additional findings on petitioner's professional standing and activities; these findings may be summarized as follows: Petitioner is an able and experienced municipal court judge, highly respected by the judicial officers of his court. He has become widely known and well respected by the judges of other Los Angeles County Municipal Courts, and has contributed to the efficiency of those courts, through his extensive activities in the Municipal Court Judges' Association of Los Angeles County and in the Presiding Judges' Association, of which he is a founder and has served in all offices. He was particularly involved in a project of the latter association for implementation of section 987.8, and since the county bureau of resources and collections found it uneconomic to attempt collection of fee orders of less than $100, he developed a procedure of ordering smaller fees paid through the clerk of his court for remission to the county. He believes that assessment and collection of fees under section 987.8 is in the public interest and cannot be accomplished without unremitting and zealous attention by municipal court judges themselves to attempt to collect smaller fee orders, believing that if judges did not see to collections, no one else would. Petitioner denies any misconduct and contends that even if he made mistakes, they were merely legal errors subject to correction on appeal or in writ proceedings. We disagree. Though some of the acts in question, such as setting a date for payment of an attorney fee in advance of the date set for payment of a fine in a particular case, would not necessarily constitute misconduct or even legal error when viewed in isolation, they became misconduct as part of petitioner's larger scheme for using threats of criminal sanctions to collect attorney fees ordered paid to the county. That scheme violated the provisions of section 987.8 that provide for collection of attorney fee orders only by execution as on a judgment in a civil action and prohibit enforcement by contempt. Central to the scheme was the practice of ordering defendants who failed to pay the fees by a set date to return to court, not because of any doubt about their ability to pay (which presumably had already been determined as a prerequisite to the § 987.8 order) but simply to coerce compliance by questioning them about why they had not yet paid, perhaps suggesting community service as an alternative to payment (a suggestion for which petitioner offers no legal justification), and then setting a new date on which the defendant was ordered either to have paid the fee or to reappear for a new round of interrogation. It was apparent concern over interference with this approach that provoked petitioner's anger at the deputy public defender who told Mervin Anderson that Anderson could pay a fine without simultaneously paying a fee that had been ordered paid on the same day. The effectiveness of this periodic interrogation as a collection device was enhanced by petitioner's other practices. Making fee orders appear to defendants to be a condition of probation, regardless of petitioner's lack of intention to enforce them as such, necessarily suggested that failure to pay would jeopardize the defendant's probation status. Ordering the fine payable after the fee made sure that until and after the fee was paid, the defendant would remain subject to the court's jurisdiction for purposes of administering the criminal sanctions available to enforce payment of the fine. A similar result was achieved when, in violation of Penal Code section 1297, bail deposits were applied to ordered fees even though a balance remained due on a fine. We accordingly concur in the commission's conclusion that petitioner's course of conduct described in the findings sustained hereinabove constituted misconduct subject to discipline. We next must decide whether it was wilful misconduct, as determined by the commission, or no more than conduct prejudicial, as determined by the masters. (7) Bad faith is the touchstone for testing whether misconduct committed by a judge while acting in a judicial capacity constitutes wilful misconduct. ( Geiler v. Commission on Judicial Qualifications, supra, 10 Cal.3d 270, 283-284.) `[B]ad faith' is quintessentially a concept of specific intent, requiring consciousness of purpose as an antecedent to a judge's acting maliciously or corruptly. ( Spruance v. Commission on Judicial Qualifications, supra, 13 Cal.3d 778, 796.) When the judge has `intentionally committed acts which he knew or should have known were beyond his lawful power,' [citation], ... `bad faith' entails actual malice as the motivation for a judge's acting ultra vires. The requisite intent must exceed mere volition; negligence alone, if not so gross as to call its genuineness into question, falls short of `bad faith.' ( Id. at pp. 795-796.) Even when the acts in question were within the judge's lawful power, they may involve bad faith, and thus constitute wilful misconduct, if committed for a corrupt purpose, i.e., for any purpose other than the faithful discharge of judicial duties. ( Id. at p. 796.) [7] (8) Conduct prejudicial, when committed in the course of acting in a judicial capacity, lacks the element of bad faith but must be prejudicial to the administration of justice and [bring] the judicial office into disrepute. ( Id. at p. 796; Const., art VI, § 18, subd. (c).) [8] Bring[ing] the judicial office into disrepute does not require notoriety, but only that the conduct be `damaging to the esteem for the judiciary held by members of the public who observed such conduct.' ( McCartney v. Commission on Judicial Qualifications (1974) 12 Cal.3d 512, 534 [116 Cal. Rptr. 260, 526 P.2d 268]). ( Wenger v. Commission on Judicial Performance, supra, 29 Cal.3d 615, 622-623, fn. 4.) (2c) We are not persuaded that petitioner's wrongful fee-collecting practices were carried out in bad faith. His interest in recovering county costs of legal representation appears to have originated in requests by Los Angeles County officials to the county's courts to find means of implementing section 987.8. In seeking such means through his activities in the two judges' associations mentioned in the masters' findings and in his day-to-day handling of misdemeanor matters, we do not doubt that petitioner was endeavoring in good faith to serve the public interest as he saw it. Relevant to his good faith is his perception that other judges were engaged in similar practices. [9] As already explained, good faith does not preclude a determination of conduct prejudicial. (9) It is true that a judge should not be disciplined for mere erroneous determination of legal issues, including questions of limitations on the judicial power, that are subject to reasonable differences of opinion. (See, e.g., Wenger v. Commission on Judicial Performance, supra, 29 Cal.3d 615, 646-647, fn. 13.) (2d) But, as explained, petitioner engaged in collection practices that were clearly improper or were carried out in order to implement improper collection methods. We accordingly conclude that petitioner committed conduct prejudicial by ordering appearances for fee-collection purposes, causing fee orders to appear to be conditions of probation, ordering fees payable out of posted bail even though part or all of a fine thereby remained unsatisfied, and making fees payable ahead of fines for the purposes of prolonging the availability of sanctions for nonpayment of the fine and creating the impression that such sanctions could also be used for nonpayment of fees. (10) For the guidance of trial courts, we add that ordering payment of section 987.8 fees before payment of the remaining balance on a fine is not necessarily improper if the defendant is not given the impression, through any of the other practices engaged in by petitioner, that payment of the fees may be enforced by criminal sanctions. As previously explained, deduction of section 987.8 fees from cash bail deposits without the depositor's consent is improper under section 1297. (11) There remains for consideration the Mervin Anderson incident. The commission included that incident in the course of conduct it concluded was wilful misconduct, while the masters concluded, with respect to the incident, that threatening to increase another judge's fee order was conduct prejudicial. We conclude that not only the threat, but also the order that Anderson return to court, made for the purpose of implementing collection of the fee, amounted to conduct prejudicial. (See Roberts v. Commission on Judicial Performance (1983) 33 Cal.3d 739, 748 [190 Cal. Rptr. 910, 661 P.2d 1064] (threats to counsel held conduct prejudicial).)